The History and Philosophy of Social Science

H. Scott Gordon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134863068
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Business allgemein

Scott Gordon provides a magisterial review of the historical development of the social sciences from their beginnings in renaissance Italy to the present day.

Chapter 1

Sociality and social science

In the modern university the field of study is typically divided into various ‘departments’ such as Mathematics, Astronomy, Philosophy, Economics, Biology, English, History, and so on. In many universities one finds that some of these departments are grouped together as a ‘division’ or ‘faculty’ called ‘Social Sciences’ or ‘Social and Behavioural Sciences’. If our world were very neat, and static, we would have little difficulty in determining what is ‘social science’, or its various branches; we would only have to examine the curricula and research programmes of the social science departments. But our world is not neat. If an extraterrestrial being were preparing a report on our scholarly and scientific activities, he might start by looking at our university organization, but he would very quickly run into difficulties. He would find, for example, that the study of crime is carried on, not only in the School of Law, but also in departments of Criminology or Forensic Studies, Sociology, Economics, Philosophy, Political Science, and Psychology, some of which are classified as social sciences and some not. He would find that in some universities History is classified as a social science and in others it is in another division, usually called ‘Humanities’. If the visitor attempted to obtain some assistance from study of our languages, he would find that the word ‘economics’, in the classical Greek, meant ‘the management of a household’ but then he would note that the modern study of this is called ‘Home Economics’, which is not classified as a social science, while there is another subject, called ‘Economics’, which is, and there is also another division or school called ‘Business’ or ‘Business Management’, which resembles Home Economics in the original Greek meaning in its objectives, but is closer to Economics in the kinds of things studied and the methods employed. What this signifies is that dividing the field of scholarship and science into various departments or faculties or schools is largely a matter of convenience in organization rather than a reflection of intrinsic differences in subject matter. Astronomy is different from sociology, to be sure, but a great deal of our classifying is rather arbitrary and may be mainly due to the historical development of the various areas of study. There is not much point in arguing over what is ‘social science’ and what is not. If we take the broad view that the social sciences study the social behaviour of the mammalian species Homo sapiens, we immediately discover that this is hardly confined to the social science departments of a modern university. Most of the professors in the literature departments are students of human behaviour and, outside the university, what are the novelists, playwrights and poets doing if not this? We could emphasize the word ‘science’ and say that social science is the study of human behaviour by scientific methods. This is a useful distinction. The poet does not go at the problem the same way as the sociologist does. But the distinction can be overdone, especially if the main object in making it is to infer that sociology is meaningful because it is scientific and poetry is meaningless because it is not.

Our object is to study the ways in which people have tried to develop a scientific approach to the investigation of human social behaviour. But we cannot begin by definitively stating what this means. As we shall see, the history of social science shows a great variety of approaches, and we shall have to note that there are many difficult philosophical problems here that are as yet unresolved. By the end of this book the reader should have a deeper appreciation of what the ‘science’ part of the term ‘social science’ involves but, even then, it will not be possible to arrive at a definitive statement. In the final chapter I shall survey the main issues that have emerged in the literature on the philosophy of social science and make an effort to identify the philosophical principles that appear to be broadly embraced by the modern practitioners of the social science disciplines.

A. THE CONCEPT OF ‘SOCIETY’

Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (1978) defines ‘social science’ as ‘the study of people living together in groups, as families, tribes, communities, etc.’. The focus of this definition is upon ‘people’, that is, humans, but we should note at the outset that ‘living together in groups’ is not an exclusive characteristic of the species Homo sapiens. Most animals, and indeed plants, live in ‘groups’ in some sense. Sumac bushes are not distributed randomly over the countryside; they clump together in particular locations. A botanist would say, though, that this is because different environments are not equally favourable for the growth of sumac and it is found concentrated in certain locations because the environment there provides a favourable ‘niche’ for that species. Similarly, if you turn on the porch light on a summer evening, moths will gather around it. This is because some species of moths, as individuals, are ‘phototaxic’ in their behaviour and will locate themselves close to the limited number of light sources that exist when the sun is not shining. We might find it useful to say that a clump of sumac bushes, or a group of moths around a light, are ‘aggregations’ but they do not constitute ‘societies’.

The words used to make this distinction are somewhat arbitrary but the distinction itself is important, whatever words we use for it. The concept of a ‘society’ involves the notion that the members of it are interacting with one another. So far as I know, moths are not interacting with one another when they gather around the light; they aggregate because each individual is responding independently to a common external factor. The notion of interaction is, however, only a necessary feature of the concept of society; it is not sufficient, by itself, to indicate what we have in mind when we use the concept. For example, lions interact with gazelles and bees interact with flowering plants, but we do not consider such relationships as social. Biologists use the term ‘ecological system’ to refer to the interactions among different species. The concept of ‘society’ usually refers to interactions among the members of a single species. We could go a bit further and say that in a society the members of a species co-operate with one another to achieve objectives collectively that they could not achieve as individuals.

