Everything Else Equal. Reductionism Contained.

October 16th, 2007 Posted in Individual, Charismatic Leader

The dramatic narrative so far: Max Weber introduces a human called charismatic leader who radically recreates culture and social organization from within himself. Sociology is threatened with reduction to an appendage of biology.

We rally to the defense of sociology out of sentiment but also in the hope of clarifying its purpose. There are a number of maneuvers that either stave off reductionism or mitigate its consequences.

(1) A pure sociology. Durkheim studied suicide and unlike most other scholars never considered the details of an actual case. He studied rates of suicide and correlated them with measures of the quality of the local culture. The suicide, like the vote in an election, only has social meaning as part of a pattern. The issue of reduction is avoided by staying within one’s own empirical sector.

(2) Then there is isolation. The offending incident is quarantined–no attempt to generalize to similar situations. The charismatic is a one-off. Everything else continues on as before.

(3) The smothering. In what we have called the second step, the changes wrought by the charismatic are routinized. A social process assimilates his works into a new consensus and an accompanying social organization. The intrusion of the bio-psychological is limited.

(4) Where experiments are possible reductionism is held at bay by matching the test with a control. No extraneous element can enter. The proviso of everything else equal is the tag that assures the unreduced result.

In the non-experimental world the refusal of the unwanted is presumed. Any differences in personality or in biological or material status wash out in the expectation of an uncomplicated, fuzzy normal–a sort of random comfort zone, an average. There is an assumption of standard elements in passive place.

So our ultimate non-experimental defense is to adjust, as best we can, our standard elements to conform to real conditions encountered. The small group in zero gravity or in crowded circumstances is something else. The suicide rate of charismatics in an anomic cultural setting is something else.

^^^^^

On the importance of clarity in what is being observed and described we have the example of the directed movement of a boat in water. Say there are three ways: the oar, the sail, and the engine. We evaluate and measure each separately. All together would only result in confusion and error. What each can do in pocket, we can attempt the all at once with greater assurance.

To keep the several sectors of the empirical world separate increases our chances of a more intimate understanding of each. They all come together in the analysis of the concrete. In the investigation of accidents, of crimes, of any unique actual event everything is in play.

^ ^^^^

There are other issues that develop out of our ruminations on charisma and reductionism. Two follow from a closer critique of the meaning of charisma. First, data and concept can be advanced that bring it even closer to a social source. The second breaks the complex concept of charismatic into its simpler parts. We will argue that these have a wide potential applicability within the field. These two strands will, we hope, bring a revised charisma out of isolation into the main stream of the sociological project.

I ‘ll follow these leads in future posts.

I have other notes on reductionism that are perhaps less relevant to the sociological project but have a passing interest of their own. I’ll post these as pages (access on the right side of the screen) as time and opportunity allow.

And so we part.