Social Science and the Sources of Policy: 1951–1970

1970 ◽  
Vol 3 (03) ◽  
pp. 294-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan MacRae
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Applied Science ◽  
Policy Sciences ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Pure Science ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Applied Social Science

“…[T]hereis no necessary conflict among these three desires of the American social scientist: to be a scientist like physical and biological scientists, to provide useful technical services, and to be significant at the level of policy. The chapters of this symposium are intended to illustrate their compatibility.”This statement indicates a major theme ofThe Policy Sciences– a volume that marked, as of 1951, the aspirations of a group of leading American social scientists for the policy applications of their disciplines. The harmony of goals that it suggests is no longer evident today.The possibleincompatibilities among the goals of pure science, applied science, and policy can be seen by examiningThe Policy Sciencesin two decades' perspective. They are of three major kinds:1. To provide intelligent advice on practical problems, the social science disciplines need to include systematicvaluative discoursein a way that natural science does not.2. Applied social science (like applied science generally) differs from pure natural science in stressing valuative dependentvariablesthat may not be closely related to the conceptual schemes of pure science, and independent variables related to alternative choices open to the actor.3. Different roles andchannels of influenceare appropriate for pure and applied science; and for applied social science in democratic regimes, participation and consent on the part of those influenced are of vital significance.

scholarly journals The Usage of CAUSE in Three Branches of Science

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Bei Yang ◽  
Bin Chen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Applied Science ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Pure Science ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Semantic Prosody ◽  
National Corpus

<p>Semantic prosody is a concept that has been subject to considerable criticism and debate. One big concern is to what extent semantic prosody is domain or register-related. Previous studies reach the agreement that CAUSE has an overwhelmingly negative meaning in general English. Its semantic prosody remains controversial in academic writing, however, because of the size and register of the corpus used in different studies. In order to minimize the role that corpus choice has to play in determining the research findings, this paper uses sub-corpora from the British National Corpus to investigate the usage of CAUSE in different types of scientific writing. The results show that the occurrence of CAUSE is the highest in social science, less frequent in applied science, and the lowest in natural and pure science. Its semantic prosody is overwhelmingly negative in social science and applied science, and mainly neutral in natural and pure science. It seems that the verb CAUSE lacks its normal negative semantic prosody in contexts that do not refer to human beings. The implications of the findings for language learning are also discussed.</p>

Reflections of a Black Social Scientist: Some Struggles, Some Doubts, Some Hopes

1982 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Graduate Student ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Inquiry ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Preschool Program ◽  
Research World

Jacquelyn Mitchell describes her experiences as a teacher in a compensatory preschool program and later as a graduate student and researcher, examining a number of issues relevant to black social scientists. She discusses some dilemmas (such as bicultural awareness and a sense of double marginality) of the black social scientist who is seeking a place in the academic/research world—simultaneously questioning the sociopolitical nature of social science inquiry and asking how research can more adequately reflect the reality of black people's lives.

scholarly journals The Full Circle

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. v-viii
Author(s):  
Ejaz Akram
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
World Science ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Full Circle ◽  
Full Picture ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World

Science Without Philosophy?Many of our readers and contributors have raised questions regarding thevarious definitions of social science and their relation to the scope of MISS.Definitions of social science have changed with time and place, and one of thereasons for that is not what is “social,” but what is “science”? “Science” inFrench, or “wissenschaft” in German, do not translate exactly the same as“science” in English. In English speaking world, “science” has an associationwith hard sciences while social sciences have been tacitly considered to be softsciences, or not sciences at all. Such a distinction does not exist in otherlanguages.It is not our intent here to provide a mere taxonomy of the meanings ofscience, but to develop an understanding as well as a consensus that socialsciences and their sub-disciplines are, without exception, based on certainparadigms that are philosophical in nature. Being a social scientist without theknowledge of these philosophical assumptions, upon which the paradigms ofthe socia1 sciences rest, is to willingly escape the full picture. Properphilosophical training, therefore, has a deep nexus with the methods of socialscience, and constitutes a necessary pre-requisite of understanding theparadigms. Paradigms establish the agenda and the agenda dictates the policy.social sciences therefore become a vehicle of understanding the society inconsonance with the accepted philosophical truths.Philosophical exposition of concepts and ideas in turn necessitates adefinition of philosophy itself. All definitions of philosophy will point tocertain “givens” or a priori assumptions that precede all scientific inquiry. Ifsocial sciences stay within the realm of the positivist paradigm, the problemmay seemingly be solved, but reducing inquiry to empiricism has its own pitfallsand the atomistic division in today’s academia is a direct result of that.Further, it restricts the scope of those social scientists who also happen to bebelievers in transcendental Truth. Conversely, to the degree that philosophy is ...