The traditional social sciences focus their attention upon the behaviour of the species Homo sapiens, examining how people interact with one another and how they organize themselves for co-operative activities. But such a statement, if we left it at that, would be seriously deficient because some of the interactions among people are characterized by conflict rather than cooperation, and some of the things that people do weaken or damage the system of social organization and work against the achievement of collective objectives. Moreover, the system of social organization may itself be deficient in certain respects that make it difficult, or even impossible, for people to co-operate effectively. So we have to amplify our statement about what the social sciences do in order to take note of the fact that they devote a great deal of attention to dysfunctional behaviour, such as crime and war, and malfunctional phenomena, such as unemployment and pollution.

Some social scientists (including the writer) would say that the main object of social science is the study of such dysfunctions and malfunctions, just as the medical scientist is mainly concerned with disease. But disease cannot be studied without understanding what constitutes good health. The counterpart of this in social science is that it is necessary to employ some notion of the criteria of a healthy system of social organization. This means that the social sciences are closely connected with that branch of philosophy called ‘ethics’—the study of what should be regarded as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in the moral sense of these terms. As we shall see, a great deal of the history of social science has been concerned with ethical issues. We cannot disregard such matters but the discussion of the philosophy of social science in this book will focus mainly on the branch of philosophy called ‘philosophy of science’ or ‘epistemology’—the study of how we are able to know whether our notions or theories about empirical phenomena are ‘true’ or ‘false’.

Humans are not the only animals that form societies, as I am here using that term. As soon as one moves above the level of the single-celled organisms, like the amoeba, some degree of socialness or ‘sociality’ is evident, since, in most species, reproduction is possible only if two organisms interact co-operatively so as to combine their genetic material. (In fact, biologists have discovered that even single-celled organisms that multiply by division occasionally exchange genetic material in a process that resembles sexual reproduction.) Above this bare minimum we find many species that form family groups in which the two parents continue their co-operation in the rearing of their progeny. Further up the scale we find many species that form larger groups which co-operate in food-gathering, provision of shelter, and defence. And so on, up the scale of sociality to its most elaborate forms in the social insects (ants, termites, bees, etc.), and man.

It seems rather arbitrary to compartmentalize the study of social behaviour, with man in one department and all other animals in another, since sociality is a phenomenon that runs across species differences. Some biologists argue that economics, sociology, political science, and the other social sciences would be more productive if they were reorganized as branches of biology. Throughout this book the reader will find many references to biological factors and biological theories in our study of the history and philosophy of social science. An important feature of modern social science is that it views man as an animal species, different from other animals in important ways to be sure, but not separated from them in the categorical fashion that is implied in theology and was universally believed by thinkers prior to the modern era and the development of empirical science.

B. TYPES OF SOCIALITY

We could try to make a classification of sociality by arranging the various animal species on a scale that would indicate the degree to which their members interact. This might be worth doing, but it would be very difficult because we do not have any satisfactory way of measuring the ‘degree of interaction’. One of the persistent problems in science is that often we can make quantitative distinctions conceptually but cannot measure them. Even if we could measure sociality, and locate the species Homo sapiens on a general scale, it would not tell us a great deal about human behaviour. More useful, I think, is to recognize that there are different types of sociality, which we can distinguish as empirical phenomena even though it is impossible to make specific quantitative measurements of these characteristics.

For our purposes it is useful to distinguish five types of sociality, which are based upon (1) the apparent preference of members of some species for physical closeness: ‘gregariousness’; (2) the practice of establishing ‘hierarchy’; (3) the existence of ‘biological differentiation’; (4) the practice of ‘functional specialization’; and (5) ‘altruism’.

1. Gregariousness

If a farmer puts ten sheep into a field, they do not distribute themselves evenly or randomly over the area. During the day they crop most parts of the field but they move around it together as a group. A flock of sheep seems to be a social entity of some kind, not merely an ‘aggregation’. Without being a sheep it is difficult to say what the object of this behaviour is. The quantity of food available to the sheep is not increased by foraging as a flock rather than individually. The behaviour does not help to protect the members against predators. So far as one can tell, the sheep are not achieving anything collectively that they could not achieve individually, except satisfying an apparent preference for physical closeness. If a flock of sheep is a ‘society’, its organization is minimal and the utility of the organization is not apparent to an outside observer.

Humans are clearly gregarious, but they do not associate with one another in ways that embrace all the members of the species in a particular area. Smaller groups are formed which include some members and exclude others. People like to be close to those who are similar to themselves in certain respects, but they prefer to be distant from those who are different; human gregariousness is quite severely limited in its scope. In a word, humans discriminate. They prefer association with others of the same occupation, socioeconomic class or status, religion, language, nationality, race, colour, and so on. This is the source of some of the most serious problems facing human societies. Some limited associations are much more important in this respect than others. If the tool-and-die makers of a city form an exclusive recreational association it creates few, if any, social problems, but if white residents form white-only residential areas or school districts that is a different matter. Man’s limited gregariousness is not, in itself, a social problem, but certain kinds of discrimination are sources of conflict and hostility that are dysfunctional for the collectivity. The study of discrimination, its kinds, its consequences, and its remedies when the consequences are dysfunctional, is a major interest of social scientists.

