Philosophy of Science and Sociology

From the Methodological Doctrine to Research Practice

Edmund Mokrzycki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135028213
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Originally published in 1983. This book concentrates on the impact of philosophy of science on sociology and other disciplines. It argues that the impact of the philosophy of science on sociology from the rise of the Vienna Circle until the mid-1980s resulted in a deep-reaching and, in the author's view, undesirable methodological reorientation in sociology.

1 Introduction

Logicians cannot make sense of science — but they can make sense of logic and so they stipulate that science must be presented in terms of their favourite logical system. This would be excellent comedy material were it not the case that by now almost everyone has started taking the logicians seriously.(1)

It is difficult to guess to which population that almost everyone was intended by Feyerabend to apply, but it would be easy to show that the seriousness with which the various academic milieus treat the logic of science is a gradeable feature and that there are in that respect essential differences between, for instance, the milieu of physicists and that of sociologists. In the present book I am concerned, among other things, with the attitude of sociologists qua a certain group toward the logic of science, and especially with the objectified form of that attitude, that is with the scholarly work of sociology.

Instead of the term logic of science I shall use the seemingly broader term philosophy of science. Of course, the latter term can, and sometimes is, interpreted broadly as all kinds of philosophical reflection on science, but usually it refers to only one way of philosophizing about science, namely that which originated with the Vienna Circle and other centres having a similar orientation (the Berlin School, a group of British analytic philosophers and several other small groups in various countries, primarily in the United States, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries)(2) and which came to single out logical positivism as a trend in philosophy. In other words, the philosophy of science functions as a historical term which applies to a specified trend in the history of thought, and will be used in that sense here. This is additionally legitimated by the fact that the said trend has developed into an academic discipline: the philosophy of science as it functions today as an academic discipline is the product of a single orientation, and its origin is clearly connected with the trend of ‘scientific philosophy’ in the 1920s (the first international congress organized by the Vienna Circle in Prague, in 1929, can well be regarded as the first congress of representatives of the new discipline). Of course, during its fifty years’ history, the philosophy of science has evolved considerably. There have also always been differences of opinion among its representatives. This, however, does not change the fact that among the possible, and even actually existing, types of philosophical reflection on science, the philosophy of science has represented a coherent whole: the differences of opinion between, for example, Carnap and Popper as compared with the views of, for example, Ingarden or Habermas, referred to secondary issues.

Early logical positivism primarily imposed on the subject matter and the method of research on the philosophy of science. Lip service was paid to covering science as such, but in fact research came to be confined to that sphere of phenomena in the modern history of Western civilization which academic circles in the 1920s labelled as science. The research method was defined as the logical analysis of the language of science and later, of products of science. This in fact proved to be an analysis of products of science (or what were considered to be products of science) in the light of contemporaneous logic. This is why the terms the logic of science and the philosophy of science can be treated as interchangeable. We shall revert to these issues on many occasions. For the time being let me just mention the fact that the philosophy of science as we have it today was based on specified assumptions and that the adoption of those assumptions came to determine its later evolution, including the latest studies which seemingly mark a turning point in that discipline.

Thus, when I refer to the philosophy of science, I mean that very coherent whole, clad in the paraphernalia of an academic discipline, distinguishable in philosophical reflection on science, which is closely linked to logical positivism. It does not cover philosophical reflection on science as practised by such authors as Karl Mannheim, Alfred Schutz, Michael Polanyi, Peter Winch and Jürgen Habermas. Thus I do not mean all philosophical reflection on science, but only its dominant(in the institutional sense of the word) form, organized around a certain philosophical doctrine.

The subject matter with which I am concerned here covers the impact of the philosophy of science understood in that way, on sociology and related disciplines, and the main thesis of the present book can be formulated thus: the impact of the philosophy of science on sociology over the last fifty years, i.e., from the rise of the Vienna Circle, has resulted in a deep-reaching and basically undesirable methodological reorientation in sociology. The turning point comes in the 1940s and 1950s. At that time, radical and very restrictive methodological ideas that marked the early period of logical positivism, i.e., ideas shaped in the 1920s and 1930s, in sociology won the status of the scientific interpretation of scientific method and gradually came to circulate as the methodological foundation of sociology. That discipline accordingly lost much of its humanistic nature without, however, contrary to current opinions, acquiring the status of a scientific discipline in the narrower sense of the term, because sociology came not so much to be made scientific, but to be shaped after a methodological model of science which had already been abandoned as inadequate in the discipline where it originated, that is, in the philosophy of science.

