The use of the social sciences in the interpretation of the New Testament emerged from the 1970s and has become a standard methodology for interpreting the New Testament. However, it has not been significantly used in the interpretation of the New Testament in Nigeria by biblical scholars. This article discusses what social-scientific criticism is and the need for its application in the interpretation of the New Testament by Nigerian New Testament scholars for a better understanding of (...) the New Testament and the people, beliefs and teachings it presents and contextualisation in the face of changing contexts of Christianity in Nigeria. Contribution: As far as we know, this article is the first one written on using social-scientific criticism to interpret the New Testament in the Nigerian context. It therefore contributes to the need for a multidisciplinary approach to interpreting the New Testament in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. It therefore contributes also on methodological considerations with regard to interpreting the New Testament. (shrink)

Under the conditions of the revolution in science and technology, of tremendous social changes, of the tempestuous and significant growth in the prestige of scientific knowledge, and of the exacerbation of the ideological struggle, there has been an immeasurable broadening of the social tasks and spheres of operation of such social phenomena as scientific criticism and self-criticism. Study of social, theoretical, and psychological cross-sections of these phenomena is one of the necessary conditions (...) for cultivating lofty civic qualities, a communist world-view, and the moral and aesthetic improvement of the individual. Special attention is directed to the socializing function of criticism and self-criticism in the Program of the CPSU, the materials of the Twenty-fourth Congress of the CPSU, and the resolutions of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On Literary and Artistic Criticism" and "On the State of Criticism and Self-Criticism in the Tambov Regional Party Organization." Scientific criticism reveals the extent to which the results or processes of practical activity are in accord with communist ideals and to what degree the moral and aesthetic norms of individuals and collectives are an expression of proletarian and general human culture. This is a distinctive intellectual and theoretical form of solution of social contradictions. Criticism is organically interwoven into theoretical and practical human activity. It breaks down old and established social traditions and customary values and impels human thought to undertake scientific quests. It does not permit society to content itself merely with its past triumphs. Scientific criticism arouses and cultivates class consciousness and provides an evaluation of social phenomena from the standpoint of the progressive class. Under the conditions of developed socialist society, criticism and self-criticism become an active means for improving ideological, political, and educational work, the development of the toilers' creative capacities, and activation of the sociopolitical and intellectual life of society. (shrink)

Ethnicity reasoning offers one way of looking at social identity in the letter to the Hebrews. The context of socio-economic abuse and hardships of the audience creates a situation in which ethnicity in social identity becomes an important issue for the author of Hebrews to address. This article is a social-scientific study which explores how the author establishes the ethnic identity of the audience as people of God. While this ethnic identity indicates the more privileged position (...) the readers occupy in relation to the benefits of God accessible to them, it also provides the author with the appropriate social institutions and scripts by which his demand for appropriate response to God and the Christian group becomes appreciable and compelling. The article involves the definition of social-scientific criticism, ethnicity and social identity, and discusses the social context of the letter to the Hebrews. It then explains how some social scripts within specific ethnic institutions give meaning to the demands the author makes from his readers. (shrink)

This article revisits an earlier social scientific analysis of the thought of Rudolf Arnheim and E. H. Gombrich. Adding to the earlier analysis in terms of social ontology and historical development is an analysis of the sufficiency of perception to yield information about the world, both in ordinary and in artistic contexts. Gombrich held to an idea of perception as hypothesis testing, and it joins with Popper's philosophy in the deferred warrant of the perceptual image. Arnheim, instead, (...) followed the Gestalt theorists to believe that each stage of perceptual experience was incorrigible according to the given conditions. Consequently, Arnheim felt confident addressing the essence of art, while Gombrich remained anti‐essentialist. Ultimately, Gombrich's Popperian empiricism attenuates realism, whereas Arnheim's gestaltism seeks to build a bridge between ordinary and scientific observation. (shrink)

This paper will defend scientific study of the social by scrutinizing Clifford Geertz's interpretive anthropology, and evolutionary psychologists' criticism of it. I shall critically examine Geertz's identification of anthropology with literary criticism, his assumption that a science of society is possible only on a positivist model, his view of the relation between culture and mind, and his anti anti-relativism. Then I shall discuss evolutionary psychologists' criticism of Geertz's view as an exemplar of the so-called "Standard (...) Social Science Model." Finally, I shall claim that both Geertz and evolutionary psychologists misunderstand the aim of the social sciences, which is to explain the unintended consequences of human actions in institutional contexts. Key Words: Clifford Geertz • evolutionary psychology • interpretive anthropology • positivism • Standard Social Science Model (SSSM). (shrink)

