Note on a Second Review of Blogs Past. Science Nixed.

This is second in the series of recollections and comments on past blogs.  “Two. The Question of a Scientific Sociology.”

It is an important topic because there is some residual confusion in the field.  One must see a hard social science as an unfortunate error. Then the jump to the real question of what next becomes possible.

^^^^^

Scientific status is a claim to assured acceptance.  It is a value boost. A brand name.  It is a social persona as well, a mask  for an occupation  It is no guarantee of attitude and intention or the quality of the work done.  Behind it are actual results, useful paradigms, the discovery of correct ways.  Sometimes the value is in entertaining antics, distractions. All in the mix.  This conceit of hard science  is like a white wash on a wall.  It is possible to change the cover and leave the wall intact.  It is possible to give up a false identity and still remain the same old useful worker that has always been there.For me the way of the hard science was a detour to nowhere.  It has been a distraction among workers of the plural experience.  A more reasonable estimate of what is possible, what methods may lead to useful results, requires a giving up of a false premise.

^^^^^

Item 4. Posted 8/15/2007. Title “Social Science Nixed. Social What Left?”

When I started in sociology, early on, I was convinced by a brilliant young instructor that the scientific method could be adjusted to fit social phenomena.  Feeling that we had entered a new era of discovery  I bought the positivist package and quietly abandoned my casual adherence to democratic socialism and the united front against fascism which had been my fuzzy ideology during World War II and the few years after.  I thought I was giving up a life of confused contention for increments of universal certainty.  Somehow the scientific way would lead on to a liberal nirvana, a flowering of the New Deal promise.

But the river and the tide soon ran in the opposite direction. Politically in the U.S. we entered an era of continuing suppression of socialism and the rolling back of the New Deal. This has been the political trend since. On the other side of the Cold War an oppressive state dictatorship usurped the legacy of the united front to the same effect.

The anti-socialist line became obvious during the Vietnam War when students fearful of the military draft and the battlefields of southeast Asia became radical and active and, as part of their contrariness, generated a critique of sociology that tracked a wide conservative bias in its basic works. Emphasis was on the placid order of  what since has been called democratic capitalism  to the exclusion of other actively possible orders.

A strict science is unbiased, objective, without any interest or presumption in the results of research.  Except for the morality of the scientific method itself there is no moral interest in an experimental outcome.  But this basic premise simply can not exist in the social world.  The rise of gender and ethnic liberation movements and the associated political actions and the social scientific studies all involve moral fervor, the righting of a wrong.   The prior acceptance of the status quo (involving ethnic and gender oppression) also fronted a political bias.  Dilemmas involved choices that negated scientific objectivity.

But the powerful indictment from the left was only partial since the same argument reflected back onto the critic and his own ideology and biases.  Not only the fascists and then the monarchists and conservatives were disqualified for hard social scientific work but also those whose politics we might applaud.  Yes, even the liberals and socialists, the secular, the good guys, are also biased.  The social scientific game is impossible because the necessary pure scientist does not exist except for the most trivial case.

This limit, the feet of clay, is a source of  the devolution in the popular acceptance of the social studies and other non-sciences based on social agendas.  Psychoanalysis, criminology–everything but economics, which at the present moment is talking its lumps.  For those who come later who haven’t experienced the demise of social positivism directly this need to emphatically reject the possibility of social science might not be as imperative. But all should be warned. The claim of the mantle of hard science by a student of the plural  must be held suspect.  At best we have sincere error, otherwise suspect chicanery and fraud.

Listing again some of the logical arguments against scientific sociology (with some overlapping). These all suggest limits and biases to the possibility of the objective test.

(1) Famous theories within the field itself suggest  limits to the use of the scientific model.

*From psychoanalysis, the unconscious energetic. The unlabeled urges, compulsions beneath conscious will. The bias is unappreciated.

*From the sociology of knowledge, one’s social place limits one’s social horizon. The observer sits behind a view blocking screen.

*From social class certain encounters and interaction sequences are contradictory and subject to conflict.  Self-interest and even survival of a particular social way tend to take precedence over moral strictures of science.

*From the concept of culture, knowing is limited by group consensus. The dilemma: to risk the group’s approbation with a new self-discovered insight. In a variation of a old joke Does scientist  believe his  group’s interpretation  or his own eyes?

