IV. Interlude: What about the social sciences?

Chris:

99% of social science is not science. And Einstein was not religious in any meaningful way, unless you similarly overdefine religion as "anything that makes us feel wonder at the bring of our understanding," which is weaker even than PTJ's "Carl Sagan's Religion."

(I think that this is getting a bit unwieldy - unsurprising considering how many directions we've gone toward.)

Erin:

[Separate discussion... I'll reserve judgment on whether social science is science till after I've finished my course in Philosophy of the Social Sciences (though so far that's been more concerned with the ontology of the "social' than the definition of "science"). At this point, though, I'm with Weber in saying that whatever it is (and for Weber at least, an interpretive element does not stop the social sciences from being "strictly empirical sciences"), its methods are (or should be) scientific. If someone wants to claim social science isn't science, I'm ok with that so long as they recognize that it still represents a valid, empirically rigorous way of knowing about the world. I'm comfortable with the social as a knowable realm that does not operate according to scientific law. But perhaps that's best left for another time ...]

As for Einstein, what's relevant is that his religious views motivated his scientific inquiry: "Science can be created only by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion."

Again, not my view of the world, nor the only possible religious motivation for the practice of science, but why not take advantage of such sentiments to work together? I'm not a huge fan of naive syncretism, but I *am* all for getting people on board with science and very much opposed to the alternative you're proposing.

(And, yeah, it is. Massively unwieldy. I'll also maintain it's been a much more productive/educational use of my study time than most of the work I've been assigned this week.)

Chris:

[I would argue that social scientists usually are not rigorous enough to have their work considered "good science," though they certainly at least pay lip service to scientific methods because it helps ground their work in the language of science. Again, the problem is when social science treats its conclusions as more accurate than they really are. As I'm fond of saying, it's too bad that 99% of social scientists give the other one percent such a bad name.]

[Also, is that course being taught by someone who has a vested interest in calling the social studies sciences? Could be dangerous.]

Erin:

[Oh, I understand why many social scientists have dogs in the "is social science science?" fight; the "science" label confers a great deal of legitimacy to their work and when people exhibit a tendency to dismiss anything that isn't science as sophistry and illusion, it's no wonder everyone's so intent on subsuming their methodology under the science rubric. I guess what primarily concerns me in the debate is establishing that, whatever we call them, there *are* empirically rigorous, appraise-able, causal explanations of the social realm that are uniquely preferable to a wholesale application of the methods of the natural and physical sciences as a method of problem-solving. As I'm not trying to publish or sell anything at this point -- and as I don't need to convince most of my professors of the legitimacy of these other ways of knowing -- it doesn't really matter to me whether what Catherine and I did with our pirate research project this summer, for example, or what Jutta Weldes does in her Cuban Missile Crisis book is "science" or not. I do know that our methods were rigorous, conceptually coherent, reproduceable, and applicable to many other social phenomena -- and that they generated new understanding of a genuine puzzle that can be held up to the qualitative empirical data we used. Those qualities matter to me much more than earning the "science" label or generating falsifiable predictions.

As for the class, the lecturer is a very open-minded philosopher of science who has done a lot of work with the evolution of morality and applying game theory and computational methods to the evolution of norms. The class teacher's research interest is evolutionary psychology, but again, from the perspective of philosophy of science. Not my cup of tea -- by any means -- but as both of them are philosophers, not social scientists, their interests are considerably less vested than if they were practicing evolutionary and social psychologists. Again, the question of whether or not what we call the social sciences is "really" science is largely bracketed in that class: We did spend several weeks on the subject of objectivity and values in the social sciences, but questions of whether the social sciences are (can be, should try to be) objective and what objectivity actually means (probably not value-free, as it turns out) are distinct from questions of scientific-ness. Plus, give me some credit for thinking for myself here! I always treat my professors' philosophical and definitional commitments with a healthy level of skepticism.

Digression: It was with incredible amounts of agonizing, soul-searching, discomfort, and sharply critical thinking that Catherine and I embraced a relational methodology for the pirates this summer, and while our decision to do so was absolutely influenced strongly by working with Prof. Jackson, we had come up with the idea of a discourse analysis of piracy before ever meeting him. Of course, this idea did not predate our taking a research methods class with Prof. Howard who was Prof. Jackson's PhD student, and rest assured, we're very much aware of that. All the same, if we'd found another methodology more compelling, we could easily have sought out a different professor to work with. So there was -- as ever -- an interplay of influences and personalities at work, and if anything, the fact that we were working with a professor who has the strongest vested interest in selling one particular methodology (let's not pretend last year's IR Theory -- at least the second half -- was anything else) I've come across made as look at what we were doing even more critically. End digression. I just figured since you'd already dragged space into this, I'd put in a pirate plug as well :) ]

Chris:

[Sounds interesting. Didn't mean to put your professor on trial.]

Erin:

[I always put my professors on trial.]

TO BE CONTINUED (and returned to science and religion) ...