Defending the Difference

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Difference ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.

scholarly journals The Cop21 Process from the Point of View of the Social Sciences

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Jan-Erik Lane
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Policy Implementation ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Anthropogenic Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Energy Emissions ◽  
The Universe

<em>Thus far, all the debate about climate change in the myriad of UN conferences and special meetings has been about the application of the theories of the natural sciences to the global warming phenomena. Now, that there is a decision by the governments of the world countries to go ahead with a radical decarbonisation policy in the 21st century, the lessons from the social science theories must be taken into account. The COP21 project is a case of policy implementation, but implementation is difficult. Greenhouse Gases (GHG) like CO2:s stem from the anthropogenic sources of carbon emissions from the factors that drives not only the universe but also all social systems, viz. energy. This article spells out the energy-emissions conundrum of mankind.</em>

Benson and Miller in Perspective

1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Applied Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Stock Of Knowledge

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.

Assessing Contemporary Crises: Aligning Safety Science and Security Studies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bibi van den Berg ◽  
Ruth Prins ◽  
Sanneke Kuipers
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Safety Science ◽  
Key Topics

Security and safety are key topics of concern in the globalized and interconnected world. While the terms “safety” and “security” are often used interchangeably in everyday life, in academia, security is mostly studied in the social sciences, while safety is predominantly studied in the natural sciences, engineering, and medicine. However, developments and incidents that negatively affect society increasingly contain both safety and security aspects. Therefore, an integrated perspective on security and safety is beneficial. Such a perspective studies hazardous and harmful events and phenomena in the full breadth of their complexity—including the cause of the event, the target that is harmed, and whether the harm is direct or indirect. This leads to a richer understanding of the nature of incidents and the effects they may have on individuals, collectives, societies, nation-states, and the world at large.

New Outlines of Structural Sociology, 1945–70

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-85
Author(s):  
J.P.S. Uberoi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
World View ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Indian Point

This chapter presents a discussion of international intellectual trends in the social sciences, theoretical and empirical studies in India, the question of independence of mind or home rule in intellectual institutions. Following the swarajist project outlined earlier of viewing Europe and its systems of knowledge and practices from an independent Indian point of view, this chapter is in effect a research outline for a new structural sociology in India. We are introduced to structuralism as it exists in the world, its scope and definition and as a methodology for the social sciences. This is followed by the approach to structuralism as scientific theory, method and as philosophical world view. Finally discusses are the principles of structural analysis, structuralism in language, literature and culture, in social structure, with regard to society and the individual, religion, philosophy, politics, sociology and social-anthropology.

scholarly journals RESPONSE FUNCTIONS TO CRITICAL SHOCKS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES: AN EMPIRICAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY

2004 ◽  
Vol 15 (06) ◽  
pp. 809-834 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. M. ROEHNER ◽  
D. SORNETTE ◽  
J. V. ANDERSEN
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Numerical Study ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Large Variability ◽  
Future Evolution ◽  
Damage Spreading ◽  
Exogenous Shocks ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Difference

We show that, provided one focuses on properly selected episodes, one can apply to the social sciences the same observational strategy that has proved successful in natural sciences such as astrophysics or geodynamics. For instance, in order to probe the cohesion of a society, one can, in different countries, study the reactions to some huge and sudden exogenous shocks, which we call Dirac shocks. This approach naturally leads to the notion of structural (as opposed or complementary to temporal) forecast. Although structural predictions are by far the most common way to test theories in the natural sciences, they have been much less used in the social sciences. The Dirac shock approach opens the way to testing structural predictions in the social sciences. The examples reported here suggest that critical events are able to reveal pre-existing "cracks" because they probe the social cohesion which is an indicator and predictor of future evolution of the system, and in some cases they foreshadow a bifurcation. We complement our empirical work with numerical simulations of the response function ("damage spreading") to Dirac shocks in the Sznajd model of consensus build-up. We quantify the slow relaxation of the difference between perturbed and unperturbed systems, the conditions under which the consensus is modified by the shock and the large variability from one realization to another.

Discussion: A Sociologist's Point of View

1950 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-149
Author(s):  
W. Rex Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Full Development ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Reverence For Life ◽  
The Individual

The only words in the title of this symposium which do not cause difficulty are “of” and “in,” since even Latin America is a “nomer” that many protest is a “misnomer,” for some parts of the region southeast of the U.S.A., and “pathology” and “democracy” can get into water as hot and deep as any that lies under the thin ice over which the social sciences skate. The very lumping together in our discussion of twenty republics varying as they do in Latin America is a procedure of doubtful accuracy, and one which at first encounter arouses the ire of any good nationalist in these countries. The term “pathological” suggests too strongly a complacent superior attitude on our own part that may befit the propagandist or the naive and uninformed man on the street, but not the social scientist. The world does not fall so neatly into the patterns of perfect democracy and the outer darkness as Mr. Churchill has supposed. Can we not accept a certain relativity in these matters and remember the large-sized mote in our own eye?With the struggle of almost innumerable thinkers to define the direction and goal, we are surely familiar. The writer has no intention of assembling all the definitions available, for if they were all assembled, sociologists might lay the emphasis not upon forms and constitutions so much as upon something broader that earlier theologians would have called men's will and men's love. Since the development of “Mr. Tylor's science,” cultural anthropology, we would be more likely to say that the legal arrangements grow out of and express the culture; that back of them lies a slow secular growth of the idea that personality, the freedom and full development of the individual are ultimate values, not to be sacrificed to the state; that power may be necessary for survival, and that unity or consensus or conformity may be necessary to power, but that something like Albert Schweitzer's “reverence for life” is a deeper principle. These things are no sooner said than we realize that we often sin against the ideals we cherish and fear the freedom to which we give lip-service. The practice falls far short of the preaching.