ABSTRACT The individual-community relationship has always been one of the most fundamental topics of social sciences. In sociology, this is known as the micro-macro relationship while in economics it refers to the processes, through which, individual actions lead to macroeconomic phenomena. Based on philosophical discourse and systems theory, many sociologists even use the term "emergence" in their understanding of micro-macro relationship, which refers to collective phenomena that are created by the cooperation of individuals, but cannot be reduced to individual (...) actions. "Emergence" theories attempt to explain the nature of society as a complex system by examining how individuals and their relationships lead to the creation of integrated and macro-social phenomena such as markets, educational systems, cultural beliefs, and shared social practices. As a prelude to activity, every researcher has to answer the question from the methodological point of view, how is it possible to study the behavior of social groups and how can we gain knowledge about the laws related to social groups? Anyone who deals with humanities and social sciences or any reality and phenomenon that affects human beings, inevitably deals with the reality that is emerging. In fact, emergence occurs when one level of reality emerges radically from another level. Examples of emergent levels of reality include how the mind emerges from the body; or the way society emerges from human beings. Therefore, when there is an emerging factor, different scientific disciplines should be used, because it is inevitable to talk about social affairs, psychology and neurobiology, as well as physical and even chemical. -/- INTRODUCTION Since its beginning in the 19th century, sociology has faced the fundamental question of what a social phenomena stands for? At a glance, sociologists deal with the study of social groups, collective behavior, institutions, social structures, social networks, and social dynamics, and ultimately all such phenomena are composed of individuals. Therefore, social phenomena seem to have no independent ontological status, and in this case, sociology is ultimately about reducible individuals. Different approaches about the micro-macro relationship, using the concept of "emergence", argue that although collective phenomena are created by individuals, they cannot be reduced to individual action. The term "emergence" is used to distinguish "emergent results" from " Procedural results". Results are called Procedural that can only be calculated by adding or subtracting the causes that act together. On the contrary, they are emergent outcomes that are qualitatively novel compared to the causes from which they originate. An example of such emergent results is mental characteristics that emerge from neural processes, but are not considered among the characteristics of neural processes of components - which are their origin. Philosophical debates about emergentism and reductionism focus on the mind-brain relationship, but as many philosophers have noted, they can be generalized to apply to any hierarchical set of features. The cognitive revolution reactivated a 19th century controversy between theorists of Identity and dualism. The theorists of Identity believe in reductionist materialism and elimination of metaphysics, according to which the mind is nothing more than the biological, while the dualists believe that the mind and the brain are distinct from each other. Emergence has been considered as a third way between the theories of Identity and dualism. -/- METHODOLOGY Interdisciplinarity Is fundamentally indicated by the dominance of open systems as well as social and emerging systems at different levels. Therefore, as long as we are facing a new emergentism, there will necessarily be different fields and an interdisciplinary method. The commonality of social sciences and cognitive sciences on the issue of emergence provides the possibility of interaction and exchange of concepts between these two for deeper research. Therefore, in this research, apart from the concepts of Subvenience and downward causation, we have used multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, which are used to explain the emerging concept in cognitive sciences, including neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy. For analytical and interdisciplinary approaches, after examining the concepts of subvenience, and wildly disjunctive, Individualistic and collectivist emergentism have been reviewed. And then their adequacy is criticized and evaluated in meeting strong emergence conditions. -/- FINDINGS Philosophers of the mind have been able to define the conditions of irreducibility and downward causation, which are essential for strong emergence, by using the principle of subvenience with the help of multiple realization and wildly disjunctive principles. Therefore, by definition, emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and emergentist collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the challenges facing the two methodological approaches of individualism and collectivism leads us to three unresolved issues about the emerging phenomenon, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. Despite the differences in the stances of these two approaches regarding the aforementioned triple problems, individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and some others are irreducible due to their complexity, the determination of which, depends on the case study of the mechanism of emergence of each social characteristic. -/- CONCLUSION An emergence that is consistent with reductionism is called a weak emergence. And strong emergence includes the principle of irreducibility and downward causality. According to strong emergence, the characteristics of social phenomena have downward causal power, which cannot be reduced to the causal forces. The principle of subvenience, together with multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, can provide the conditions of irreducibility and downward causality, which are essential conditions of strong emergence. Based on the philosophical analysis of two methodological approaches, individualist and collectivist, it can be concluded that emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and reification collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the problems faced by these two approaches leads us to three unresolved issues, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. individualist emergentists acknowledge the existence of emergent social characteristics, but despite this, they believe that these characteristics are not real but merely analytical constructs that require explanation based on individuals and their mutual actions. But collectivists argue that emergentism yields a categorical ontology and supports social realism. They accept the dependence of social characteristics on individuals, but claim that social entities and structures are ontologically independent. Individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and others are irreducible due to their complexity; and the only way to recognize this is to engage in empirical studies of the mechanisms and temporal processes of "emergence" that create social characteristics. -/- NOVELTY The newness of this compact article is as follows: a) Presenting an interdisciplinary approach using the analysis of philosophy of cognitive sciences, including the philosophy of mind, neurobiology and psychology to formulate the issue of social emergence; b) Criticizing individualist and collectivist methodological approaches to the issue of social emergence and explaining the sufficiency and shortcomings of both in providing weak and strong emerging conditions; c) Explaining and categorizing the challenges facing methodological approaches in explaining the phenomenon of social emergence, in three categories: realism, downward causality, and mechanism. BIBLIOGRAPHY Beckermann, A., Flohr, H., & Kim, J. (eds.) (1992). Emergence or reduction? Essays on the prospects of nonreductive physicalism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The possibility of Naturalism. New York: Routledge. Bhaskar, R., Danermark, B. & Price, L. (2018). Interdisciplinarity and wellbeing: A critical realist general theory of interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge. Blau, P.M. (1981). Introduction: diverse views of social structure and their common denominator. In Blau, P.M. & Merton, R.K. (eds.), Continuity in Structural Inquiry (pp. 1–23). Beverly Hills: Sage. Blau, P.M. (1987). Microprocess and macrostructure. In K.S. Cook (ed.), Social Exchange Theory (pp. 83–100). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Brooks, R.A., & Maes, P. (eds). (1994). Artificial life IV; proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Coleman, J. S. (1987). Microfoundations and macrosocial behavior. In: J. C. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, & Neil J. Smelser (Eds.). The Micro-Macro Link (pp. 153–73). Berkeley: University of California. Coleman, J. S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Elster, J. (1985). Making sense of Marx. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fodor, J.A. (1974). Special sciences (Or: The disunity of science as a working hypothesis). Synthese, 28(2), 97–115. Fodor, J.A. (1989). Making mind matter more. Philosophical Topics, 17, 59-79. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hempel, C.G. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science. New York: The Free Press. Horgan, T. (1993). From supervenience to superdupervenience: meeting the demands of a material world. Mind, 102, 555-586. Humphreys, P. (1997). How properties emerge”. Philosophy of Science, 64, 1-17. Kim, J. (1999). Making sense of emergence. Philosophical Studies, 95, 3–36. Kincaid, H. (1997). Individualism and the unity of science. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Lewis, D.K. (1986). The plurality of worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nigel, G., & Conte, R. (eds.) (1995). Artificial societies; The computer simulation of social life. London: UCL Press. O’Connor, T. (1994). Emergent properties. American Philosophical Quarterly, 31, 91-104. Popper, K.R. (1968). Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row. Sawyer, R. K. (2001). Emergence in sociology: contemporary philosophy of mind and some implications for sociological theory. American Journal of Sociology, 107, 551-585. Sawyer, R. K. (2004). The mechanisms of emergence. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34, 260–282. Sawyer, R. K. (2005). Social emergence: societies as complex systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sawyer, R.K. (2003). Nonreductive individualism: Part 2, Social causation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 33, 203–224. Winch, P. (1993). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy‭ (SAMT, Trans.). Tehran, Iran: SAMT. (shrink)

In the traditional debate on the dichotomy between dogmatism and criticism in scientific practice (the Popper-Kuhn debate), dogmatism is considered a psychological or ethical attitude of the individual scientist. In this paper, I propose a new interpretation of scientific dogmatism by means of a reconstruction of the pragmatist and Wittgensteinian heritage of Kuhn’s concept of dogmatism. My thesis is that such a revised concept accounts for both the stability of scientific knowledge (against scepticism and ceaseless (...) class='Hi'>scientific revolutions), and the importance of doubt and criticism for scientific progress. This is possible only if we consider dogmatism from a social perspective that focuses on scientific communities as the main actors in the history of science. From this point of view, dogmatism is not the unjustified acceptance of particular beliefs, but the blind adherence to the “formal” normative structure of the paradigm. I argue that we have grounded this normative structure in the training process that physics students experience in their formative years, and that Kuhn describes in a similar way to Wittgenstein’s analysis of general linguistic training. Finally, dogmatism does not refer to a system of beliefs, but to a system of norms; not to the specific content of knowledge but to the way that scientific knowledge is authenticated, organised, and transmitted by scientific communities. The institutional structure of science, that is to say its social organisation trough training, textbooks, scientific communities and so on, is a precondition for the organisation of meaningful scientific discourse (i.e. for the production and organisation of empirically verifiable or falsifiable statements). That is the nature of the paradigm: it creates and constrains the possibilities of scientific practice. In normal circumstances, dogmatism and certainty are concerned with such pragmatic a priori, while criticism and doubt are concerned with the empirical statements articulated through it. (shrink)

Marx himself would have agreed with such a practical approach to the criticism of his method..... He was led to this position, I believe, by his conviction that a scientific background was urgently needed by the practical politician.

