Abstract

This substantial volume offers research students—chiefly American according to editorial estimate: ‘a fair assumption in view of the results of the bibliography search, that by far the greatest interest in values for the time covered is in the United States’ —a basic bibliographical record of some two thousand entries concerning the literature, in book and article form, upon problems of values during the past forty years. It is the fruit of some ten years’ meticulous team-work, first in the Laboratory of Social Relations, Harvard and then in the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. Written primarily for behavioural scientists, i.e., anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists, the compilers hope it will extend their acquaintance with published works in their complementary sciences and in philosophy. They have found recent studies of values to be ‘increasingly interdisciplinary in character’ but ‘less cumulative than is desirable’—for at least one sad reason that ‘with the partial exception of the philosophical journals, there has been no “obvious” place in which to publish on the subject’.