scholarly journals La función explicativa de los modelos en biología

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Diéguez
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Scientific Explanations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Scientific Laws

RESUMENLos modelos científicos son recursos explicativos fundamentales en la ciencia, y particularmente en aquellas ciencias en las que es dudoso que podamos contar con leyes científicas genuinas, como es el caso de la biología (y de las ciencias sociales). La cuestión de cómo explican los modelos ha despertado una gran atención en las últimas décadas y, sin embargo, sigue siendo una cuestión controvertida. Hay muchos tipos de modelos y no es de extrañar, por tanto, que puedan proporcionar explicaciones de los fenómenos de formas muy diversas. Si se puede señalar un rasgo común a todos estos modos diferentes de explicar, es el hecho de que los modelos nos ofrecen una mejor comprensión de los fenómenos. Se argumenta en este trabajo que la noción de ‘comprensión’ aquí implicada no es irremediablemente subjetiva.PALABRAS CLAVEMODELOS BIOLÓGICOS, EXPLICACIÓN CIENTÍFICA, COMPRENSIÓN, LEYES CIENTÍFICASABSTRACTScientific models are basic explanatory resources in science. This explanatory function is especially relevant in biology and social sciences, where it is doubtful the existence of genuine scientific laws. How models can provide scientific explanations has been a widely debated issue in the past decades, but in spite of this fact it remains as a controversial one. There are many kinds of models in biology, so it is not surprising that they provide scientific explanations of phenomena in very different ways. A possible common feature among this diversity is the fact that models give us a better understanding of phenomena. It is argued in this paper that the notion of ‘understanding’ is not irremediably subjective.KEYWORDSBIOLOGICAL MODELS, SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION, UNDERSTANDING, SCIENTIFIC LAWS

The Problem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Prestigious Journal ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Researchers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wide Gap

This chapter introduces ‘the problem’ of meaningless research in the social sciences. Over the past twenty years there has been an enormous growth in research publications, but never before in the history of humanity have so many social scientists written so much to so little effect. Academic research in the social sciences is often inward looking, addressed to small tribes of fellow researchers, and its purpose in what is increasingly a game is that of getting published in a prestigious journal. A wide gap has emerged between the esoteric concerns of social science researchers and the pressing issues facing today’s societies. The chapter critiques the inaccessibility of the language used by academic researchers, and the formulaic qualities of most research papers, fostered by the demands of the publishing game. It calls for a radical move from research for the sake of publishing to research that has something meaningful to say.

scholarly journals The Relevance of Inequality Research in Sociology for Inequality Reduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110201
Author(s):  
Thomas A. DiPrete ◽  
Brittany N. Fox-Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Large Scale Change ◽  
The Subject

Social inequality is a central topic of research in the social sciences. Decades of research have deepened our understanding of the characteristics and causes of social inequality. At the same time, social inequality has markedly increased during the past 40 years, and progress on reducing poverty and improving the life chances of Americans in the bottom half of the distribution has been frustratingly slow. How useful has sociological research been to the task of reducing inequality? The authors analyze the stance taken by sociological research on the subject of reducing inequality. They identify an imbalance in the literature between the discipline’s continual efforts to motivate the plausibility of large-scale change and its lesser efforts to identify feasible strategies of change either through social policy or by enhancing individual and local agency with the potential to cumulate into meaningful progress on inequality reduction.

scholarly journals Lawful Humean explanations are not circular

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Callum Duguid
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
General Pattern ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Scientific Explanations ◽  
Absurd Conclusion

AbstractA long-standing charge of circularity against regularity accounts of laws has recently seen a surge of renewed interest. The difficulty is that we appeal to laws to explain their worldly instances, but if these laws are descriptions of regularities in the instances then they are explained by those very instances. By the transitivity of explanation, we reach an absurd conclusion: instances of the laws explain themselves. While drawing a distinction between metaphysical and scientific explanations merely modifies the challenge rather than resolving it, I argue that it does point us towards an attractive solution. According to Humeanism, the most prominent form of the regularity view, laws capture information about important patterns in the phenomena. By invoking laws in scientific explanations, Humeans are showing how a given explanandum is subsumed into a more general pattern. Doing so both undermines a principle of transitivity that plays a crucial role in the circularity argument and draws out a central feature of the Humean approach to scientific explanation.

scholarly journals Niche Construction Theory in Archaeology: A Critical Review

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert N. Spengler
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Niche Construction ◽  
Heuristic Function ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanism ◽  
Ecosystem Impacts ◽  
Niche Construction Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Explanatory Mechanism

AbstractOver the past decade, niche construction theory (NCT) has been one of the fastest-growing theories or scholarly approaches in the social sciences, especially within archaeology. It was proposed in the biological sciences 25 years ago and is often referred to as a neglected evolutionary mechanism. Given its rapid acceptance by the archaeological community, it is important that scholars consider how it is being applied and look for discrepancies between applications of the concept. Many critical discussions of NCT have already been published, but most of them are in biology journals and may be overlooked by scholars in the social sciences. In this manuscript, my goal is to synthesis the criticisms of NCT, better allowing archaeologists to independently evaluate its usefulness. I focus on the claims of novelty and differences between NCT and other approaches to conceptualizing anthropogenic ecosystem impacts and culture-evolution feedbacks. I argue that the diverse concepts currently included in the wide-reaching purview of NCT are not new, but the terminology is and may be useful to some scholars. If proponents of the concept are able to unify their ideas, it may serve a descriptive function, but given that lack of a testable explanatory mechanism, it does not have a clear heuristic function.