2. Hierarchy

If a farmer puts twenty hens, previously unassociated with one another, into a barnyard, a great deal of fighting takes place, which continues until a ‘pecking order’ is established. The hen at the top of the hierarchy may, without fear of retaliation, peck all the other nineteen; the second in rank may peck the eighteen below but not the one above; and so on down to the poor creature at the bottom who may peck no one and may be pecked by all.

In this case we have a highly ordered social structure, so hens form ‘societies’ rather than mere ‘aggregations’. But it is difficult to see what purpose the hierarchical organization serves. It has no utility in providing

food, shelter, or defence. The flock of hens are not able to achieve anything collectively that they could not achieve individually, unless we ascribe to them sado- masochistic desires. A biologist would probably point out that hens (and sheep) are domesticated animals and suggest that their social behaviour may be a vestigial remnant of practices that did serve collective purposes for their wild ancestors: the explanation of their behaviour is ‘historical’ rather than ‘functional’.

Hierarchy is characteristic of virtually all human organizations. But the degree of hierarchical order differs very greatly. In an organization like the United States Army all members are ranked in distinct status categories that represent clear relationships of superiority and subordination; generals at the top, then colonels, and so on, down to privates at the bottom. But an organization like the American Economic Association has only a small governing body, all other members not being ranked at all. Organizations also differ greatly in the comprehensiveness of their hierarchical order. The Catholic Church is organized on a hierarchical scheme that embraces the entire communion of Catholic believers throughout the world, whereas many Protestant Churches have very little hierarchical organization that extends beyond the individual local congregation.

A social organization that functions to achieve collective purposes requires some method by which the actions of its individual members are coordinated. Hierarchical order is one method of achieving this co-ordination but there does not seem to be any general principle that governs the degree and extent of hierarchy that is necessary to the achievement of collective ends. The interest of social scientists in hierarchy is magnified by the fact that many serious social problems are closely connected with this method of social organization. Hierarchical ordering means that persons in superior positions have power to direct the actions of those in subordinate positions, which raises the issue of freedom and authority. Hierarchical status is often associated with income and wealth, either as cause or consequence, which raises the issue of economic inequality. The hierarchical status of parents may be a very important factor in determining the status of their children, which raises the issues of social mobility, equality of opportunity, and the fairness of the social system.

3. Biological differentiation

In the higher animals such as the vertebrates, which includes man, each species has two forms, male and female. They are characterized by the possession of different anatomical structures for reproduction and, in numerous cases, there are also other differences, such as overall body size. In many species that live in groups it has been observed that males and females engage in a division of labour, some tasks being typically performed by males and others by females. Such groups have a greater degree of sociality than mere gregariousness or hierarchy, since division of labour tends to make the individuals of a group dependent on one another for food, protection, etc. Moreover, there are advantages in the division of labour, whether or not it is based upon biological differentiation, so a group that practises it can indeed achieve something that its members could not achieve as individuals.

Biological differentiation and division of labour based upon it have been developed to the highest degree among the social insects. In the various species of ants, for example, there are the usual morphological differences between males and females but, in addition, there are striking differences among the females. The ‘queen’ is a specialized egg-producing entity, incapable of performing any other task. The ‘soldiers’ are sometimes so specialized for their role that they cannot even feed themselves. Among the ‘workers’ there are often a number of subcategories, biologically differentiated so as to perform the different tasks involved in food-gathering, nest-making, and housekeeping.

An ant colony is a highly organized social system in which the members interact with one another in complex ways, co-operating in a collective enterprise through an extraordinary degree of division of labour. The individual ant is helpless without the services provided by other members of the colony. Even the worker, who can forage for herself, could not survive for any appreciable time on her own. On account of this high degree of individual differentiation and collective integration, some biologists suggest that the ant colony should be regarded as the basic biological entity, not the individual ant. Some social scientists and social philosophers take a similar view of humans and their societies. This raises issues that we will repeatedly encounter in the following pages. What is the nature of the relationship of the human individual to his society? Should individual persons be regarded as the primary entities or should we focus instead upon interactions among collective entities such as nations, classes, religions, or civilizations? Is the proper methodology for a scientific study of society ‘individualistic’ or ‘holistic’?

The sociality of the social insects is especially notable in the extent to which it is based upon biological differentiation. But even these species do not have a distinct morphological form for every different task. There is a good deal of division of labour in an ant colony among workers of the same body type. Some biologists bel...