What happened to Philosophy of Social Science after Ernest Nagel (1961)?

The hazards of trying to draw conclusions about all of science, by focusing narrowly on physics were learned at the end of the last century. However, including biology and chemistry are only the beginning, not the end, of the project of trying to develop a more well-rounded picture of science.--Alisa Bokulich

The quoted passage is from a terrific NDPR review by Bokulich that Catarina discussed yesterday. Bokulich notes that "Conspicuously absent from this list are any of the social sciences." Bokulich goes on to call attention to the works of four recent leading philosophers of social science--all of which happen to be women. [By the way, when later in the review Bokulich calls attention to the lack of representation of women in the volume (and the lack of focus on philosophy race/feminism) she does not refer back to her earlier discussion. This justifies Catarina's claim that Bokulich should be praised for the "elegant way" in which these issues are raised. ]

As the epigraph to this post suggests, our current understanding of the development of philosophy of science is that we are "trying" to develop it away from an exclusively physics focus to other sciences during the last few decades. (It was gratifying to read Bokulich's claim that philosophy of economics is "thriving.") But this leaves me with a puzzle: if one opens Ernest Nagel's (1961) The Structure of Science, one notes that three out of fifteen of chapters are exclusively focused on philosophy of social sciences and history. These together comprise 25% of the text. (This understates the situation because  earlier chapters also discuss relevant material. There is is also a chapter on biology, by the way.) So, half a century ago one the most widely cited works in the philosophy of science (although probably unread these days unless one is interested in Nagel-reduction) by one of the professional leaders of the discipline (who arguably invented analytical philosophy as a category) at one of the then  elite departments already was offering a "well-rounded" picture of science. How come this was not the norm in the profession?

Now, that's an honest question. Clearly several of Nagel's PhD students (Kyburg, Levi, and Suppes) went on to do very important work in decision theory (or formal epistemology), but this also involved (inter alia) a narrowing of what was discussed in philosophy of social science.  My own suspicion is that Nagel himself was also partly to blame for this state of affairs. For as regular readers of this blog now I think he is the originator of how we intuitively come to think about analytical philosophy. (When he did so he would been understood as a Pragmatist scientific philosopher.) And as I have noted in his act of prophecy he omitted  what we may label analytical philosophy of social science not just in Cambridge (Ramsey, Braithwaite) and at Vienna (e.g., Neurath); a focus on Ramsey would have forced him to consider the ways in which analytical philosophy and Cambridge political economy in the wake of Sidgwick overlapped. So, no obvious space was created for philosophy of social science (and the other projects that make PoS more well rounded) in the image that guided the self-conception and training(s) of analytical philosophy. (Of course, such space may well have been created more recently.)

PS This can't be the whole story, of course. Peter Winch's Wittgensteinian philosophy of science was also widely read, but Nagel mentions it only in a footnote (and rejects it polemically). Popper was, of course,  extremely well known including in the social sciences.

PPS As I have pointed out before, Rawls (who understood all of these matters better than we do) had his own reasons for also telling the story in such a way in which active engagement with social science became less necessary.

PPPS. As noted Nagel's work in philosophy of social science got published in the American Economic Review.