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.

Histories for Anthropology: Ten Years of Historical Research and Writing by Anthropologists, 1980–1990

1991 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-455
Author(s):  
Susan Kellogg
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Historical Anthropology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Textual Practice ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Duke University ◽  
Anthropological History

Editor’s Note: Susan Kellogg’s article on anthropology and history continues our special series “History and the Other Social Sciences.” There will be one further article, by David Robertson, on political science and history. An expanded version of the whole series will then be published as a book by Duke University Press.The past, once considered the exclusive domain of historians and antiquarians, has increasingly been embraced by anthropologists. Today, it is difficult to find a major anthropological study that does not claim to offer a diachronic, processual, historical analysis. In examining 10 years of historical anthropological writing, I cover three broad topics in this essay. First, I explain the emergence of a more historical anthropology as a widespread response to a crisis in the conceptualization of culture. Second, I argue that while there are certain identifiable themes that cut across this literature, in general, it reflects long-standing topical interests within anthropology; I review this literature according to these topics rather than divide it into interpretive or cultural studies versus studies of political economy. Third, I try to assess this body of work critically. I concentrate here on anthropological history as both research and textual practice, as well as briefly examine anthropological uses of the concepts of time, colonialism, and structure and agency.

Moral economy: What’s in a name

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G Carrier
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
The Past ◽  
Empty Symbol ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Moral Economic

The idea of moral economy has been increasingly popular in the social sciences over the past decade, given a confusing variety of meanings and sometimes invoked as an empty symbol. This paper begins by describing this state of affairs and some of its undesirable corollaries, which include unthinking invocations of the moral and simplistic views of some sorts of economic activity. Then, referring especially to the work of EP Thompson and James C Scott, this paper proposes a more precise definition of moral economy that roots moral economic activity in the mutual obligations that arise when people transact with each other over the course of time. It thus distinguishes between the moral values that are the context of economic activity and those that arise from the activity itself. The solution that the paper proposes to the confused state of ‘moral economy’ can, therefore, be seen as terminological, as the sub-title suggests, but it is intended to have the substantive benefits of a better approach to economic activity and circulation and a more explicit and thoughtful attention to moral value.

Futures Honed

Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
The Past ◽  
Writing Theory ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Verse Form ◽  
The Way

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.

Islamic International Relations Towards a Theoretical Framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gubara Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The World

The Western originators of the multi-disciplinary social sciences and their successors, including most major Western social intellectuals, excluded religion as an explanation for the world and its affairs. They held that religion had no role to play in modern society or in rational elucidations for the way world politics or/and relations work. Expectedly, they also focused most of their studies on the West, where religion’s effect was least apparent and argued that its influence in the non-West was a primitive residue that would vanish with its modernization, the Muslim world in particular. Paradoxically, modernity has caused a resurgence or a revival of religion, including Islam. As an alternative approach to this Western-centric stance and while focusing on Islam, the paper argues that religion is not a thing of the past and that Islam has its visions of international relations between Muslim and non-Muslim states or abodes: peace, war, truce or treaty, and preaching (da’wah).

Egyptology and Global History: Between Geocultural Power and the Crisis of Humanities

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 29-76
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Moreno García
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Global History ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gradual Loss ◽  
Dynamic Flows ◽  
Western Hegemony ◽  
Intellectual Environment ◽  
New Strategies ◽  
New Framework

Abstract Globalization, the decline of Western hegemony, and the rise of new political and economic actors, particularly in East Asia, are concomitant with the emergence of more encompassing historical perspectives, attentive to the achievements and historical trajectories of other regions of the world. Global history provides thus a new framework to understanding our past that challenges former views based on the cultural needs, values, and expectations of the West. This means that humanities and social sciences are subject to intense scrutiny and pressed to adapt themselves to a changing cultural, academic, and intellectual environment. However, this process is hindered by the gradual loss of their former prestige and by the increasing influence of economics in the reorganization of the educational, research, and cultural agenda according to market-oriented criteria. The result is that the mobilization of the past increasingly conforms to new strategies in which connectivity, trading, and diplomatic interests, as well as integration in dynamic flows of wealth, appear of paramount importance. Egyptology is not alien to these challenges, which will in all probability reshape its very foundations in the foreseeable future.

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