This paper explores the history of ‘the social’ in information science. It traces the influence of social scientific thinking on the development of the field’s intellectual base. The continuing appropriation of both theoretical and methodological insights from domains such as social studies of science, science and technology studies, and socio-technical systems is discussed.

The theoretical base of clinical sociology is analyzed through Pepper's root metaphor method. Practice is found to be framed by the analogy between society and a complex ecosystem. The resulting world hypothesis is identified as Ecologism, within which the four relatively adequate world hypotheses identified by Pepper (Formism, Mechanism, Contextualism and Organicism) take their place as comple...

A consistent result in the evaluation of group-delivered intervention to promote social reciprocity in children with PDDs is that outcome data are inconclusive. Lack of robust evidence of efficacy confounds understanding of these interventions and their value to the field. It is conceivable that the construct of impaired social reciprocity in PDD presents unique circumstances that require speci...