scholarly journals Applied Social Science? Academic Contributions to the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and Their Consequences

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
KARIM MURJI
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Hate Crime ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Applied Social Science ◽  
The Impact

AbstractA decade on from the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, this article examines the contributions of social scientists to the Inquiry on two key issues: the meaning of institutional racism and the police response to racial violence. These academic inputs are characterised as instrumental and reflexive forms of knowledge. While social science applied to social policy is most effective in instrumental mode, rather than reflexively, there are various factors – such as the interpretation of evidence, media debate and the role of prominent individuals – that are more significant in assessing its consequences. The impact of these factors mean that, although academic work on these issues has been influential, the outcome appears to be that institutional racism has run its course and been disowned or downgraded, while racial violence has become subsumed within the broader category of hate crime. It is argued that the relationship between academic knowledge and policy requires a better grasp of the complexities of applying social science, and that is what this article aims to make a contribution to.

scholarly journals Do Perceptions of Gifted Intelligence and Normal Intelligence Participants Differ About Social Science and Social Scientists?

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 90
Author(s):  
Sezgin Selvi ◽  
Selcuk Besir Demir
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Common Finding ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Normal Intelligence ◽  
Perceptions Of Students

This qualitative study was conducted to compare the perceptions of students with gifted intelligence and studentswith those of normal intelligence about social science and social scientists. The data obtained from 23 giftedintelligent and 23 normal participants within the same age group was analysed using content analysis and resultswere represented with a straight and systematic language. A significant part of normal participants confused socialscience teacher with social scientist. Both groups find a social scientist happy. Social scientist was represented asyoung and dynamic, was thought without hindrance as well. As a common finding, gender is significant for bothgroups and males were distinguished. They do not sufficiently recognise social scientists. However, normalintelligence participants confuse social sciences with the natural sciences and they give names of both naturalscientists and inventors instead of social scientists.

Two Theories of Civilization

Philosophy ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 54 (210) ◽  
pp. 473-483
Author(s):  
Jay Newman
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Objective Truth ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Evaluative Terms ◽  
Unexpected Difficulty

Once upon a time, when there was no psychoanalysis or cultural anthro-pology or meta-ethics, most philosophers believed that there was objective truth in such statements as, ‘Murder is wrong’, ‘One should not steal’, and ‘Heliogabalus was an evil man’. Many philosophers still believe that there is, and though their view is not wholly respectable in most English-speaking philosophical circles, it probably has the important merit of being true. There are serious reasons for worrying about the traditional view: it is not clear how an ‘ought’ can be derived from an ‘is’; there are problems s e in trying to translate evaluative terms into descriptive ones; reflective men disagree profoundly on ethical issues; ethical judgments appear to have an emotive component; etc. Still, there are also very good reasons for believing that murder is wrong and that Heliogabalus was an evil man. I shall not defend the objectivity of statements of the form, ‘X is good (bad, evil, right, wrong)’, for I am not at all worried about such statements passing out of the language of rational men. Even behaviourists and relativists and emotivists still make reasonably intelligent statements of this form. But I am worried about the future of a related class of statements, those of the form, ‘X is civilized (barbarous)’. These statements have been gradually disappearing from our discourse; perhaps they have been casualties of recent revolutions in social science and philosophy. And this state of affairs is a tragic one indeed, for not only is there a need for statements of this form, but of all ethical statements, these are the ones whose descriptive content is most incontrovertible. Non-cognitivistic moral philosophers generally dismiss statements about the ‘civilized’ and ‘barbarous’ along with statements about the ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘right’, and ‘wrong’. But social scientists have made statements about the ‘civilized’ and ‘barbarous’ special objects of attack. They have even suggested that people who make such statements are narrow-minded, naive, and ‘ethnocentric’. ‘Ethnocentrism’, an eminent social scientist tells us, ‘is the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.’ Ethnocentrism is innocent enough up to a point, but reflective men should be careful not to allow it to blind their moral sense. The noted anthropologist, Herskovits, has given us the following warning:Cultures are sometimes evaluated by the use of the designations ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive’. These terms have a deceptive simplicity, and attempts to document the differences implied in them have proved to be of unexpected difficulty.