이 글은 물질론적 에코페미니즘을 중심으로 에코페미니즘에 대해 비판적으로 고찰한다. 이를 통해 에코페미니즘의 기획, 곧 사회적 지배와 자연적 지배 간의 내적ㆍ구조적 연관을 인식하여 여성을 비롯한 모든 사회적 약자가 해방되는 생태사회를 창출하기 위해서는 무엇보다 에코페미니즘의 문제틀의 해체와 대체라는 의미에서의 ‘과학혁명’이 요청됨을 보인다.이를 위해 먼저 물질론적 에코페미니즘을 그 철학적 기초를 중심으로 비판적으로 재구성한다. 그 결과 물질론적 에코페미니즘이 본질주의, 나아가 자신이 비판하는 근대과학의 문제틀과도 ‘단절’하지 못하고 있음을 보인다. 또한 이로 인해 현실인식 및 대안전망과 관련하여서도 고유한 한계와 난점이 귀결됨을 보인다.이어서 에코페미니즘 내부에서 물질론적 에코페미니즘의 이러한 (...) 한계를 극복하려는 사조로 교차적 에코페미니즘을 고찰한다. 이를 통해 교차성의 관점이 과학혁명을 가능하게 하는 문제틀의 위상을 갖는 것이 아님을 보인다.마지막으로 이 글은 마르크스의 문제틀에 기반하는 사회적 재생산 여성주의를 살펴본다. 이를 통해 에코페미니즘 기획, 곧 사회적 지배와 자연지배 간의 내적ㆍ구조적 연관성을 인식하여 이에 기초하는 해방적인 생태사회를 창출하고자 하는 기획이 사회적 재생산 여성주의의 문제틀과 연구 프로그램에 기초하여 전개되어야 한다고 논의한다. (shrink)

This article responds to recent criticism regarding the application of consequentialism and rational choice theory in the social and moral sciences. It clarifies the limited scope of the presented criticism and its overly simplistic view of social scientific inquiry that, together, lead to the presentation of an argument that claims more than it warrants. Moreover, I argue that the criticism overlooks one of the most important uses of instrumentalism in moral theory that may be (...) considered the most challenging case for the application of rational choice theory. (shrink)

Humanist sociologists are activists rooted in the reality of history and change and guided by a concern for the 'real life' problems of equality, peace, and social justice. They view people as active shapers of social life, capable of creating societies in which everyone's potential can unfold. Alfred McClung Lee introduces this volume with 'Sociology: Humanist and Scientific' and develops the theme that a sociology that is humanist is also scientific. The other nine selections are grouped (...) into four parts: 'The Individual and Social Life;' 'Social Institutions: Technology, Science, and Formal Organization;' 'Political Structures: Issues of Justice and Equality;' and 'Methodological Critiques and Counterproposals.'. (shrink)

Abstract This paper is a close textual criticism of Theodosius Dobzhansky's Genetics and the Origin of Species. It argues that the book succeeds as interdisciplinary communication by promoting polysemy. The professional goals of two scientific communities are embedded in the text in such a way that each audience reads the call for co?operative action as implicit support for their own methods.

The social sciences are predominantly seen by their practitioners as critical endeavours, which should inform criticism of harmful institutions, beliefs and practices. Accordingly, political attacks on the social sciences are often interpreted as revealing an unwillingness to accept criticism and an acquiescence with the status quo. But this dominant view of the political implications of social scientific knowledge misses the fact that people can also be outraged by what they see as its apologetic potential, (...) namely that it provides excuses or justifications for people doing bad things, preventing them from being rightfully blamed and punished. This introduction to the special issue sketches the long history of debates about the exculpatory and justificatory consequences of social science and lays the foundations for a theory of social scientific apologia by examining three main aspects: what social and cognitive processes motivate this type of accusation, how social theorists respond to it and whether different contexts of circulation of ideas affect how these controversies unfold. (shrink)

In recent years, feminist philosophy of science has been subjected to criticism. The debate has focused on the implications of the underdetermination thesis for accounts of the role of social values in scientific reasoning. My aim here is to offer a different approach. I suggest that feminist philosophers of science contribute to our understanding of science by (1) producing gender‐sensitive analyses of the social dimensions of scientific inquiry and (2) examining the relevance of these analyses (...) for normative issues in philosophy of science. (shrink)

has become an honorific title used by researchers to commend their work, or the particular approach they adopt. Conversely, the work of others is often dismissed on the grounds that it is "uncritical". However, there are important questions about what the term critical means, about what we should be critical of, and about the form that criticism ought to take. These questions are addressed here in relation to both the role of the social researcher itself and that of (...) researchers operating as public intellectuals. It is argued that the distinction between these roles is an important one, and has implications for what can legitimately be criticised, on what grounds, and in what way. In each case, there are proper limits to criticism, albeit different ones. Like anything else, criticism is not always a good thing. Key Words: critical social research • scientific criticism • social criticism • public intellectuals. (shrink)

Criticism is a staple of the scientific enterprise and of the social epistemology of science. Philosophical discussions of criticism have traditionally focused on its roles in relation to objectivity, confirmation, and theory choice. However, attention to criticism and to criticizability should also inform our thinking about scientific pursuits: the allocation of resources with the aim of developing scientific tools and ideas. In this paper, we offer an account of scientific pursuitworthiness which takes (...) criticizability as its starting point. We call this the apokritic model of pursuit. Its core ideas are that pursuits are practices governed by norms for asking and answering questions, and that criticism arises from the breach of these norms. We illustrate and advertise our approach using examples from institutional grant review, neuroscience, and sociology. We show that the apokritic model can unify several indices of criticizability, that it can account for the importance of criticizing pursuits in scientific practice, and that it can offer ameliorative advice to erstwhile pursuers. (shrink)

For the last forty years, two claims have been at the core of disputes about scientific change: that scientists reason rationally and that science is progressive. For most of this time discussions were polarized between philosophers, who defended traditional Enlightenment ideas about rationality and progress, and sociologists, who espoused relativism and constructivism. Recently, creative new ideas going beyond the polarized positions have come from the history of science, feminist criticism of science, psychology of science, and anthropology of science. (...) Addressing the traditional arguments as well as building on these new ideas, Miriam Solomon constructs a new epistemology of science. After discussions of the nature of empirical success and its relation to truth, Solomon offers a new, social account of scientific rationality. She shows that the pursuit of empirical success and truth can be consistent with both dissent and consensus, and that the distinction between dissent and consensus is of little epistemic significance. In building this social epistemology of science, she shows that scientific communities are not merely the locus of distributed expert knowledge and a resource for criticism but also the site of distributed decision making. Throughout, she illustrates her ideas with case studies from late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century physical and life sciences. Replacing the traditional focus on methods and heuristics to be applied by individual scientists, Solomon emphasizes science funding, administration, and policy. One of her goals is to have a positive influence on scientific decision making through practical social recommendations. (shrink)

Scientific progress has many facets and can be conceptualized in different ways, for example in terms of problem-solving, of truthlikeness or of growth of knowledge. The main claim of the paper is that the most important prerequisite of scientific progress is the institutionalization of competition and criticism. An institutional framework appropriately channeling competition and criticism is the crucial factor determining the direction and rate of scientific progress, independently on how one might wish to conceptualize (...) class='Hi'>scientific progress itself. The main intention is to narrow the divide between traditional philosophy of science and the sociological, economic and political outlook at science that emphasizes the private interests motivating scientists and the subsequent contingent nature of the enterprise. The aim is to show that although science is a social enterprise taking place in historical time and thus is of a contingent nature, it can and in fact does lead to genuine scientific progress - contrary to the claims of certain sociologists of science and other relativists who standardly stress its social nature, but deny its progressive character. I will first deal with the factual issue by way of introducing the main concepts and mechanisms of modern institutional theory and by applying them to the analysis of the cultural phenomenon that we call modern science. I will then turn to the normative issue: what is the appropriate content of the institutional framework, for scientific progress to emerge and be sustained at which level should it be set and by whom? Addressing this problematic is equivalent to conducting a constitutional debate leading to a Constitution of Science. (shrink)