Social Indicators: A Comparison Among Selected Countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-144
Author(s):  
Badar Alam Iqbal ◽  
Mohd Nayyer Rahman ◽  
Munir Hasan
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Growth And Development ◽  
Social Indicators ◽  
High Growth ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lower Income ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

The difference between growth and development is not subtle but substantially huge and the gap is ever increasing. The dividing line is social indicators. Countries witnessing high growth rates for decades are not equal performers in development when social indicators are observed. India is an emerging economy on the one hand and a developing on the other hand but a lower income country as per World Bank statistic. While India holds economic indicators that appears to be promising to the world and investors that is not the case with social indicators. The present study is an attempt to critically review the social indicators for India and to trace the trajectory of fall or growth in such indicators while comparing with selected countries.

WOMEN‘S STUDIES IN SOCIOLOGY: A PERFUMED GHETTO?

1981 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-8
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Women's Studies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

One of the fields of sociology which is experiencing a dramatic explosion is that catch‐all area of Women's Studies. Books and articles touching on women's experiences in the labour market or in the home, the education of girls or images of femininity, the impact of the law on women or sexism in the social sciences have been proliferating in the last decade. Much of the impetus has been provided by the renascent Women's Movement, and the various academic concerns echo the diverse attacks on the status quo being made by politically active women. The one thing which holds all this material together is an explicit concern to bring women to the centre of the stage in the social sciences, instead of leaving them (as they so often have been) in the wings or with mere walk‐on parts. Taking the woman's point of view is seen as a legitimate corrective to the tendency to ignore women altogether. But is this sufficient to constitute the nucleus of a new speciality within sociology, which is what seems to be happening to ‘Women's Studies’ and ‘feminist’ social science? More seriously, should sociological discussions of women be ghettoised into special courses on women in society? As a preliminary attempt to redress the balance maybe such separate development can be justified, but if that is all that happens, the enriching potential of feminist social science may well be lost to mainstream sociology. It is not just that feminist social scientists want women to be brought in to complete the picture. It is not just that they claim that half the picture is being left unexposed. The claims are often much more ambitious than that: what much feminist writing is attempting is a demonstration of the distortion in the half image which is exposed. An injection of feminist thinking into practically any sociological speciality could lead to a profound re‐orientation of that field. More than this, a feminist approach can indicate the ways in which traditional boundaries between sociological specialities can obscure women and their special position in society. Feminist social scientists throw down the gauntlet on the way in which the field of sociology has traditionally been carved up. But if women's studies are kept in their ghetto, this challenge will be lost: to me, the explicitly critical stance which feminist research takes with respect to mainstream sociology is one of its most exciting qualities, and such research has important insights to contribute to the development of the discipline.

Cowboy Economics versus Spaceship Ecology

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garrett Hardin
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
New World ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Henry George ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Beginning Students

Europe-focused histories present the world as it appeared to Europeans and to the cultures derived from that continent. It is said that the New World was discovered in 1492—a statement that would have surprised the Aztecs had they heard it. Adopting for the moment the Eurocentric point of view, we note that whereas before 1492 there were about 24 acres of Europe per European, afterward there were some 120 acres of land per European. The fivefold increase presumes the legitimacy of property gained by conquest. This sudden wealth led to what W. P. Webb called an "age of exuberance." No wonder, as Catton and Riley remarked, "Opportunities thereafter seemed limitless. . . [and] it is not surprising that an optimistic belief in 'progress' developed." The age of exuberance has lasted for over four centuries, but seems to be drawing to a close as the sixth century looms on the horizon. Epicurus proclaimed two important default positions: (1) nothing can be created out of nothing, and (2) no existing thing can be converted into nothingness. These are universally accepted by natural scientists, who view them as conservative statements since they refer to the conservation of things. Are economists conservative, in this sense? The record is mixed. Economists demand that their helpers, the accountants, balance their books exactly; and an economist is likely to tell his beginning students that "There's no such thing as a free lunch." But before the course is far advanced the conservative sense of this incantation seems often to be forgotten. The manmade complexities of the world of finance make it difficult to recognize the underlying conservation of true wealth. Scientists have had an easier time dealing with matter and energy. By 1879 the conservation of these entities had been well established in the natural sciences, but in that year the "single taxer" Henry George (1839-1897) defiantly proclaimed non-conservation in the social sciences (see Box 7-1). Real estate developers and commercial promoters in general still sing George's song.

Social Science’s Cold War

2019 ◽  
pp. 65-90
Author(s):  
Michael C. Desch
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
World War ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

This chapter details how with the end of the Second World War, social science disciplines were pulled in two diametrically opposed directions. The general intellectual climate of the post-World War II/early Cold War era was one of great optimism about professionalizing and modernizing the social sciences on the model of the natural sciences. This impulse especially affected political science. However, the inherent tensions between “rigor” and “relevance” reasserted themselves once again, and it became clear that a peacetime choice between them might have to be made. On the one hand, the experience of the war, and the growing realization that the country faced a protracted period of rivalry with the Soviet Union, encouraged the disciplines to try to remain relevant to policy. On the other hand, the mixed security environment and desire to remake the social sciences in the image of the natural sciences eventually pushed them away from it.

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