Explanation in Social Science

Robert Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134553020
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This is volume II of twenty-two of the Social Theory and Methodology series. Originally published in 1963, the present study has as its aim the discussion of certain questions of philosophical interest as they come to be imbedded in the work of social scientists. It is intended to be an essay which might be of interest to the practising scientist.

PART ONE

Description, Observation and Explanation

I

QUESTIONS ABOUT SOCIETY

MANY critics have fastened their attention on the questions asked by social scientists. The questions have been accused of ambiguity, theoretical irrelevance and triteness; their authors of confusion compounded by logomachy and illiteracy, of grandiose promises and self-evident absurdity. One historian, for example, referred to sociologists as ‘fanatical in their zeal and shameless in their claims’, and summed up his views of sociology by saying: ‘Its practitioners are in the stage of alchemy, not of chemistry. Probably that is why they proclaim so loudly that they are on the verge of discovering the philosopher’s stone.’⁵

There is no doubt that such charges are sometimes true. Some social scientists are muddle-headed, some are trying to prove a thesis at all costs, and some are desperately trying to conceal from themselves – with the aid of a ‘barbarous patois’ – that they have nothing to contribute. But sometimes it is their critics who are at fault. Often they don’t like questions because they probe into ‘closed’ areas. Nor do critics always ask themselves whether the questions have arisen in a serious context. And some critics assume that because a question is common or familiar the answer must be equally so. We can illustrate all these faults, perhaps, by taking a single case.

Suppose, then, we learn that ‘conceptions resulting in illegitimate births are far more numerous in Finland during the season from April to September than during other months of the year’.⁶ We may wish to explain this seasonal variation in the rate of illegitimate births for urgent practical reasons: there may be an unwelcome and fluctuating demand for maternity facilities; questions may be asked in Parliament about ‘summer madness’; placement of infants in foster homes may be difficult during the period of summer vacation, and the military authorities may object to the increase in spring and summer births because of the effects upon their call-up system. Yet it may be claimed that the answer is as obvious to any literate European as it is to the scientist who raised the question. For in view of Finland’s climate both believe that the opportunities for unmarried persons to secure privacy are greater during the warm months of April to September.⁷ And both will be quite ready to advance the generalization that the number of illegitimate conceptions in Finland, as elsewhere in Europe, varies directly with the knowledge about opportunities for privacy.⁸ From the truth of these beliefs and that of others too trivial to mention, it logically follows that the number of such conceptions is greater during the months of privacy. We do not, says the plain critic, require the services of a demographer in order to hit upon answers of this kind or, indeed, the questions which provoke them.

Perhaps we do not, but we do need someone to look into the issues at greater length. Is it true, for example, that in Finland privacy for unmarried persons is more easily obtained in warm months than in cold ones ? Whether this is so or not will depend upon a host of conditions about which nothing has been said: the use of space in the homes, the social arrangements for unmarried persons, the ways in which land is employed, and the severity of the weather with respect to the hardiness of the Finns. The question can be settled, of course, without an investigation of these factors. We can simply poll an appropriate sample of people, since we are interested not in whether they are making full use of their opportunities but only in the knowledge upon which they act. Assuming that the results of such a poll support the contention about summer privacy, we may still demand evidence for the general statement that illegitimate conceptions in Finland vary directly with the knowledge of the opportunities for privacy. And this evidence may be difficult to obtain – even by the plain critic.

It is clear that the questions asked by social scientists represent many different kinds of problems. Almost any sample will bring out something of their variety. Consider these questions:

 

(1) What is the average population per dwelling unit in Cairo?

(2) What method shall we use for obtaining a sample of unmarried men who have no permanent residence?

(3) How did the banking houses of Morgan, Drexel, and Bonbright obtain control of the electric utility industry in the United States?

(4) Why can devaluation of currency sometimes worsen the balance of trade?

(5) What are the functions of political moieties among the Berbers?

(6) Why is there some form of incest taboo in all known societies?

(7) What were Eden’s intentions in ordering the British troops to occupy the Suez Canal in 1956?

(8) Why in Western Europe do men have their hair cut shorter than do women?

(9) What motives have the Indonesians for claiming Dutch New Guinea?

(10) What grounds are there for calling Japan a ‘shame society’?