Frank Welz's "Kritik der Lebenswelt" undertakes a sociology of knowledge criticism of the work of Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz that construes them as developing absolutist, egological systems opposed to the "processual" worldview prominent since the modern rise of natural science. Welz, though, misunderstands the work of Schutz and Husserl and neglects how their focus on consciousness and eidetic features pertains to the kind of reflection that one must undertake if one would avoid succumbing to absolutism, that uncovers the (...) presuppositions of the processual worldview itself, and that secures a domain distinctive of philosophy over against sociology. Finally, Welz's charge that Schutz favors a Neo-Kantian social scientific methodology contradictory to his phenomenology neglects the levels of Schutz's discourse and ignores how the Weberian ideal-typical approach can be subsumed within phenomenology. (shrink)

Methodological criticism may be defined as the critique of scientific practice in the light of methodological principles, and critical methodology as the study of proper methods of criticism; the problem is that of the interaction between the scientific methods which give methodological criticism its methodological character and the critical methods which give it its character of criticism. These ideas and this problem are illustrated by an examination of Karl Popper's critique of Marxian social (...) science. It is argued that though Popper's favorable articulations of Marx are valuable, his unfavorable criticism is invalid, the grounds of my argument being certain ideas in critical methodology relating to the distinctions between theory and practice, between inaccurate and invalid criticism, and between the justification of favorable criticism and the justification of unfavorable criticism. (shrink)

This paper is a supplement to, and provides a proof of principle of, Kuhn vs. Popper on Criticism and Dogmatism in Science: A Resolution at the Group Level. It illustrates how calculations may be performed in order to determine how the balance between different functions in science—such as imaginative, critical, and dogmatic—should be struck, with respect to confirmation (or corroboration) functions and rules of scientific method.

What is the relationship between natural science, social science, and religion? The dominant paradigm in contemporary social science is scientism, the attempt to apply the methods of natural science to the study of society. However, scientism is problematic: it rests on a conception of natural science that cannot be sustained. Natural scientific understanding emerges from an instrumental and objectifying relation to the world; it is oriented toward control and manipulation of the physical world. Social‐scientific understanding, (...) by contrast, must begin with a practical and meaningful relation to the world: it is oriented toward the mediation of values and objective possibilities in the social world. Social science is therefore a form of practical reason based on objective claims. But while social‐scientific understanding starts with interpretation, its possibilities by no means end there. In particular, by developing abstract and objectified models of society as a system, social science opens existing social organization to critical reflection. Religion, by contrast, is a form of speculative reason about ultimate values, based on subjective claims of religious experience. Social science nevertheless shares with religion an orientation toward values and concern with the “good life.”. (shrink)

Large research collaborations constitute an increasingly prevalent form of social organization of research activity in many scientific fields. In the last decades, the concept of distributed cognition has provided a suitable basis for thinking about collective knowledge in the philosophy of science. Karin Knorr-Cetina’s and Ronald Giere’s analyses of high energy physics experiments are the most prominent examples. Although they both conceive the processes of knowledge production in these experiments in terms of distributed cognition, their accounts regarding the (...) epistemic subject of knowledge thus produced are quite different. While Knorr-Cetina argues for an irreducibly collective subject, Giere argues for eliminating the epistemic subject and opting for using the passive voice in describing collectively produced knowledge. Neither of these views are easy to assimilate within an epistemological account, since epistemology traditionally operates within an individualist framework. They both entail that we should deny knowledge to individuals when the processes of knowledge production are distributed. I will argue that epistemology should be extended in a way that can accommodate collectively produced knowledge, but that we would have a serious problem if we deny scientific knowledge to individuals. If the members of a large collaboration cannot be said to know, we have to accept the absurd conclusion that either no one or only a supra-individual entity learns from the most successful research collaborations we have. I will argue instead for conceiving research collaborations in terms of a cognitive system that produces knowledge, which can eventually be possessed by constituent individuals when certain conditions are met. Firstly, the distributed research process should be reliable in producing scientific evidence and secondly, there should be a reliable distributed process of criticism for scrutinizing the reliability of the scientific evidence that is collectively produced. I will analyze both conditions in terms of distributed first-order and second-order justification, where I put forward a reliabilist account of justification that is compatible with epistemic dependence. I will conclude that the notion of justified epistemic dependence enables us to attribute knowledge to individuals when knowledge production is irreducibly social. (shrink)

A hallmark of recent critical social science has been the commitment to methodological and theoretical pluralism. Habermas and others have argued that diverse theoretical and empirical approaches are needed to support informed social criticism. However, an unresolved tension remains in the epistemology of critical social science: the tension between the epistemic advantages of a single comprehensive theoretical framework and those of methodological and theoretical pluralism. By shifting the grounds of the debate in a way suggested by (...) Dewey's pragmatism, the author argues that a thoroughgoing pluralism strengthens, rather than weakens, both the social scientific and political aims of critical social science. Not only does pragmatism offer a plausible interpretation of the epistemic pluralism of the social sciences, but it also provides a way of thinking about their fundamentally practical and political character. With a better normative vocabulary with which to discuss the epistemological issues of such a pluralistic mode of inquiry, the democratic role of critical inquiry and its specifically practical form of verification can be clarified. (shrink)

Frank Welz’s Kritik der Lebenswelt undertakes a sociology of knowledge criticism of the work of Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz that construes them as developing absolutist, egological systems opposed to the “processual” worldview prominent since the modern rise of natural science. Welz, though, misunderstands the work of Schutz and Husserl and neglects how their focus on consciousness and eidetic features pertains to the kind of reflection that one must undertake if one would avoid succumbing to absolutism, that uncovers the (...) presuppositions of the processual worldview itself, and that secures a domain distinctive of philosophy over against sociology. Finally, Welz’s charge that Schutz favors a Neo-Kantian social scientific methodology contradictory to his phenomenology neglects the levels of Schutz’s discourse and ignores how the Weberian ideal-typical approach can be subsumed within phenomenology. (shrink)

Resumen: Este trabajo reconstruye la crítica general del conflacionismo hecha por Margaret Archer. En su programa de morfogénesis social la autora británica realizó un agudo diagnóstico acerca de los déficits fundamentales de las diversas construcciones del objeto sociológico y las cuestionó teórica y epistemológicamente a través de la figura crítica de conflacionismo, en la que distinguió tres modalidades. Aquí las reconstruiremos por separado y analizaremos en esa crítica general la formulación in nuce de las bases teóricas o fundamento operativo (...) del programa de realismo crítico morfogenético, que impulsará la autora con el ariete alternativo de establecer una sociología no-conflacionista, informada ontológica y epistemológicamente por el realismo crítico y metodológicamente por el dualismo analítico. Para llevar a cabo esta tarea asumimos la perspectiva sistemática de programas multinivelados y la categoría de estrategia de metateorización de tipo preludio de Ritzer.: This text reconstructs the general criticism to conflation formulated by Margaret Archer. In its social morphogenesis programme, Archer elaborates an acute diagnosis about the main deficits of different constructions of sociological object and she questioned them ontological and epistemologically through the figure of conflation, in which she distinguished three modes. Here we reconstruct each of them separately and we analyse the formulation in nuce the theoretical basis of critical and morphogenetic realism, a scientific research programme that she establishes as a non-conflation sociological way, supported by critical realism and analytical dualism. In doing so, we assume the systematic perspective of multileveled research programmes and the category of metatheorizing as prelude by Ritzer. (shrink)