(2)  The possibility of the objective observer outside of the system observed is undermined by the exact similarity of the two.  Like the observer, the observed looks back, develops concepts and theories about what is happening and can act gratuitously (free of the observer’s experimental controls). The relationship of scientist and subject is an interaction sequence.  The relationship draws them into a counter-objective togetherness.  The observer has a moral obligation to the subject.  Danger, discomfort, inconvenience for the other become concerns.  Again the observer is drawn into the experimental space.  In cases where the intervention and the sadistic bias of the scientist occur, the moral monster that the experimenter reveals himself to be becomes the second subject, open to social sanction. The intervention and its initiator become again part of the thing observed.

(3)  The presence of moral concerns, is universal.  A second set of moral imperatives, outside of the scientific ethic and way, are always operational and set limits.  Ideology, operating philosophy fit here.  All extra limits on the scientist.

(4)  The definition of positivism as limited to existent material fact, avoiding the several theological realities based on faith and on the negative elements that have been rejected and excluded from consideration.  These negated, suppressed, ignored elements continue to operate below the radar, sub-rosa, black market, alternate realities.  They continue as part of the dynamic process of the dominant positivist way. The positivist social science limits fact and consideration and sustains a bias within its very definition. This negative space is capable of continual expansion and new discovery.  It is never ending.  Limits the application of a limited system.

(5)  These elements of conflict, negation, rejection, definition make it difficult to broaden the reality base of observation.  There is an element of discomfort and danger to moving over these socially imposed limits.  Even in a free society with limits on the use of police to suppress an  act outside of the convention can bring on informal sanctions that limit livelihood and movement and expression of independent conceptual thought and acts of research and discovery. (This expands on a point made in #1’s last paragraph above.)

The second part of our initial question on what replaces the scientific method in sociology is still open. In the early days of the house without science the inhabitants engaged in an orgy of ideology as fact.  It was known as being politically correct.   For me this always suggested agreeing with the dictator, teacher, or guru in residence. Agreeing is OK so long as the option of choice is understood.

It might be a form of nostalgia but I think the attempt to stay within the scientific ethic is still worthwhile.  We know that our biases, conscious and unconscious, will still be there despite our efforts to the contrary. And to the extent we know them we should alert each other of their existence.  We should strive for a universal truth and failing that try for a secular truth, and failing that be clear about who we are and what we are attempting. As teachers it makes sense  to try to intellectually liberate our students and each other.

So sociology isn’t a science but its acolytes can still strive  for clarity.  Accepting this knowledge is a liberation in itself.  It leads  to a more concerted consideration of method–the blocks to our knowing–and it defines our reality more precisely.  By giving over the rote and, on its face, false science we increase our chances of describing and understanding the plural experience.

^^^^^

One more idea, the issue if praxis.  It is a sort of intermediary notion combining the theoretical complexity and sophistication of science (and literary critics and such) with the practical concern of getting a job done.  The idea leads to the act whose result feeds back to the concept.  The act is not the experiment but the actual behavior and participation in the on-going interaction in the real, consequential world.

The distortion away from hard experimental science is blatantly obvious.  The test is in the concrete actual so the ordering of events has to include all possibilities.  The experimental effect may be buried and unobserved amid  the flood of events. You design a kite, build it and test fly it but it crashes.  It the fault in your design or in the weather, or in the children and dogs who distracted you from your test?   Also since the practice includes a purpose, goal, desired end, a value,  so the theory itself is limited and focused.  Maybe you are asking too little or too much of your theory.  Maybe the purpose and the theory don’t match.  Maybe your theory has a use you haven’t fathomed yet.

 Still praxis may be all we have or want.

In our parallel track, the posts to the blog proper we have been flirting with the problems of the social analysis of the concrete.  Gradually I feel a pull toward a sociology of the concrete, and praxis may be one of the lines in.  Something to work on.

Keep in touch.

Note on a Forward Looking Review

Somali Piracy

Taking Advantage

Jobs

Participating in a Socio-Economic Order

Participation In Happenings

Rumor and Experience

Jury Duty–One

Lobbying Against Lobbying