The Entanglement of the Social Realm: Towards a Quantum Theory Inspired Ontology for the Social Sciences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luk Van Langenhove
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Quantum Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Realm

scholarly journals Classroom assemblage: the vibrant setting of the schooling process

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 580
Author(s):  
Paula Cristina Lameu
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Classroom Environment ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
The Social ◽  
Multiple Case ◽  
Social Realm ◽  
Schooling Process ◽  
Matter Energy

Some scholars and researchers have been claiming we are in a New Materialist and Posthumanist era. It means that for the ones who are researching in Social Sciences, the focus is not only the human as the centre and the cause of what happens in the social realm. For human, nonhuman and inhuman are attributed the same importance in research once all of them are components of reality, inserted in nature.Reality is regarded as complex, not simple straightforward isolated cause and effect processes. This is how the classroom is supposed to be observed in educational research: not only teaching and learning, but these two processes and policy making, and identity construction, and emotional flows, and curriculum, and schooling, and…, and…The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the complexity of the classroom environment regarded as an assemblage. The hypothesis is that all the components of the assemblage are equally vital, although some components are more vibratory than others. The theory of Vitalism from Driesch (1914) and the Vital Materialism from Bennett (2010a, 2010b) are used as the theoretical tools for analysis. Assemblage Ethnography (YOUDELL, 2015; YOUDELL and MCGIMPSEY, 2015) is the methodology of data collection. A multiple case study was developed in three different schools in United Kingdom: one Primary, one Secondary and one Post-secondary. The results suggest that teacher and students are the components who most influence on the classroom assemblage composition, decomposition and recomposition orienting the flows of matter-energy once they are change-creating agents.

Epistemology, social inquiry and quantum theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-242
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Monk-Turner
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Social World ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Physics

PurposeThis work examines assumptions of positivism and the traditional scientific method.Design/methodology/approachInsights from quantum mechanics are explored especially as they relate to method, measurement and what is knowable. An argument is made that how social scientists, particularly sociologists, understand the nature of “reality out there” and describe the social world may be challenged by quantum ideas. The benefits of utilized mixed methods, considering quantum insights, cannot be overstated.FindingsIt is the proposition of this work that insights from modern physics alter the understanding of the world “out there.” Wheeler suggested that the most profound implication from modern physics is that “there is no out there” (1982; see also Baggott, 1992). Grappling with how modern physics may alter understanding in the social sciences will be difficult; however, that does not mean the task should not be undertaken (see Goswami, 1993). A starting point for the social sciences may be relinquishing an old mechanistic science that depends on the establishment of an objective, empirically based, verifiable reality. Mechanistic science demands “one true reality – a clear-cut reality on which everyone can agree…. Mechanistic science is by definition reductionistic…it has had to try to reduce complexity to oversimplification and process to statis. This creates an illusionary world…that has little or nothing to do with the complexity of the process of the reality of creation as we know, experience, and participate in it” (Goswami, 1993, pp. 64, 66).Research limitations/implicationsMany physicists have popularized quantum ideas for others interested in contemplating the implications of modern physics. Because of the difficulty in conceiving of quantum ideas, the meaning of the quantum in popular culture is far removed from the parent discipline. Thus, the culture has been shaped by the rhetoric and ideas surrounding the basic quantum mathematical formulas. And, over time, as quantum ideas have come to be part of the popular culture, even the link to the popularized literature in physics is lost. Rather, quantum ideas may be viewed as cultural formations that take on a life of their own.Practical implicationsThe work allows a critique of positivist method and provides insight on how to frame qualitative methodology in a new way.Social implicationsThe work utilizes popularized ideas in quantum theory: the preeminent theory that describes all matter. Little work in sociology utilizes this perspective in understanding research methods.Originality/valueQuantum insights have rarely been explored in highlighting limitations in positivism. The current work aims to build on quantum insights and how these may help us better understand the social world around us.

Practice Theories: The Latest Turn in Historiography?