The way in which knowledge progresses, and especially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism: that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests. They may survive these tests; but they can never be positively justified: they can neither be established as certainly true nor even as 'probable'. Criticism of our conjectures is of decisive importance: by bringing out our mistakes (...) it makes us understand the difficulties of the problems which we try to solve. This is how we become better acquainted with our problem, and able to propose more mature solutions: the very refutation of a theory - that is, of a tentative solution to our problem - is always a step forward that takes us nearer the truth. And this is how we can learn from our mistakes. As we learn from our mistakes our knowledge grows, even though we may never know - that is, know for certain. Since our knowledge can grow, there can be no reason here for despair of reason. And since we can never know for certain, the can be no authority here for any claim to authority, for conceit over our knowledge, or for smugness. The essays and lectures of which this book is composed apply this thesis to many topics, ranging from problems of the philosophy and history of the physical and social sciences to historical and political problems. (shrink)

The value-freedom of scientific knowledge is commonly hold to be a necessary condition for objectivity. Helen Longino’s contextual empiricism aims to overcome this connection. She questions the suitability of the normative ideal of value-freedom and develops an alternative conception of objectivity, which integrates social and epistemic aspects of scientific enquiry. The function of this notion of ‘social objectivity’ is to make value-laden assumptions assessable through a process of criticism, even if there cannot be any guarantee (...) of their elimination. This assessability requires common standards of evaluation, which are threatened by Longino’s rejection of the distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive values guiding theory choice. I will argue that in order to resolve this inherent tension, social objectivity has to be understood as based on a procedural epistemology and, differing from Longino’s own approach, must include the normative requirement to strive for consensus instead of allowing for epistemological pluralism. (shrink)

In the human sciences of eighteenth century Europe, systematic comparison played a crucial part, generally as a method but also occasionally as a target of criticism. Particularly in the domains of political and social thought, comparison was conceptualized and practiced in sharply contested forms: philosophical, social-scientific, and rhetorical. While some of the meanings now carried by the concept of comparison in the human sciences coincide with what was understood by it in the eighteenth century, others do (...) not. This paper discusses such competing concepts and practices of comparison in Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Hume, and Herder, who contested the very notion of the commensurability of human regimes and societies. Comparison turned out to be a profoundly ambiguous and controversial concept, holding in suspension a number of disparate intentions and methods. Writers could use comparative studies to accentuate differences, establish similarities, or reveal ranges of variation within the same category. Comparisons and contrasts became crucial weapons in all major eighteenth century disagreements dividing Europeans among themselves, as well as in theories of where they stood in relation to the rest of the world. (shrink)

Presumably authoritative sources, such as social scientists who study conspiracy theorists, are generally expected to be logically rigorous, intellectually honest, and unbiased. This chapter suggests that this expectation may not always be justified. Specifically, it exposes a number of significant problems in an attempt by a group of social scientists to defend the (ostensibly) scientific study of conspiracy theorists. First, they misrepresent their own previously stated intentions. Second, they misrepresent a critique of those intentions. Third, they fail (...) completely in their attempt to show that, regarding the inappropriate pathologizing of conspiracy theorists, their critics are guilty as they are. Fourth, they cite seriously flawed studies as though they offered robust findings. And fifth, their criticism of a central distinction, between “generalist” and “particularist” approaches, is based on a misunderstanding. This raises troubling questions: How can we to have confidence in a program of study undertaken, in part, by scientists who get so much wrong? And, to what degree is this an isolated problem? (shrink)

Environmental ethics has an identity and public image problem. Unlike the other applied ethics subfields like biomedical or business ethics, environmental ethics is surprisingly devalued and even rejected as a possible contributor to confronting effectively the global environmental crisis by anti-environmental philosophers and public policy analysts. Thus, environmental ethics has many critics, both within and outside of philosophy, who strongly challenge the contemporary, practical social relevance of this academic field.In contrast to this critical viewpoint, this essay argues for the (...) profound significance of environmental ethics to the environmental crisis, and, in that way, seeks to present a successful rebuttal to the misguided critiques of this area of philosophy. The argument aims to demonstrate how environmental ethics can facilitate social criticism of the prevailing modern social values and the social institutions associated with the market or consumer capitalist society built upon them. My approach will center its insights and prescriptions upon the philosophical grounding of the collective movement for ecologically-and ethically-based social criticism and social change.I conclude the essay by emphasizing: 1) the normative nature of environmental problems (as opposed to an exclusive scientific or technological conception of such problems), and 2) environmental ethics and philosophy as powerful catalysts for necessary social change in order to save the world through social criticism of the status quo ecologically unsustainable and unethical (exemplified by unjust) modern social values such as, limitless economic growth. These points support the upshot that much more is at stake in the controversy over the nature and value of environmental ethics than the typical academic debate: nothing less then the fate of our planet. (shrink)

Psychoanalysis: Its Image and Its Public is a perfect illustration of Tarde's claim that ‘beautiful’ should be reserved for ideas that lead to a discovery of more ideas and to an invention that we can judge as fruitful for the future. The article examines the influence of the book in geographical, historical and scientific contexts and traces the development and diffusion of the theory of social representations throughout four periods. The article highlights the difference between the first edition (...) in 1961, and the second one in 1976, and it examines the development of Moscovici's ideas over time. The first edition of Psychoanalysis, based on the criticism of sociology of knowledge, underlines common sense as a new object of study, attempting to capture complex social phenomena. It shows common sense as a legitimate object of study that interweaves social, cultural and individual dimensions in the constitution of social reality. The 1976 edition emphasises that language and communication and its role in the theory of social knowledge. The book has had manifold impact on new areas of study. An overview of international research in social representations shows how this work has inspired scholars all over the world, has lead to creating Schools of research and to innovative proposals not only in terms of domains that have been studied but also in terms of theoretical models and methodological concerns. (shrink)

This paper describes a holistic approach and an interdisciplinary curriculum in enhancing critical thinking and education for democracy at the junior-high schools and highschools levels. The curriculum includes academic subjects such as the humanities, sciences, social sciences and art. The aim of this curriculum is not to teach an additional lesson in history, political sciences, art, etc., but to fostercritical thinking and democratic behavior. The theoretical framework has two bases. The first derives from eighteenth century rationalism and scientific (...) thinking, while the second is from the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century. Both produced social economies and a political structure of mass democracy. The focal point here is that critical thinking is a prerequisite for the existence of democratic values and principles in a post-modern society. The program integrates McPeck’s strategies on the conception of critical thinking and the dialectic technique of Richard Paul. The curriculum is designed forone or two semesters (14 to 28 meetings). It is built in a modular fashion, in which each subject stands on its own and is presented by various lecturers from different domains. The curriculum was implemented in junior high and high schools in Haifa and vicinity."It is this consensus around liberal democracy as the final form of government that I have called “the end of history.”(Fukuyama, F (1990) in Fortune, January 15, 1990, p. 75). (shrink)

Environmental ethics has an identity and public image problem. Unlike the other applied ethics subfields like biomedical or business ethics, environmental ethics is surprisingly devalued and even rejected as a possible contributor to confronting effectively the global environmental crisis by anti-environmental philosophers and public policy analysts. Thus, environmental ethics has many critics, both within and outside of philosophy, who strongly challenge the contemporary, practical social relevance of this academic field.In contrast to this critical viewpoint, this essay argues for the (...) profound significance of environmental ethics to the environmental crisis, and, in that way, seeks to present a successful rebuttal to the misguided critiques of this area of philosophy. The argument aims to demonstrate how environmental ethics can facilitate social criticism of the prevailing modern social values and the social institutions associated with the market or consumer capitalist society built upon them. My approach will center its insights and prescriptions upon the philosophical grounding of the collective movement for ecologically-and ethically-based social criticism and social change.I conclude the essay by emphasizing: 1) the normative nature of environmental problems (as opposed to an exclusive scientific or technological conception of such problems), and 2) environmental ethics and philosophy as powerful catalysts for necessary social change in order to save the world through social criticism of the status quo ecologically unsustainable and unethical (exemplified by unjust) modern social values such as, limitless economic growth. These points support the upshot that much more is at stake in the controversy over the nature and value of environmental ethics than the typical academic debate: nothing less then the fate of our planet. (shrink)

