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05.09.2022 Lecture 1*Homework on Brightspace: Every Monday before 10:00 1 or 2 questions on assumptions, bias,
arguments of readings
*Presentation: What is the main argument? Maybe any connections with other articles?
We can use questions that other students post on Brightspace
*Paper: 4th November(?)
*Exam(take-home): Tuesday 1st November
*chapter 3,4 of the book !!!
• Paradigm/theoretical framework/lens/epistemology/research methodologies
- Paradigm: what is the nature of knowledge?
• Why SPER?
• The SPER puzzle
- Part 1: what is this thing called ‘science?’
We are being trained to be a political scientist. How we do it? There are always
ethical questions.
- Part 2: the political dimension of science
What is, and ought to be, …
• History of the philosophy of science
Philosophy of science: Epistemology cs. Metaphysics
- Plato: real form and abstract form
What we do is we think (reasons)
- Aristotle: ‘the essence of thing is in the thing itself’
We can study things by digging into actual things, trying to find eternal goals…
- Deduction vs. induction: two directions to engage with logics
- Islamic contribution (based on Aristotle science)
- Scientific revolution (1550-1700)
Copernicus -> Galileo -> Kepler
Vesalius on anatomy
Newton on gravity, motion, etc
- 17th century: rationalists vs. empiricists
Francis Bacon (Empiricist)
Rene Descartes (Rationalist)
Christian Huygens (Empiricist)
- 18th century: scepticism: how can we know about the external world if we only know
our perceptions?
Hume: problem of causality
Problem of induction
• The problem of causality
- “When I cast my eye on the known qualities of objects, I immediately discover that
the relation of cause and effect depends not in the least upon them”
- It follows that: 1) in the empirical domain, necessity & inevitability do not exist (we
are the ones who construct causality -> necessity & inevitability do not exist), 2)
cause and effect do not exist independently of us
,• The problem of induction
- Can we infer the idea of causality from experience?
- Hume: no
- “there can be no demonstrative arguments to prove, that those instances, of which we
have had no experience, resemble those, of which we have had experiences”
- “it is impossible to demonstrate, that the course of nature must continue uniformly the
same, and that the future must be conformable to the past. What is possible can bever
be demonstrated to be false; and it’s possible the course of nature may change, since
we can conceive such a change.”
• Implications
- What are the implications of Hume’s argument for science?
What do we have to distinguish between true and non-true?
- It sets the scene for the first part of the puzzle
1) What is this thing called science?
2) What is the nature of scientific knowledge?
Hume: all of our knowledge is fundamentally uncertain
3) Consequences for the authority of science?
• Open the social science
Funded by private foundation, global problems, better future society, broad reflection on
history, present and future of social sciences
- Chapter 1: historical construction of the SS – 18th century to 1945
Ø Since 16th century, truth/knowledge
• Newton
• Descartes/dualism
Ø PROGRESS
Ø Victory of natural sciences at beginning of 19th century.
Ø 8, Universities, natural sciences, tensions between ‘sciences’
Ø 9-11, Birth of social sciences, positivism, Comte
Ø 19, Positivism, political science
Ø 28, this process takes place at same time as colonialism ...
Ø 30-31, disciplines, areas of knowledge, epistemologies, categories, method
- Chapter 2: debates
Ø 33, Three major changes (in world political structure)
• US superpower
• Baby boom
• University goes global
Ø 36, Consequences of these changes; three debates:
• Validity of the distinctions among the SS
• Degree to which the heritage is parochial
• Utility and reality of the distinction between the ‘two’ cultures.
Ø Conclusion – Divisions between natural sciences, SS and humanities are now up
for debate
- Chapter 3: what kind of social science shall we now build
Ø Eternal battle for resource allocation
Ø University becomes central for knowledge production – where are universities?
Who has access? Costs? Is higher education a better education? Necessary ?
Ø Theoretical/methodological issues that need new heuristic for new knowledge:
• Relationship of researcher to research (disenchantment or re-enchantment)
• Time/space/phenomenology/experience/social construction
• Problematic separations/disciplines.
