Living Sociology: On Being in the World One Studies

Living sociology refers to the life of sociology, seen as a field of competing scientific research programs. The dynamism of each program requires, on the one hand, engaging internal contradictions and external anomalies and, on the other hand, extended dialogue among the programs themselves. Living sociology also refers to the life of sociologists as they participate in the society they study. My understanding of these two dimensions of reflexive science—the scientific and the hermeneutic—developed through the interaction of teaching and research. I trace the way I learned the extended case method in Zambia and reformulated it through collaborations with students at Berkeley, arriving at the idea of the scientific research program. I show how I tried to contribute to the Marxist research program by wrestling with anomalies that sprung from my experiences working in factories in the United States, Hungary, and Russia. Finally, I describe how teaching social theory led me to Marxist conversations with structural functionalism and with the work of Pierre Bourdieu as well as prefiguring an extended conversation between W.E.B. Du Bois and the sociological canon. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 47 is July 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Is unified institutional economics possible?

In recent years, some papers were published with the aim to integrate the original institutional economics and new institutional economics. This paper considers the possibility to solve this problem. To do this, it has analyzed four tasks: firstly, how do the original institutionalists characterize their scientific program specificity; secondly, how do the original institutionalists criticize new institutional economics; thirdly, what do they mean by the integration of original institutional economics and new institutional economics, that they have been observing since the 1990s and fourthly, what do they propose as a integration program. The analysis showed that the explicit methodology of original institutionalism, in fact, attributes to it characteristics, which are very close to the properties of “folk theory”. New institutional economics’ criticism is often based on the distorted interpretations of this scientific research program. The authors typically understand as the institutionalisms’ similarity the facts of the new institutionalism development by Douglass North, who used the data of the empirical behavioral research, but not the claims of original institutionalism. The method of integration proposed in the literature presupposes the adoption of the old institutionalism methodology by the new institutionalism, which could drastically reduce the quality of its research. The paper concludes that under present-day conditions, it is practically impossible to create a unified institutional economics.

The Myth of Science as a Source of Progress

In the philosophy of science and technology, scientific progress has been usually considered in a logical-methodological way, namely, from the point of view of the capacity to solve problems, the theoretical and empirical success of a certain theory or scientific research program. These are the concepts of K. Popper, I. Lakatos, and L. Laudan. They are opposed by historical and sociological ap­proaches to the development of science by T. Kuhn, S. Toulmin, and P. Feyer­abend. The article proposes a variant of the second approach – socio-epistemo­logical and, in particular, value interpretation of scientific progress shifting the focus of the discourse on scientific progress to the world-view and ideological circumstances of the development of science not only as knowledge, but as a form of culture and social institution. There is a polemic with the thesis by A.L. Nikiforov about the dominant pragmatic need for science and the primacy of its applied results, as ifthe modern achievement of which science has al­legedly fulfilled as well as the purpose prescribed to it by F. Bacon, and even ex­hausted its progressive potential. Criticism of the position by A.L. Nikiforov is based on an alternative view on science, which follows from a different interpre­tation of the New Times scientific revolution and the purpose of science in gen­eral. Scientific progress is seen in the creation by science of a new image of the world, new ways of communication, new moral guidelines, the design of new ways of social order. Such a science does not fit into the narrow, logical-method­ological criteria of scientific rationality. However, it is precisely this culture-forming, socio-cultural function of science that allows us to talk about science as an enterprise that contributes to social progress and, if progressive, it is precisely because of this circumstance.

Visualization Research on Scientific and Technological Information of Aviation Industry in Shaanxi Province

The integration of industry and information is necessary for the development of industrial modernization in China. Under the context of this, the research on visualization has leaded to a wide and further integration between science and technology and arts disciplines. It fosters the progress and innovation of digitalization and smart technologies, working to make industrial manufacturing more informationalized. Besides, it has a long-term gaining effect on the digitalization and informatization of relevant national science and technology projects under way and enterprises, and even the development of education, Thus, this paper, based on the progress of aviation industry, combines visual simulation design, visual management system and visual technologies, analyses main methods and key objectives, and elaborates on the effect and significance of integration between visual technologies and manufacturing. Fund program: Special Scientific Research Program of Education Department of Shaanxi(20JK0240)

From expected utility theory to prospect theory: tracking down the experimental path after forty years

The article is an experimental study testing the expected utility theory axioms. Three of the experiments are a repetition of a previous test, while the other two are original. The repeated experiments were performed in slightly changed circumstances. The participants were incentivised with rewards, which did not happen in the tree replicated tests. The results confirmed degeneration of the expected utility theory as a scientific research program. The evidence that emerged from the tests supported the hypothesis on the cumulative prospect theory predicting facts not forecasted by the EUT.

Extraordinary Science and Psychiatry

The subject of the book is the culture of crisis and controversy that exists in contemporary mental health research, following the publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) and the National Institute of Mental Health’s declaration of it as unfit for guiding research in psychiatry. The book explores both the nature and sources of the crisis as well as whether and, if so, how, it can be overcome. It brings together a collection of original articles that develop and apply various analytical ideas and strategies from the philosophy of science, and from other relevant areas of philosophy and science, with the aim of clarifying some aspects of the current crisis and the associated extraordinary science. The themes of the chapters include understanding the research domain of mental illness, clarifying the nature of the problems that constitute the current crisis, identifying key substantive and methodological assumptions concerning classification and research focused on the domain of mental illness, identifying ideas bearing on how best to respond to the current crisis with respect to the scientific research agenda, and constructively addressing the tension between pursuing a progressive scientific research program concerning mental illness and maintaining a place of prominence for individual persons and their contexts.