The sociology of scientific knowledge is one of the profession’s most marginal specialties, yet its objects of inquiry, its modes of inquiry, and certain of its findings have very substantial bearing upon the nature and scope of the sociological enterprise in general. While traditional sociology of knowledge asked how, and to what extent, "social factors" might influence the products of the mind, SSK sought to show that knowledge was constitutively social, and in so doing, it raised fundamental (...) questions about taken-for-granted divisions between "social versus cognitive, or natural, factors." This piece traces the historical development of the sociology of scientific knowledge and its relations with sociology and cultural inquiry as a whole. It identifies dominant "localist" sensibilities in SSK and the consequent problem it now confronts of how scientific knowledge travels. Finally, it describes several strands of criticism of SSK that have emerged from among its own practitioners, noting the ways in which some criticisms can be seen as a revival of old aspirations toward privileged meta-languages. (shrink)

The hermeneutic movement in philosophy and criticism has done us a service by directing our attention to the role of critical interpretation in understanding the humanities. But it has done us a disservice also because it does not recognize any comparable role for interpretation in the natural sciences and in this way sharply separates the two fields of scholarship and experience.1 Consequently, I shall argue, the central truths and virtues of hermeneutics have become encumbered with a whole string of (...) false interferences and misleading dichotomies. These distortions have had two effects. On the one hand, they have rationality which are crucial goals of the natural sciences; and, on the other hand, they have encouraged an exaggerated idea of the extent to which difference in personal and/or cultural standpoint rule out any such goal for the humanities. Once we recognize that the natural sciences too are in the business of "construing" reality, we shall be better able to preserve the central insights of the hermeneutic method, without succumbing to the misleading implications of its rhetorical misuse.Physics, in particular, has always required its participants to adopt an interpretive standpoint, and this standpoint has changed more than once during the historical development of that science. Yet this variable standpoint has done nothing to undercut the commitment of physicists to rationality and objectivity: on the contrary, they have made it one of their chief aims to discover just what aspects of reality, or nature, lend themselves to interpretation and understanding as considered from any particular standpoint. If we can drive this wedge between scientific objectivity and hermeneutic relativity in the case of physics, we are free to return to the humanities and apply the same distinction there too. It has too often, and too readily, been assumed that whatever needs to be interpreted in order to be understood will, to that extent, become a matter of taste or subjectivity; and, as a result, any claims to rationality and objectivity in the critical realms–whether moral or aesthetic, political and intellectual–have been too hastily surrendered.The current sharp distinction between scientific explanations and hermeneutic interpretation was launched by Wilhelm Dilthey nearly a century ago; and, in justice to Dilthey, we need to bear in mind that the interpretive element in natural science was far less evident then than it is today. Scientists nowadays view the world from a new and less rigid standpoint. This period which Frederick Ferre calls "postmodern science," differs from the older one of "modern science" in just those respects that enable us to reconcile the rational claims that have always been central to the natural sciences with a new hermeneutic richness and variability.1. Some will respond that Edmund Husserl, for one, spoke of the natural sciences as being, in their own way, "interpretive"; but the role allotted to natural science by the phenomonologists and their successors—I have in mind Hans Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermass much as Martin Heidegger and Husserl—I an impoverished and unhistorical one. The hermeneutic philosophers have not, in this respect, fully recognized either the plurality or the historical variability of the interpretive modes adopted in one or another of the natural sciences for different intellectual purposes and at different stages in their historical development.Stephen Toulmin is a professor in the Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. He is author of, among other works, Foresight and Understanding, Human Understanding, and Knowing and Acting and is currently at work on volume 2 of Human Understanding. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "The Inwardness of Mental Life," appeared in the Autumn 1979 issue. (shrink)

The last two years have seen the publication of two books in the genre of how-to fiction writing manuals that use science both as a selling point and as a genuine analytical par­adigm. The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr and The Science of Screenwriting by Paul Joseph Gulino and Connie Shears use insights from the cognitive sciences and evolution­ary psychology, while retaining their practical, how-to character. This review article goes through some of the main clusters of advice shared by (...) the two books, dealing with infor­mation processing, attention allocation, the implications of human sociality for fiction, and story structure, while fitting their takes on these issues within the fields of biocultural criticism and cultural evolution. Despite containing occasional flaws and confusions about theory common in pioneering works, these books could be harbingers of change for the genre and an important step in the bottom-up infusion of biocultural theory into literary studies. (shrink)

Le but de cette encyclopédie en deux volumes, rédigée à l’instigation du président Hoover, était d’exposer tous les aspects de la vie sociale américaine, dans le dessein bien arrêté de saisir les rapports existant entre les différentes sphères sociales et de déterminer les transformations qui se produisent au sein de la société. Ces transformations devaient non seulement être constatées, mais on voulait encore essayer de trouver leur tendance générale, leur „trend“, c’est-à-dire la loi qui les détermine. Dans une critique des (...) résultats et des méthodes de cette „expression collective de la recherche sociale aux États-Unis“, M. G. s’efforce de montrer qu’en dépit de l’ampleur considérable de l’ouvrage, qui est également, en quelque sorte, une encyclopédie de la société américaine, le but scientifique visé n’a pas été atteint, et qu’il ne pouvait pas l’être. En effet, la théorie d’Ogburn, qui est à la base de l’ouvrage, et d’après laquelle les crises sont dues à des disproportions dans la vitesse de développement des différentes régions sociales, est insuffisante. Elle présuppose un ordre social relativement stable, dans lequel les dérangements peuvent être considérés comme de simples oscillations autour d’un noyau sain en lui-même. Comme le phénomène fondamental, la crise économique, n’est pas traité, on renonce à reconnaître méthodiquement que tous les processus sociaux sont incontestablement influencés par les faits économiques. Une autre objection importante, illustrée par M. G. au moyen d’une série d’exemples, concerne la notion du „trend“, empruntée à l’étude de la conjoncture. Le „trend“ ne peut pas avoir une loi sociale adéquate, parce qu’il tend à transformer tous les rapports sociaux qualitatifs en rapports mathématico-statistiques de valeurs. Le système actuel de la société, avec ses multiples ramifications, ne pourra toutefois jamais être saisi à i’aide de méthodes uniquement quantitatives ; il exige au contraire, dans son ensemble, une interprétation dynamique de la société. Comme le „Report“ y a renoncé, son intention théorique devait nécessairement échouer. Plus encore : les propositions pratiques qu’il fait pour l’élimination des défauts de la société américaine n’arrivent pas à la racine du mal.The joint report written at the request of president Hoover undertakes to present every aspect of social life in America. It has more over the special purpose of comprehensing the inter-relationships between these separate social compartments, and determining what social changes are taking place. Not only are these changes to be ascertained but the attempt made to grasp their trend, or in other words, to grasp the law determining these changes. G. seeks to show in a criticism of the results and methods of this „collective expression of sociological research in the United States“, that notwithstanding the extraordinary experience these 40 leading social scientists could draw upon, and the admirable comprehensiveness of this work-indeed an encyclopedia of American social life-, the scientific aim was not achieved, and could not be achieved. This is due to the insufficiency of Ogburn’s theory which underlies the work, that phenomena of crisis are to be traced to the disproportionate rates of change of the various provinces of social life. It presupposes a relatively stable social order in which upheavals are felt as mere oscillations around an intrinsically firm nucleus. Because the fundamental phenomenon of the economic crisis is not considered, the Report dispenses with the approach to a methodological standpoint, according to which all social processes are decisively determined by economic processes. Another important objection, which G. illustrates by a series of examples relates to concept of the trend borrowed from the business cycle. This can in no way furnish a suitable social law, because it tends to resolve all qualitative social relationships into mathematical- statistical formulae. Present day society, with its manifold divisions, can never be understood by quantitative methods only, but presumes a dialectical point of view for social life as a whole, which is ever in a state of flux. Since such a theoretical aim vitiated, but even its practical proposals, which it puts forward to rectify the shortcomings of American social life, fail to touch the root of the evil. (shrink)

