Ted Benton


Ted Benton is a British academic.

Career

As an academic, Benton works as an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Essex. He has taught subjects such as social theory and environmental social science for more than forty years.
His most notable book is Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies, published by Routledge, which was reviewed in , Acta Sociologica and the American Journal of Sociology. He was influential in some of the early discussions that grew into the critical realism tradition in philosophy of science and the social sciences and has since maintained a realist position, though outside the mainstream of critical realism. He has had a particular interest in the relation between the social and natural sciences, where he has criticized some of the more constructionist approaches to this relation. He has also been a strong advocate of eco-socialist ideas, influenced by the Marxist tradition.
Alongside his work in philosophy and social theory, Benton is an active natural historian, who has published well regarded works, specializing in insects and particularly in bees. In 2007, he received the Stamford Raffles Award given by the Zoological Society of London.

Books