Contrary to appearances, this claim remains outside ‘anti-positivism’ and ‘antiscientism’, at least if these terms are interpreted in accordance with the way they are used in reflection on sociology, although it is connected with these two trends by the subject matter of criticism. That subject matter is, of course, the main trend in present-day sociology, at one time called ‘contemporary empirical sociology’ or ‘empiricist sociology’, and today more and more often, especially in the United States, called ‘traditional sociology’. Every competent sociologist can easily draw a fairly clear demarcation line between that trend and the rest of sociology, even though defining the place of that trend in the discipline as a whole and the answer to the question, how far sociology has been dominated by that trend, are questions of intuitive estimates and depend, among other things, on contacts and links with the various milieus: Jürgen Habermas, who is comparatively little connected with academic sociology, is less inclined to see the omnipresent domination of empiricist sociology(if we agree to use this conventional term) than was Stanislaw Ossowski, at one time President of the Board of the Polish Sociological Association and Vice-President of the International Sociological Association. I do not, it seems, risk much by claiming, in the present book, that while there are no grounds for equating empiricist sociology with present-day academic sociology, the domination of empiricist sociology is strong enough to make its imprint upon the discipline as a whole.

In a sense, this is due to change in the linguistic usage: the concept of sociology has changed, so that part of the work which traditionally used to be included in sociology, at a certain point moved outside the scope of that conceptual category. This happened, for instance, to reflection on social problems, based on the Frankfurt School's approach. Such work has not been abandoned, even though it has left the field associated with the term sociology. It might seem, therefore, that the domination of sociology by the said trend is, in fact, apparent rather than real, a process which took place in the sphere of language rather than in that of research. The point is, however, that those changes in linguistic usage merely reflected what was taking place in the discipline itself; to be more specific, the extension of the term sociology was brought into line with what organized academic activity treated as sociology. Hence, if part of the output which was traditionally treated as sociological is now outside the scope of the term sociology or has an obscure status relative to the scope of that term, this is usually due to the fact that it has been driven outside sociology or removed to the peripheries of that discipline. The struggle for a place within sociology is, of course, a struggle for a place within that discipline, and not for a place in a certain classification of science.

Anyone who has followed, even if only cursorily, the evolution of sociology over the last decades, can easily see that the struggle for a place within that discipline was exceptionally vehement, at times even brutal, and that it rarely complied with the current conception of science as the arena on which ideas clash and the truth emerges victorious. From the point of view of the sociology of science, such a picture is naive regardless of the academic discipline we have in mind.(3) But sociology, together with related disciplines, such as psychology and political science, is in an exceptional position: it is a discipline in which the very status of being scientific is at stake, and not just position in the hierarchy of scientific schools. Defeat in conflict may mean an immediate elimination from the discipline or being assigned the status of an intellectual relic. Victory opens the way to acquiring a monopoly on being scientific within the discipline, which in practice means having the status of ‘the only scientific’, ‘truly scientific’, ‘the most scientific’, or just ‘scientific’ orientation.

Just such a position was won by the empiricist trend in sociology. This was in a sense natural, for that trend was born of ‘the quest to make sociology scientific’, and its success, whether real or apparent, automatically assigned to those engaged in that quest the rank of leading scholars in the field. But all the rest were thereby, also automatically assigned the ambiguous status of representatives of pre-scientific sociology. The very rise of scientific sociology assumes the existence of non-scientific sociology. The same applies to empirical sociology: its reason for existence as a separate trend is based on the non-empirical nature of the other trends. Regardless of the underlying intentions and the arguments used, ‘contemporary empirical sociology’ won its position by questioning the raison d’être of the other trends and theoretical and methodological orientations. Its birth and development was thus necessarily accompanied by impassioned polemics, in which one side was blamed for being non-scientific, and the other, for being pseudo-scientific, thus in effect, for the same thing. Lundberg, with great rhetorical and polemical skill, showed that classical sociology was based on methodological obscurantism; Sorokin did not conceal his conviction that the trend meant ‘to make sociology scientific’(represented among others, by Lundberg) was nothing more than academic chutzpah. It is not true that all of the controversy over empiricist sociology was conducted in such a spirit, but the fact remains that the meaning of the arguments used in most cases intended placing the opponent outside the limits of ‘true’ sociology, and thus de facto questioned his scholarly competence.