During the last several decades, the concept of social innovation has been a subject of scientific and practical discourse. As an important paradigm for innovation policies, social innovation is also an object of criticism and debate. Despite a significant proliferation of literature, the rate at which social innovation is a catalyst for coping with challenges of modern societies remains unclear. The goal of the paper is to gain a better understanding of social innovation by (...) integrating past and present views on the concept. Applying a historical overview covering the period from the 19th to the 21st century, we outline the milestones in the evolution of social innovation and distinguish seven trajectories that illustrate the commonalities in its interpretation. We consolidate the findings into a three-dimensional model that defines social innovation as an intervention that is targeted toward structural changes within a social dimension that, in terms of different functional settings (e.g., technological, business, organizational), are oriented on systemic improvements of societies. Reflecting on future avenues, we consider social innovation as an integrative part of a holistic intervention that acts across single societal dimensions and provides systemic impact for the sustainable development of societies. (shrink)

Silicon Valley is both object of intense fascination and stark criticism. Academic observers have described it as a unique amalgamation of hippie culture, libertarian thinking, wild experimentation, but also scientific rigor, high-tech precision, and turbo-capitalism – a seemingly improbable, even paradoxical combination. Nevertheless, Silicon Valley continues to be an economic powerhouse and a global innovation hub. The current study explores its socio-cultural and ideological foundations through the lens of an insider perspective to find explanations for its stability and (...) sustained success in light of conflicting components. Based on 15 interviews with Silicon Valley experts from start-ups, tech giants, and academic institutions, the study identifies several paradoxes on the level of ideology and environment, structure(s), and actors. These can be grouped into a binary, oppositional view, indeed describing the Silicon Valley paradox. However, alternative explanations are given, including the conceptualization as a non-dualist phenomenon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Modern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700–1900) by Scott W. Hahn and Jeffrey L. MorrowSteven C. SmithModern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700–1900) by Scott W. Hahn and Jeffrey L. Morrow (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2020), 312 pp.Almost anyone who has suffered through a course in biblical studies at a secular (or, increasingly so, Christian) university, read a book, or heard a (...) lecture from one of its scholarly progenies is acquainted with the litany of hermeneutical absolutes. Among the factum historicum are the following certainties: the Enlightenment rescued the Bible from the Dark Ages; the Old Testament was shaped out of the mythical clay of Hellenism; Israel's priesthood was a lamentable development that hijacked an earlier, socially oriented love-of-neighbor religion, replacing it with its bloodthirsty, sacrificial cult; the Documentary Hypothesis is not merely a theory, but the scientific truth of how the Pentateuch emerged; one must separate the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith; Peter and Paul clashed over their dueling Christianities; and above all, historical criticism is the only reliable lens by which the Bible is to be studied.In Modern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700–1900), Hahn and Morrow expose such positivisms as the outflow of Europe's secularized universities over these centuries. Not only did politically motivated institutions seek to diminish the theological truths of Scripture (and sadly, were often successful at it), but they eventually repurposed the Bible as "a work of historical fiction," such that the Sacred Page was "to be studied like other ancient myths and fairy tales; it is one fairy tale among many" (24). The authors present a thoroughly researched and meticulously detailed study of the period, and throughout the book amply demonstrate that the aforementioned tropes (and numerous others), no matter how often or how confidently recited, are merely one slant on "the story of biblical criticism" in the modern age.Taking their lead from the lead of Pope Benedict XVI, Hahn and Morrow provide a much-needed critique of historical biblical exegesis and its "appearance of quasi-scientific certainty."1 These salient words of the biblical-theologian Pope, articulated in a variety of contexts (e.g., Verbum Domini), provide the jumping-off point for this robust three-hundred-page voyage. And it is a journey through a divided and secularized Europe, with notable stops in England, France, and above all, Germany. This "divided" Europe, the authors explain, was not a result of the Protestant [End Page 985] Reformation, nor of the so-called "war of religions" that sprang from it—no. The divisions run much deeper still. Drawing upon Andrew Jones's important Before Church and State, Hahn and Morrow rightly lament the societal competition that developed within late medieval Christendom between church and state.2Building upon Jones's work, the authors rightly stress that there indeed existed "a unified medieval worldview wherein what we might think of as temporal authorities and spiritual authorities were united in a single purpose—the extension of the kingdom of God—and this was the background that unified Christendom" (3). As Jones point out, this earlier period of European history "was a world not of the religious and the secular, but of the New Testament and the Old, of virtue and vice, grace and law.... It was an integral vision which included all of societal reality."3 Sadly, the reality of "sacramental kingdoms," in which there lived a reciprocal respect and vision of unity between throne and alter, was torn asunder long before the 1700s, the time at which the present volume commences. Over time, this formerly unified European world gave way to the very complicated, deeply skeptical, and highly politicized world of nation-states. And biblical criticism (along with many other worthy and creative endeavors), became deeply mired in "statecraft."Here, it is worth mentioning that the book should be approached as the rightful heir to an earlier volume (which involved one of its authors, Hahn), Politicizing the Bible.4 While Modern Biblical Criticism may be intelligently read upon its own merits, the reader would do well to pick up the earlier... (shrink)

Starting from R. K. Merton's now classic criticism of 'holistic' functionalism, i.e. of a functionalism which postulates social unity, universality and functional in-dispensability, the author stresses certain implications of this criticism more than they have been stressed hitherto. Classical and holistic functionalism) from H. Spencer, B. Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, etc to T. Parsons, postulates certain total unities (a global culture, an integrated system, etc.) in which each item (existence, actions, structures, etc.) is considered and defined on (...) the grounds of its consequences for the maintenance of the system as a whole; therefore holistic functionalism as a method is, in effect, the study of the consequences of the system on the items that compose it, since each of these items is defined within the sphere of the system and of its integrative functions. Merton's 'neo-functionalism', on the other hand, is remarkable not only in that it takes into account the 'dysfunctional' and 'nonfunctional' consequences of certain items on the system, but more especially because, within the context of functional analysis, it stresses the possible existence of structural substitutes and alternatives of functions, and therefore of latent structures which are foreign to objective functional consequences, as well as being able to deal with unanticipated and unexpected items and their consequences on the system. 'Neo-functionalism', which is susceptible of further development, is not limited to the study of the consequences of the system on its items: it can also reverse this scheme and study the consequences of certain items on the system. Merton's criticism of holistic functionalism therefore implies a broadening of the scientific resources of this method and a renewal of its interpretative scheme, thanks to which functional analysis ceases to appear as 'the* method of explaining sociology as a science, and becomes an interpretative method which complements the analysis of social structures and relations. Seen in this light the concept of structure becomes emancipated and independent of the concept of system and function; whereas, within the framework of universal functionalism, it was ancillary to the concept of function. Finally, latent structures and unconscious structures, conditions of possibility and subjective dispositions are favourable to social structures and social relations, not excluding those that are neither visible nor observable. This analysis, the author notes, is extremely meaningful and has great possibilities of development, especially in view of the structuralism recently to be noted in the human and social sciences: anthropology, history, linguistics, etc. (shrink)

