Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Issues and arguments
- Chapter 2 Challenges to scientific rationality
- Chapter 3 Causes, confirmation, and explanation
- Chapter 4 Functionalism defended
- Chapter 5 The failures of individualism
- Chapter 6 A science of interpretation?
- Chapter 7 Economics: a test case
- Chapter 8 Problems and prospects
- References
- Index
Chapter 6 - A science of interpretation?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Issues and arguments
- Chapter 2 Challenges to scientific rationality
- Chapter 3 Causes, confirmation, and explanation
- Chapter 4 Functionalism defended
- Chapter 5 The failures of individualism
- Chapter 6 A science of interpretation?
- Chapter 7 Economics: a test case
- Chapter 8 Problems and prospects
- References
- Index
Summary
The previous five chapters made a detailed case for a science of society. Nonetheless, important doubts remain unanswered – in particular, doubts arising from the fact that human behavior is meaningful. This chapter takes up these doubts; Chapter 7 examines the fact that the most developed social science, economics, seemingly has had very little empirical success.
Physical objects do not have a point of view on the world, do not attribute significance to the world around them, and more generally do not “mean.” The physical sciences banished such subjective qualities long ago. Yet these features seem part and parcel of social explanation. This apparently fundamental difference between the social and the natural sciences has led many to argue that no science of society – at least in anything like its current form – is possible. Interestingly enough, philosophers from two very different traditions advance this skeptical thesis. Drawing on Dilthey, Heidegger, and Husserl, contemporary philosophers in the hermeneutical tradition such as Charles Taylor argue that (1) human behavior must be understood as meaningful; (2) understanding meaning requires interpretation, a process not amenable to naturalistic methods; and thus (3) no naturalistic science of society is possible. Though details no doubt differ, philosophers from the positivist tradition espouse similar arguments. Both Quine and Rosenberg think there can be no science of meaning and thus no social science as we now know it.
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- Philosophical Foundations of the Social SciencesAnalyzing Controversies in Social Research, pp. 191 - 221Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995