(11) Suppose an excise tax on a commodity raises its price by the amount of the tax. Can this occur when the supply curve is stable and horizontal, the demand curve is stable, and the conditions competitive ?

(12) Are there stages common to the social development of all systems of ethics?

 

These questions have been chosen in part for their apparent simplicity Yet it is not likely that critics of the social sciences will find plausible answers to all or indeed any of them in some storehouse of common knowledge. It is not obvious, for example, that the reason why a devaluation of currency can sometimes worsen the balance of trade is as follows: when the exchange rate falls ‘This has the effect of making home-produced goods appear cheaper to foreigners and so increasing the volume of exports. If the physical volume of exports increases their home price cannot fall, therefore the value of exports in terms of home currency must increase. . . . Foreign goods are now dearer at home, and while the physical volume of imports purchased out of a given income will decline, total expenditure upon them may increase. Thus a decline in the exchange rate will not necessarily increase the balance of trade. If the value of imports (reckoned in home currency) increases by more than the value of exports, then a fall in the exchange rate will reduce the balance of trade.’⁹ It is surely incorrect to say either that this answer is trivially true or that the problem with which it deals is unimportant. A government might mistakenly believe that its trade balance would improve if its currency were devalued, and the consequences of this error might be financially disastrous.

Nevertheless, one objection to the questions on our list may be reasonably made. It is that questions like ‘Why is there some form of incest taboo in all known societies?’ are ambiguous as they stand. We need a context to show us what kinds of answers are desired. For the questioner may be interested in the history of the custom, or in the motives of those who practise it, or in its psychological sources, or in its social effects. The same form of words will entitle him to any of these types of answers and to other types as well. This ambiguity of interpretation to which interrogatives are liable is especially prominent in the case of ‘why’ questions. Almost any dictionary will tell us that ‘why’ can be used indifferently to elicit a variety of information: the reason for a state of affairs, the cause of an occurrence, the motives of a person, or the purpose of his action. Such questions may be taken as requests for a story about what happened in the past; or they may be understood as expressing puzzlement about the usefulness or point of a state of affairs which might easily have been different. Again, the notion that the social institution has been deliberately created may be involved, so that the questioners in asking ‘why ?’ may wish to know the motives or intentions of those responsible for this state of society.

Now it is an important though elementary truth that we sometimes fail to distinguish scientific inquiries from historical questions because of the indiscriminate use of ‘why’. But it is also important to realize that an interest in the origin of something need not be simply historical; it may include a desire for a causal or scientific explanation. That is, the questioner may be interested both in the unique details of the story and in some of the generalizations that connect one detail with another. A person who asks how the Philippine practice of hepatoscopy originated is not, as a rule, chiefly concerned to obtain psychological information. Hte wants to know when and where it began, and whether or not it developed from some different kind of activity. He can learn, if he wishes, that the prediction of the outcome of events by means of rules for examining the livers of sacrificed animals can be traced to the Babylonian priest of 2000 B.C.; that the system spread from Western Asia to Greece and the Etruscans; that the Christian Church eliminated the practice in Europe, only to find it well established later in the islands of Southern Asia. While the story unfolds, however, the listener may become interested in asking another sort of question, namely, ‘Why does any person want to know his future ?’ The answer to this would very commonly be understood to require psychological generalizations and not the production of personal histories. It is these generalizations, after all, which allow us to assume that some of the items in a personal history will fall into a recognizable kind of behaviour.

Critics of the questions dealt with by social scientists often underestimate the size of their target. To assert that the questions asked by anthropologists, sociologists, economists, demographers, and political scientists are unworthy of serious attention is to make a judgment which is so sweeping as to be useless. It is useless because it indicts so many different kinds of inquiry at once. The frivolities of one field are not those of another, nor do the mistakes made within one science necessarily have much to teach people in other sciences. No small set of criticisms is likely to embrace the deficiencies of both Gorer’s swaddling hypothesis and Herskovits’ study of social organization in Dahomey, of both the Keynsian solution for unemployment and Cressey’s explanation of the circumstances under which embezzlement occurs. There is only one criticism that will fit all these studies, though this has to be shown separately for each case. It is simply that each is defective as an answer to its questions. This is in fact the conclusion which confirmed attackers of the social sciences usually draw. The eventual result, then, so far as some of the critics are concerned, is that they are in a state of permanent melancholia – or is it permanent cheerfulness ? – with respect to the future of the social sciences. They believe that there are insoluble difficulties presented by the nature of the subject matter, and that social scientists cannot help but disappoint us with the slightness of their conclusions. Questions about society, they argue, differ radically from questions about nature. In chemistry, physics, and biology we can produce explanations by means of laws and theories. In the social sciences we have not done so and cannot do so; for there are reasons, either logical or empirical or both, which forever prevent us from attaining the same kind of knowledge about society as we have about Nature.