By linking the conceptual and social dynamics of change in science, Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions proved tremendously fruitful for research in science studies. But Kuhn’s idea of incommensurability provoked strong criticism from philosophers of science. In this essay I show how Raimo Tuomela’s Philosophy of Sociality illuminates and strengthens Kuhn’s model of scientific change. After recalling the central features and problems of Kuhn’s model, I introduce Tuomela’s approach. I then show (a) how Tuomela’s conception of (...) group ethos aligns with Kuhn’s notion of paradigms as group commitments, and (b) how Tuomela’s distinction between I-mode and we-mode forms of collective intentionality can capture the shifting paradigmatic commitments in Kuhn’s model of change as a cycle of normal and revolutionary science. But Tuomela’s analysis does not rely on meaning holism, and thus does not involve the problematic notion of incommensurability that burdened Kuhn’s analysis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Social Epistemologists at the Crossroads:Authorizing Agents of ChangeJames H. CollierIn this issue of Philosophy and Rhetoric, Thomas Basbøll and Christine Isager and Sine Just provide a vital, constructive forum for discussing the first and second editions of Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge (PREK) and Steve Fuller's broader project of social epistemology. More specifically, both Basbøll's review and Isager and Just's suggest innovative proposals for applying (...) and assessing PREK's ideas and influence. In response, I analyze and counter Basbøll's and Isager and Just's conceptions of how agency is configured, and how criticism is authorized, at the level of textuality. I end by calling for deliberations to sort out what we, as social epistemologists and critical intellectuals, know and what we want to do about it.A Job for Social EpistemologistsIf the reader of PREK wants to "be" a social epistemologist, or "do" social epistemology, what would the job and its duties entail? Thomas Basbøll offers a job description for the social epistemologist as a "postmodern grammarian"—one "who corrects academic texts to suit them for strange times." This description strikes the dissonant chord of being at once pragmatic and abstract. On the one hand, correcting academic texts is a specific task reminiscent of the duties of writing instructors or editors. On the other hand, the specificity of the labor stands in juxtaposition to the surreal working conditions—the "strange times." And in the end, "postmodern grammarian" is hardly a position for which one could apply. Yet the specificity and dissonance in Basbøll's description reveals the difficulty and ambiguity of what Fuller asks the reader to do in PREK. Basbøll gets at this problem by [End Page 269] shifting the subject position of the social epistemologist to the postmodern grammarian. This move is necessary to bring social epistemology down from "the highest level" and make it task oriented. Interestingly, the job that Basbøll describes offers a return to textuality and, I would argue, critical intellectualism. Yet these positions appear somewhat removed from the role of the rhetorician as portrayed in PREK.In proposing a specific job for the social epistemologist, Basbøll develops a microlevel application of Fuller's macrolevel vision. Basbøll's task is not easy: "One of the greatest difficulties encountered in reading PREK is its willingness to make a great many philosophical commitments for openly rhetorical purposes. Not the least of these is the concept of knowledge that a research program and policy platform that calls itself 'social epistemology' is obviously dutybound to provide." The willingness of social epistemologists to occupy many philosophical positions also obscures what labor and service commitments they might make. Moreover, since PREK's initial publication (1993) Fuller has continued to multiply social epistemologists' roles regarding scientific conduct (Science, 1997; The Governance of Science, 2000a; Knowledge Management Foundations, 2002). Further, these commitments shift as Fuller has continued to reinterpret the historical record and to recast philosophical debates (Thomas Kuhn, 2000b; Kuhn vs. Popper, 2003). The ability to both destabilize and maintain such a fluid intellectual environment is something only Fuller, or the postmodern grammarian, could—or would want to—accomplish. More on that idea in a moment.Despite the moving target, defining the subject position of the social epistemologist has been a parallel conversation accompanying much of Fuller's work. I proposed the less "stylish" idea of the social epistemologist as technical communicator in PREK's first edition and in Scientific and Technical Communication (1997). Contemplating the social epistemologist's position as rhetorician, or vice versa, has been taken on by Keith (1995; 1996), Zagacki (1995), and Campbell and Benson (1996) (as summarized by Isager and Just). In contrast to these previous configurations, Basbøll situates the labor of the social epistemologist on the level of reading and writing. As he puts it:And it is precisely because the social epistemologist assists the writer of academic texts in the difficult task of connecting utterances to particular conditions (under which they are read) that social epistemology becomes a critical force. It is not by reconfiguring the knowledge-producing practices themselves [End Page 270] that this... (shrink)

A sociological study of science is not very recent and has never been seen as particularly problematic since science, and especially modern science, constitutes an impressive and extremely ramified "social system" of activities, institutions, relations and interferences with other social systems. Less favourable, however, has been the consideration of a more recent trend in the philosophy of science known as the "sociological" philosophy of science, whose most debatable point consists in directly challenging the traditional epistemology of science and, (...) in particular, in stripping scientific knowledge of its most appreciated characteristics of objectivity and rigour . A vicious circle seems to lie at the root of this sociological epistemology because, on the one hand, criticism of the traditional concept of scientific knowledge is developed by relying upon sociology, but this, on the other hand is reasonable only if sociology is credited with the status of a reliable instrument, that is, because it has been recognized as a science through an epistemological debate . In this paper it is shown that not all circles are vicious: in particular, feedback loops, positive and negative, are normally considered in cybernetic models of various processes. Negative feedback loops are fundamental in self-regulating processes and have already occurred from time to time in readjusting the concept of science itself. Therefore, a sociological epistemology of science can contribute to a more careful analysis of the real meaning and purport of the cognitive aspect of science, provided that it is not pushed to the self-defeating extreme of challenging the legitimacy of considering objectivity and rigour as the characteristic features of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

There has been a great deal of philosophical analysis supporting the position that race is semantically empty, ontologically bankrupt and scientifically meaningless. The conclusion often reached is that race is a social construction. While this position is certainly accepted by the majority of philosophers working within the area of critical race theory, the existentially lived and socially embodied impact of `race' is often left either unexplored or under-theorized. In this article, I provide a philosophical analysis of how `race' operates (...) at the level of the embodied within the context of the quotidian, and how the recognition of instances of racism is grounded within an epistemological community. I demonstrate that race as lived is a powerful experience that emerges within an interstitial space of enduring myths and habituated bodily postures. My elevator example demonstrates that, as a lived reality, race is insidious and negatively impacts the integrity of, in this example, the black body and the white body. The black body is shown to undergo a process of `confiscation' through the phenomenon of the white gaze, which is a form of learned embodied seeing, while the white body elides any responsibility for holding the black body captive. The white gaze is theorized as a cultural achievement, which is productive of a form of ignorance. Instances of anti-racism, then, are not restricted to mere cognitive shifts in one's perspective, but must involve performing the body's racialized interactions with the world differently. (shrink)