The controversy has never died down, even though in the mid-1960s it seemed that the matter has been settled in favour of ‘empirical sociology’. This was because that trend triumphed on the social level(curricula, research programs, activity of learned societies, approval on the part of university authorities and foundations, etc.), but not on the intellectual one. The arguments advanced by its opponents, which questioned the theoretical foundations and the intellectual values of the whole undertaking, have never been refuted. It suffices to realize that such publications as ‘Methods in Sociology’ by Ell wood, ‘Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology’ by Sorokin, ‘The Sociological Imagination’ by Mills, and ‘O osobliwościach nauk społecznych’(‘On the Peculiarities of the Social Sciences’) by Ossowski have, in fact, remained unanswered.(4) And yet in those publications, much publicized at one time and quite influential in certain spheres, the assumptions on which empiricist sociology was based were literally annihilated. Hayek's well-known ‘pamphlet’ aimed at ‘scientism’ in the social disciplines, i.e., ‘The Counter Revolution in Science’,(5) also never received a thorough and deep answer. The same applies to the critical opinions voiced by Znaniecki, Blumer, MacIver, Adorno, Schutz, and many other sociologists, who represented various theoretical traditions and methodological orientations. The criticism of ‘empirical sociology’ and organized academic life each went their own way. Such a volume of unanswered critical arguments has accumulated during the last fifty years that even a small part of it would suffice to make one conclude that establishing ‘the only scientific’ sociology is an untenable undertaking. Yet it has turned out that even the most profound and convincing arguments are powerless if aimed at something which is popular and in agreement with the spirit of the times.

That spirit of the times was partly modified in the 1970s, but not enough to result in a quick undermining of the dominant position of ‘empirical sociology’. Attacks against the sociological ‘establishment’, the feeling of a crisis in sociological knowledge, the revival of some old, and the birth of some new, theoretical and methodological trends and orientations have changed the atmosphere in sociology, but not greatly affected the balance of power. ‘Empirical sociology’ is so strongly entrenched in academic life that its dominant position is guaranteed for many years to come by the vested interests of thousands of people. It is true that almost every major American university strives to have one or two ethnomethodologists and to offer courses in ‘qualitative’(versus ‘quantitative’) methodology, but this merely proves that a prestigious academic institution cannot lightly dismiss intellectual novelties, even risky ones.

Yet the 1970s have achieved what Ernest Becker has termed a ‘rehabilitation of scientific debate’. It is true that it took place following grave disturbances to academic life in the late 1960s, and early 1970s, but when disorganization in academic teaching came to an end, it became more and more obvious that coming out against ‘traditional’ sociology could not be equated with intellectual trouble-making, that apart from intellectually futile and irresponsible acts there was vigorous, but relevant and deep-reaching criticism. These two things can today easily be separated from one another, nor is there any doubt that the existence of such trends as ethnomethodology and humanistic sociology is not a transient phenomenon.(6) While a single sociological orientation is still strongly dominant in the life of academic institutions, sociological production is marked by a clear and growing methodological and theoretical pluralism. It is that pluralism which, even though it lacks institutional support, has restored the social justification of questions about the methodological and theoretical nature of ‘empirical sociology’.

Stanistew Ossowski thought that ‘empirical sociology’ shaped its postulates after the pattern of natural science, and added that this applied to research methods, the criteria of what is scientific, and to practical applications as well.(7) His well-known paper(later included as a chapter in ‘O osobliwościach nauk spolecznych’), from which this opinion is drawn, is called, Wzory nauk przyrodniczych w empirycznej socjologii (Patterns of Natural Science in Empirical Sociology). A similar characteristic of ‘empirical sociology’ can be found in most critics of that trend, beginning with Mills, Schutz, and Znaniecki, and ending in young present-day interactionists, ethnomethodologists, radicals, and humanists. Furthermore, this characteristic is also accepted by protagonists of ‘empirical sociology’. Agreement about diagnosis is thus almost universal, although the evaluations of that fact, i.e., the application of patterns drawn from natural science, to use Ossowski's terminology, differ.