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Polyakov
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Daily Activities ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Development ◽  
Social Realm ◽  
Turn Over

Abstract The linguistic turn in historiography has given way to a ‘cultural’ or ‘practical’ turn over the course of the last several decades. For its proponents, this new development heralds a return of the intentional subject and a re-invigorated concern with the dynamic nature of the social realm. Approaches clustered around the concept of practice, emphasizing routines of daily activities as the backbone of social organization and its stability, specifically seek to resolve the persisting conceptual tension in social sciences between structure and agency. This article surveys the seminal work on the topic of practice, and considers how the approach can be recruited for purposes of historiographic analysis. In defending a tentatively optimistic assessment of practice theory’s usefulness for this purpose, the article also evaluates some of the weaknesses that this approach has yet to cogently address.

scholarly journals An Architecture by means of Anthropology. Beyond learning the tools of social science

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ester Gisbert Alemany
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Core ◽  
Core Method ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Realm ◽  
The Times

Architects and urban planners have traditionally considered social sciences to learn their tools, particularly the ones that allow them to analyse and describe the environments and the people for whom they work. This has led architects to develop better tools of observation and description of the social realm and not only the material one. Nevertheless, most of the times this interdisciplinary approach has identified social sciences, and specially anthropology, with ethnography. This paper departs from the critique of this identification made by anthropologist Tim Ingold and focuses in what he proposes is the core method of anthropology, participant observation. Then it reviews several recent proposals of social scientists who are searching for a non-representational more future oriented discipline. Which is an aim more related to that of architects. This paper tries to imagine how this transdisciplinary practice could look like.

scholarly journals Scholar Entangled: The Unattainable Detachment in Social Inquiry

Problemos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
pp. 87-99
Author(s):  
Juozas Kasputis
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Science Inquiry ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Knowledge Accumulation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Realm ◽  
Scientific Endeavor ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Epistemological Point

The practice of social studies continues to be a complicated scientific endeavor. From an epistemological point of view, the social sciences, unlike the natural sciences, do not conform to the predominant definition of science. The existing differences among expositions of “science,” “inquiry,” and “studies” lie with the contested role of the intellectual who is embarked on understanding the social realm. The “maturity” of the social sciences is usually discussed in the context of objectivity and rationality. But continuing epistemological debates would be insufficient without reference to the scholar as a human studying humans. The philosophy of science has focused mainly on the procedures of knowledge accumulation, neglecting social context and its implications for inquiry. To address this neglect, this essay sets out first to retrace doubts about the role of the scholar that emerged with the institutionalization of the social sciences at the outset of the twentieth century and then to rethink these issues in terms of recent scientific developments. What surfaces is a new, participatory role for scholars that demands responsible contextualization and a broader conception of causal stories.

What Can We Learn From Factorial Surveys About Human Behavior?

Methodology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Petzold ◽  
Tobias Wolbring
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Behavioral Intentions ◽  
Actual Behavior ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Factorial Survey ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Intended Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
High Level

Abstract. Factorial survey experiments are increasingly used in the social sciences to investigate behavioral intentions. The measurement of self-reported behavioral intentions with factorial survey experiments frequently assumes that the determinants of intended behavior affect actual behavior in a similar way. We critically investigate this fundamental assumption using the misdirected email technique. Student participants of a survey were randomly assigned to a field experiment or a survey experiment. The email informs the recipient about the reception of a scholarship with varying stakes (full-time vs. book) and recipient’s names (German vs. Arabic). In the survey experiment, respondents saw an image of the same email. This validation design ensured a high level of correspondence between units, settings, and treatments across both studies. Results reveal that while the frequencies of self-reported intentions and actual behavior deviate, treatments show similar relative effects. Hence, although further research on this topic is needed, this study suggests that determinants of behavior might be inferred from behavioral intentions measured with survey experiments.

Review of Quantitative Ecological Analysis in the Social Sciences.

1970 ◽  
Vol 15 (9) ◽  
pp. 586-587
Author(s):  
JOEL SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Ecological Analysis ◽  
The Social
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