Ø Conclusion: No blueprint for re-organising the structures of knowledge
, Ø Need to consider:
• Ontological distinction between human and nature (Descartes)
• State-centric ... Boundaries, Borders.
• Universal vs particular
• What kind of objectivity do we want/have in the social sciences?
Ø Humans/Nature
• Promote interpretations, thick and thin, hermeneutics, intersubjectivity
• KNOWLEDGE VS UNDERSTANDING!!!! A new goal for the social
sciences!
• Political pressure to universalize!
• Complexity of society requires interdisciplinarity
Ø State Centric
• Appears more scientific, rational, predictable, but there is so much more to
politics
• Fails to see problems of STATE – makes it seem natural not constructed.
• Trans-national, GLOBAL – Western states are crumbling. Decolonisation.
• Challenge to expertise!
• Challenge assumption of homogeneity as reality or as desirable
Ø Universal/Particular
• Why do we aspire for general, is that true to world we are trying to understand?
• Is universality a political tool for control?
• Overlap between ideological and epistemological ... politics, religion, science
• Opening up, being inclusive, diverse is NEW GOAL
Ø Objectivity
• Secular? Power now masks itself ...
• BIAS/ Implicit Bias ...
• Quantitative vs qualitative!
• Whose Objectivity? Relation to power ...
- Chapter 4: what kind of social science shall we now build
Ø Old Structures:
• Past vs present, idiographic vs nomothetic, civilized vs barbarians
• Administrators on the rise
Ø What are creative solutions?
• More creolization/cross-fertilization of people/ideas/borders
• Make more effort to hear silenced voices!
TO DO LIST
1. More spaces for scholars to mix based on topics
2. Integrated research programmes, non-disciplinary
3. Joint apt professors
4. Joint work for graduate students
, Summary From here.
Introduction
- Central question to the report: How were the social sciences constructed?
- From the 18th century, there was a break between science and philosophy. Before, these
terms were very closely aligned.
Knowledge and the university
- Break between science and philosophy -> revival of the university.
- The structure of the university as we know it today was created in the 19th century.
- There are six major disciplines of science (or departments at universities).
Lines of demarcation
- Names of disciplines are chosen along the lines of cleavages.
Cleavage 1
- Past-present: history vs. sociology, political science and economics.
- Different assumptions about how one achieved scientific truths.
- Historians argued that one can only really study really old documents. The others wanted to
study today’s world more.
Cleavage 2
- Between 1850 and 1914, 95% of all scholarship was from just five European countries.
- Anthropology was ‘invented’ to study the world outside of that. Though, in the beginning it
focused mostly on small groups that had a low level of technology and development.-
- Ethnography was ‘invented’ to really immerse oneself in other cultures and learn that way.
- Oriental studies (developped from 1880 to 1945): mostly about studying Africa and Asia.
Cleavage 3
- This is about the existence of three nomothetic social sciences (sociology, political science
and economics).
- Why not only one social science? Has to do with 19th century ideology. Dominant view in
liberalism was that state, market and civil society were different entities. They operated by
different logics and needed to be studied separately. The division remained so, just because it
was well-established within universities.
- Development of the tripartite division in universities: natural sciences, humanities and social
sciences. Social sciences were somewhat in the middle of philosophy vs. science -> split in
social sciences (more philosophy vs. more science).
- Everything changed after 1945.
The internationalisation of the social sciences
- Everything changed, because the world changed.
- Emergence of area studies (produce specialists on Latin America, Russia, China, and so on).
Letting students combining a discipline with an area.
- The civilised world vs. rest of the world cleavage is hereby broken down -> anthropologists
and orientalists went looking for a ‘new reason for their existence’.
- After WWII, the number of university (PhD) students and scientists went up. Because of that,
a lot of new subfields of study were created (e.g. sociology -> political sociology, historical
sociology, etc.).
- From the late 60s, the ‘forgotten peoples’ were studied more. This included “women’s
studies” and “black studies”.
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