In my opinion, that diagnosis is erroneous; it is also dangerous in so far as it makes the discussion of the methodological foundations of sociology take a wrong course. ‘Empirical sociology’ takes its patterns neither from natural science in general, nor physics in particular, nor even, as some critics would have it, classical mechanics, but is an attempt to create a science of society that would be in agreement with certain ideas about the methodological characteristics of natural science. The mistake that most critics of the empiricist trend in sociology make, is to be too quick to admit that it is related to modern natural science in general, and to physics in particular. The relationship is purely hypothetical, and without analyzing that hypothesis one cannot properly judge what has happened in sociology during the last fifty years. As long as ‘empirical sociology’ has the authority of physics behind it, discussion of the applicability of ‘patterns drawn from natural science’ will of necessity focus on the peculiarities of the social sciences while disregarding the peculiarity of those patterns.

The present book is an attempt to analyze the issue of ‘patterns drawn from natural science’, as they function in ‘empirical sociology’. Unfortunately I can do this only on a very limited scale. An exhaustive study would require the co-operation of competent representatives of natural science and would result in a publication of a different kind. On the other hand, I am not sure that such a vast undertaking is really necessary in this case. As I will try to show, the empiricist trend in sociology was methodologically based on a system of opinions that were a conglomerate of distorted elements of the methodological doctrine of logical positivism and popular opinions on the nature of scientific knowledge. The properties of that conglomerate are of a kind that force us to preclude the possibility of physics attaining its present level on such a methodological basis. Obviously, the physicists have the last say on this issue, but it seems that they pose no threat to the claim that ‘empirical sociology’ is pseudo-scientific.

The present book is thus not a criticism of scientism, unless, following Popper, we mean by it ‘the aping of what is widely mistaken for the method of science’.(8) In a sense, the opinion expressed in this book is at variance with the anti-scientist criticism in sociology, and that not only because of the said thesis on the ‘patterns of natural science’ being drawn from natural science. In my opinion, Popper is right when he says that ‘labouring of the difference between science and the humanities has long been a fashion, and has become a bore,’(9) with the proviso that in the last decades that fashion was more kind to papers on the unity of science, and that papers of that type have proved even more boring. Anti-scientist criticism joined the discussion in accordance with the principles set by its opponents, thus attacking the real danger to the social sciences, but not in the quarter where that danger really originates. From the anti-scientist point of view, it is the methodological autonomy of the social sciences, that is at stake in that discussion, or, to put it more precisely, the development of those disciplines in accordance with their own logic of development, without patterns and limitations imposed from the outside. The fact is, that those patterns and limitations are imposed in the name of natural science, which is, however, not to say that that is their real origin. Yet the anti-scientist defence of the methodological autonomy of the social sciences made a point of looking for methodological differences between natural science and the social sciences. In this way, in reply to the doctrine of the methodological unity of science we have the doctrine of methodological differences between natural science and the social sciences. Note that both doctrines are of necessity based on the very dubious assumption that(all or some part of) scientific production is marked by definite and unchanging methodological properties. Furthermore, these two doctrines reveal a far-reaching similarity when it comes to the crux of the matter. The doctrine of differences, if we may call it so, being defence-oriented, was in its basic outline determined by its opponents: the search for specific methodological features of the social science had its origins in the picture of uniform science, suggested by the opponents. In such a search, the picture of the social sciences is limited in advance by those problems which emerge in connection with the description of the methodological prope...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The history-oriented trend in the philosophy of science: breakthrough or continuation?
• 3 The philosophy of science in the perspective of the theory of culture
• 4 The unity of science as a ‘logical necessity’
• 5 From the methodological doctrine to research practice
• 6 Example I: Paul Lazarsfeld: from concepts to indicators
• 7 Example II: the methodology of comparative studies
• Postscript
• Notes
• Index