EPISTEMOLOGY, METHODOLOGY, AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

EPISTEMOLOGY, METHODOLOGY, AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE EDITED BY ROBERT S. COHEN AND MARX W. WARTOFSKY VOLUME 71

EPISTEMOLOGY, METHODOLOGY, AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Edited by ROBERT S. COHEN and MARX W. WARTOFSKY Boston University SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publicaüon Data Main entry under ütle: Epistemology, methodology, and the social sciences. (Boston studies in the philosophy of science; v. 71) Includes index. 1. Science-Philosophy-Actdresses, essays, lectures. 2. Social Sciences-Philosophy-Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Knowledge, Theory of-addresses, essays, lectures. I. Cohen, Robert Sonne. n. Wartofsky, Marx W. III. Series. Q174.B67 vol. 71 [Q175.3] SOls [300'.1] 82-16159 ISBN 978-90-481-8376-0 ISBN 978-94-017-1458-7 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-1458-7 All Rights Reserved Copyright 1983 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland in 1983 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1983 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

T ABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL PREFACE vii PAUL DIESING / Ideology and Objectivity 1 LEON J. GOLDSTEIN / Toward a Logic of Historical Constitution 19 CAROL C. GOULD / Beyond Causality in the Social Sciences: Reciprocity as a Model of Non-exploitative Social Relations 53 MARJORIE GRENE / Empiricism and the Philosophy of Science, or, n Dogmas of Empiricism 89 I. C. JARVIE / Realism and the Supposed Poverty of Sociological Theories 107 SPIRO J. LATSIS / The Role and Status ofthe Rationality Principle in the Social Sciences 123 WERNER LEINFELLNER / Marxian Paradigms versus Microeconomic Structures 153 HILLEL LEVINE / Paradise not Surrendered: Jewish Reactions to Copernicus and the Growth of Modern Science 203 LA WRENCE SLOBODKIN / The Peculiar Evolutionary Strategy of Man 227 LANGDON WINNER / Technologies as Forms ofufe 249 INDEX OF NAMES 265

EDITORIAL PREFACE The last decades have seen major reformations in the philosophy and history of science. What has been called 'post-positivist' philosophy of science has introduced radically new concerns with historical, social, and valuative components of scientific thought in the natural sciences, and has raised up the demons of relativism, subjectivism and sociologism to haunt the oncecalm precincts of objectivity and realism. Though these disturbances intruded upon what had seemed to be the logically well-ordered domain of the philosophy of the natural sciences, they were no news to the social sciences. There, the messy business of human action, volition, decision, the considerations of practical purposes and social values, the role of ideology and the problem of rationality, had long conspired to defeat logical-reconstructionist programs. The attempt to tarne the social sciences to the harness of a strict hypotheticodeductive model of explanation failed. Within the social sciences, phenomenological, Marxist, hermeneuticist, action-theoretical approaches vied in attempting to capture the distinctiveness of human phenomena. In fact, the philosophy of the natural sciences, even in its 'hard' forms, has itself become infected with the increasing reflection upon the role of such social-scientific categories, in the attempt to understand the nature of the scientific enterprise. One may say that whereas the earlier decades were marked by an attempt to model the social sciences on the natural sciences, the decades from 1960-1980 were marked by the reverse trend: how were the typical concerns of the social sciences with human action, rationality, social and historical practices and structures, to be brought to bear upon the characterization of the natural sciences themselves? How were causal and statistical models of explanation to be tempered by considerations of freedom, choice, social values and interests, in understanding the growth of knowledge itself? The papers in this volume of the Boston Studies, culled from those presented to the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science during 1973-1980, address the range of these questions in a variety of ways. Paul Diesing asks "How can we overcome the influence of ideology on historical fact?" He gives a careful analysis of a long-term case-study of the historical reconstruction of some major political decisions (e.g., the Cuban Missile Crisis). Leon Goldstein also addresses the question of the methodology of historical investigation, in a study of "the character of the intellectual procedures vii

vili EDITORIAL PREFACE implicit in the production of the kinds of claim to knowledge which are the outcome of historical investigations." Carol Gould, after a critique of causal models of explanations of human action, proposes a novel view of human agency as causal, and focuses on the need for a model of social interaction, in terms of reciprocity. Marjorie Grene slays the dragon of empiricist psychological atomism, proposing an alternative 'structural pluralism' in an account of visual perception which preserves both objectivity and the normative character of human vision. lan Jarvie teils us that sociology is alive and weil, not despite its multi-paradigmatic methodological variety, but because of it, and he offers in evidence a lively and critical review of major contemporary sociological theories. Spiro Latsis counterposes to some standard views of the rationality principle in the social sciences (including Popper's) an alternative rationality for the understanding of human behavior as neither caused, nor random, but as 'plastically controlled' by situational analysis. Latsis proposes a way to save the ideal of deductive explanation in the social sciences by providing validity to rationalistic explanations of arieher, more flexible sort, which are cognizant of the parameters of human agency and choice. Werner Leinfellner examines the paradigms and theories of Marxian economics in great detail, in terms of contemporary microeconomic analysis, and restates the ethical content of Marx's theory of alienation in a rigorous way. Hillel Levine, in a fascinating excursus in the history of science, inquires into the Jewish responses to the Copernican revolution, examining the work of Jewish astronomers and cosmologists, and the reactions of the Jewish community to the new scientific age. Lawrence Slobodkin deals with the unique evolutionary strategies of the human species in developing a 'normative, introspective self-image'. He argues that human evolution radically departs from the functional restrictions of animal life by means of such strategies. Langdon Winner, in a critical study of the philosophy of technology, points to the need for a normative approach which considers both the practical and the emancipatory parameters of technology. The essays, however different in theme and orientation, exhibit a common concern for rigorous philosophical approaches to the human sciences, a concern to preserve both the requirements for scientific rationality and the goals of freedom, meaning and social values, without which the social sciences remain inadequate in their understanding of human phenomena. We believe that these essays represent some of the most intelligent and innovative work in the ongoing renewal of the philosophy of all the sciences. Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science November 1982 ROBERT S. COHEN MARX W. WARTOFSKY