Political Behavior and International Tensions

1951 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-554
Author(s):  
David B. Truman
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
International Understanding ◽  
Applied Social Science ◽  
Academic Specialization

Organized efforts to deal with the problem of war through channels other than those of traditional diplomacy seem peculiarly subject to frustration. Perhaps this is inevitable. Certainly it is common. The current disappointment with the achievements of UNESCO, which Professor Dunn examines in the opening pages of his book, is only the most recent and most obvious instance of the dismay which sometimes follows upon the discovery that the star to which the wagon supposedly has been hitched is, after all, a decidedly earth-bound horse. The fervor that often accompanies a desire to “do something” about international understanding seems to invite a kind of oversimplification that leads inevitably to disillusionment and despair. Social scientists are by no means immune from this affliction, although it is not peculiar to them. The myopias of academic specialization, confronted with the tremendous complexities of such a task in applied social science, may encourage a neglect of the limitations of particular specialties and produce oversimplifications at their peripheries.

scholarly journals The Use of Drones in the Spatial Social Sciences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ola Hall ◽  
Ibrahim Wahab
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Good And Evil

Drones are increasingly becoming a ubiquitous feature of society. They are being used for a multiplicity of applications for military, leisure, economic, and academic purposes. Their application in the latter, especially as social science research tools has seen a sharp uptake in the last decade. This has been possible due, largely, to significant developments in computerization and miniaturization which have culminated in safer, cheaper, lighter, and thus more accessible drones for social scientists. Despite their increasingly widespread use, there has not been an adequate reflection on their use in the spatial social sciences. There is need a deeper reflection on their application in these fields of study. Should the drone even be considered a tool in the toolbox of the social scientist? In which fields is it most relevant? Should it be taught as a course in the universities much in the same way that geographic information system (GIS) became mainstream in geography? What are the ethical implications of its application in the spatial social science? This paper is a brief reflection on these questions. We contend that drones are a neutral tool which can be good and evil. They have actual and potential wide applications in academia but can be a tool through which breaches in ethics can be occasioned given their unique abilities to capture data from vantage perspectives. Researchers therefore need to be circumspect in how they deploy this powerful tool which is increasingly becoming mainstream in the social sciences.

Value judgments in social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom L. Beauchamp
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Scientific Practices ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Political Values ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact

Leading theorists in the social sciences have insisted that value judgments should be strictly separated from scientific judgments, which should be value-free. Yet these same thinkers recognize that social scientists are often committed to values in carrying out their work and may be motivated by moral goals of removing or remedying social conditions. From this perspective, scientific conclusions (one sort of fact) and moral commitments (one sort of value) are intertwined in scientific practices, and the question arises whether a social scientist qua scientist makes value judgments or only makes such judgments in a nonscientific capacity. Related questions concern the role played by moral, social, and political values in the pursuit of scientific knowledge and the impact of these values on scientific theories and methods.

scholarly journals PRAGMATIC UTOPIANISM AND RACE: H. G. WELLS AS SOCIAL SCIENTIST

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 863-895 ◽  
Author(s):  
DUNCAN BELL
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
World State ◽  
Significant Contributor ◽  
The World ◽  
Innovative Fiction ◽  
Large Audience ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism

H. G. Wells was one of the most celebrated writers in the world during the first half of the twentieth century. Famed for his innovative fiction, he was also an influential advocate of socialism and the world-state. What is much less well known is that he was a significant contributor to debates about the nature of social science. This article argues that Wells's account of social science in general, and sociology in particular, was shaped by an idiosyncratic philosophical pragmatism. In order to demonstrate how his philosophical arguments inflected his social thought, it explores his attack on prevailing theories of race, while also highlighting the limits of his analysis. The article concludes by tracing the reception of Wells's ideas among social scientists and political thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic. Although his program for utopian sociology attracted few disciples, his arguments about the dynamics of modern societies found a large audience.

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