Gabriel de Tarde

Mankind is driven underground by the extinction of the sun; attitudes change dramatically as the migrants drill deeper and deeper. The book is divided into three sections. In the first, de Tarde ironically outlines man's struggle to build a Utopia; in the second, the sun turns red, the sea becomes ice, the air begins to fall in flakes of nitrogen and oxygen. Persuaded that power and heat can be obtained from the center of the earth, the survivors start digging enormous crypts. Here, under the earth, they build a genial and artistic community, with marvelous labor-saving machines that enable them to concentrate on creating works of art.

Underground Man

Gabriel Tarde’s Monadology and Sociology, originally published in 1893, is a remarkable and unclassifiable book. It sets out a theory of ‘universal sociology’, which aims to explicate the essentially social nature of all phenomena, including the behaviour of atoms, stars, chemical substances and living beings. He argues that all of nature consists of elements animated by belief and desire, which form social aggregates analogous to those of human societies and institutions. In developing this central insight, Tarde outlines a metaphysical system which builds on both classical rationalist philosophy and the latest scientific theories of the time, in a speculative synthesis ...

Monadology and Sociology

Gabriel Tarde

Tarde constructs a sociological explanantion of crime in which the individual is ultimately the principal actor, and suggests forms of penalty whose principles avoided the determinist implications of positivism. The book should be of interest to students of criminology, jurisprudence and sociology.

Gabriel de Tarde

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