There is nothing to be gained by pretending that to refer in this brief way to criticism of the work of social scientists is to fairly present the case against their results. That case, if it can be made at all, can only be constructed from the close scrutiny of a large number of examples. It might be the conclusion of a study such as this, but hardly its introduction. It does, however, suggest in a quite general way the kind of topics with which we shall be dealing; and it suggests, as well, that there is at least the appearance of disagreement on the issue of whether scientific questions about society are possible.

II

SOCIAL DESCRIPTION

LET us take three passages chosen from three studies in the social sciences. Each passage is of a kind which often comes under the criticism of natural scientists. This sort of thing may be quite interesting,’ they say, ‘but is it science ? When we learn from the first passage, for example, that a group called “the corner boys” ranked people, individually and in groups, by their success at gambling we have a piece of information which seems to foreshadow a valuable discovery. All too often, however, the foreshadowing occupies the entire study. Instead of explanation we receive a mere description of how some people behave in their particular circumstances.’

Now this comment may be harsh and unjustified; or it may simply be harsh. In either case the question is whether the three excerpts which follow are really examples of mere description – whatever that may turn out to be. Or is there something about them which would lead us to think of them as ‘scientific’ ? And if so what ?

(1) Gambling plays an important role in the lives of Cornerville people. Whatever game the corner boys play, they nearly always bet on the outcome. When there is nothing at stake, the game is not considered a real contest. This does not mean that the financial element is all-important. I have frequently heard men say that the honor of winning was much more important than the money at stake. The corner boys consider playing for money the real test of skill, and unless a man performs well when money is at stake, he is not considered a good competitor. This helps to fix the positions of individuals and groups in relation to one another.¹⁰

(2) In other situations, where the Administration endeavours to intervene in some matter in which the chief is thought to be dilatory, the Native Authority may shield a man because of the danger of possible repercussions. Thus, for instance, a District Officer on tour found a man living in a village at which he was not registered. He turned the offender over to the Native Court. The offender had a perfectly good defence but his story would have involved reference to incest by an important person and it was therefore undesirable that the District Officer should hear of the matter. Accordingly, the Court delayed the hearing of the case on some technicality, and after the District Officer had left the area nothing more was done.¹¹

(3) This paper will describe what happened when a naval bureau in Washington changed the goals of one of its laboratories on the west coast. The change was, in essence, from applied research to development. If the personnel of the department had behaved as obedient employees, they would simply have changed their behavior to conform to the new policy. But these employees were engineers and scientists who had professional opinions about their work and about the organization. The change in policy produced a sharpening of factions, a power struggle, an extensive reorganization, and the resignation of a number of persons. In this series of changes the actors were mainly the scientists and engineers in top staff and line positions. Each man had a set of beliefs about his professional work, about the organization and its goals, and about the other persons in the organization. The alignment and conflict of persons holding these beliefs produced a number of changes in the organization which had little to do with the purported aims of the policy change.¹²

A person who says that passages like these present us with mere descriptions is mistaken on two separate counts. Firstly, none of the passages is primarily descriptive. Secondly, each passage contains reports and explanations whether or not it contains any description. The critic takes it for granted that scientific work can be exhaustively classified into two parts – description and explanation – whereas a third class, that of reports, is needed as well. Having neglected the difference between reports and descriptions, the critic then finds it easy to mistake the relationship between report and explanation for that between description and explanation. He believes that he is referring to the latter when, in fact, he is referring to the former. The objections which he wrongly directs against ‘mere description’ apply only to reports.

Consider the relevant senses of ‘description’ given in the Oxford English Dictionary: (1) ‘The action of setting forth in words by mentioning recognizable features or characteristic marks; verbal representation or portraiture.’ (2) ‘A statement which describes, sets forth, or portrays: a graphic or detailed account of a person, thing, scene, etc.’ (3) ‘The combination of qualities or features that marks out or serves to describe a particular...