When stripped to the bare bone, there are only 11 foundational paradigms in social sciences. These foundational paradigms are like flashlights that can be utilized to shed light on different aspects of human society, but each of them can only shed light on a limited area of human society. Different schools in social science result from different but often incomplete combinations of these foundational paradigms. To adequately understand human society and its history, we need (...) to deploy all 11 foundational paradigms, although more limited combinations of them may be adequate for understanding more specific social facts. (shrink)

In his classic essay The Gift, Marcel Mauss argued that gifts can never be truly free; rather, they bring about an expectation of reciprocal exchange. For over one hundred years, his ideas on economy, social relations, and exchange have inspired new modes of thought, none more so than what crystallized in the 1980s around an innovative group of French academics. In The Gift Paradigm, Alain Caillé provides the first in-depth, English-language introduction to La Revue du MAUSS - or, "Anti-Utilitarian (...) Movement in the Social Sciences," combining the work of anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and others. Today, the very idea of a "general social science" seems unthinkable, unless you count the pervasive sway of a utilitarian logic in orthodox economics, or the diffuse influence of neoliberalism. Here, Caillé offers a distinctly different reading of economy and society, inspired by Mauss - as vital now as ever. (shrink)

Haas deconstructs competing paradigms in political science and sociology in order to demonstrate metaphysical, methodological, and normative assumptions that ...

In this book Mark Bevir and Jason Blakely set out to make the most comprehensive case yet for an 'interpretive' or hermeneutic approach to the social sciences. Interpretive approaches are a major growth area in the social sciences today. This is because they offer a full-blown alternative to the behavioralism, institutionalism, rational choice, and other quasi-scientific approaches that dominate the study of human behavior. In addition to presenting a systematic case for interpretivism and a critique of (...) scientism, Bevir and Blakely also propose their own uniquely 'anti-naturalist 'notion of an interpretive approach. This anti-naturalist framework encompasses the insights of philosophers ranging from Michel Foucault and Hans-Georg Gadamer to Charles Taylor and Ludwig Wittgenstein, while also resolving dilemmas that have plagued rival philosophical defenses of interpretivism. In addition, working social scientists are given detailed discussions of a distinctly interpretive approach to methods and empirical research. The book draws on the latest social science to cover everything from concept formation and empirical inquiry to ethics, democratic theory, and public policy. An anti-naturalist approach to interpretive social science offers nothing short of a sweeping paradigm shift in the study of human beings and society. This book will be of interest to all who seek a humanistic alternative to the scientism that overwhelms the study of human beings today. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore some of the non-obvious characteristics of the social science research-social policy (SSRSP) paradigm. We examine some of the underlying assumptions of the readily accepted claim that social science research can lead to the creation of rational social policy. We begin by using the framework of meta-analysis as one of the most powerful means of informing policy by way of empirical research findings. This approach is critiqued and found wanting (...) in several ways. Several conceptual and definitional issues connected to the term “policy” are explored as well. A central argument is that even the best social science research is no guarantee of enlightened policymaking because the very (inductive) basis of empirical research militates against the possibility of going from research findings to policy. This claim is explored within the context of a central paradox. This paradox is explored in some depth. Finally, within the SSRSP claim, we analyze related issues such as the possibility of utilizing Mixed Methods and the politics of policymaking. We conclude that the SSRSP framework is, at best, a subjective one which ironically is needed, but one which is constrained by the very methods that is uses to formulate policy. (shrink)

In recent years, social scientists have turned their critical lens on the historical roots and contours of their disciplines, including their politics and practices, epistemologies and methods, institutionalization and professionalization, national development and colonial expansion, globalization and local contestations, and their public presence and role in society. The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass offers current social scientific perspectives on this reflexive moment in the social sciences. Examining sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, legal theory, (...) and religious studies, the volume's contributors outline the present transformations of the social sciences, explore their connections with critical humanities, analyze the challenges of alternate paradigms, and interrogate recent endeavors to move beyond the human. Throughout, the authors, who belong to half a dozen disciplines, trace how the social sciences are thoroughly entangled in the social facts they analyze, and are key to helping us understand the conditions of our world. Contributors. Chitralekha, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Didier Fassin, Johan Heilbron, Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, Kristoffer Kropp, Nicolas Langlitz, John Lardas Modern, Álvaro Morcillo Laiz, Amín Pérez, Carel Smith, George Steinmetz, Peter D. Thomas, Bregje van Eekelen, Agata Zysiak. (shrink)

La présente étude se propose de repérer les traits principaux de la théorie des systèmes autopoïétiques qui a, depuis le début des années 80, fortement marqué les discours des sciences sociales en Allemagne. Notre analyse se réfère aux concepts-clé de ce nouveau paradigme, élaboré par Niklas Luhmann, et montre leur fonctionnement. La genèse du sens telle quelle s'opère dans la société moderne se trouve au centre de l'intérèt. Avec ses trois dimensions constituantes , le sens peut être mieux observé (...) dans l'ensemble des systèmes, qui est englobé par un environnement de plus en plus complexe. Finalement nous observerons, à titre d'essai, le système littéraire pour y relever les possibilités et les limites de cette nouvelle approche.In the past decade, the mainstream-discourses in German Social Sciences have been strongly influenced by the theoretical design proposed by Niklas Luhman, which is generally called Systems Theory. In the present article I will discuss the dominant conceptions of this extremely abstract approach and focalize my reflections on the problem of the sense : How does sense evolve in social systems and how can it be observed ? Is a better observation garanteed by the unfolding three dimensions of sense ? An exemple like the literary system will show the possibilities and limits of this new paradigm in Social Sciences. (shrink)

(1997). Super‐paradigms, art, and science: Romanticism and the birth of social science. The European Legacy: Vol. 2, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, pp. 749-754.

Transformation in the discipline of Social Sciences is a global phenomenon but in the post-colonial societies it means two things. First, far reaching societal changes resulting into the emergence of new fields in Social Sciences fulfilling new conditions and requirements of society. Second, the growing need and relevance of Social Sciences research so as to address issues which cause serious societal changes. Marginalization of Social Sciences and social scientists in case of (...) Pakistan is not a new phenomenon. There cannot be any time line which can be given for modernizing Social Sciences in Pakistan which can meet the criteria and standards of 21st century. Yet, those who teach and do research in different subjects of Social Sciences must come forward and play a leadership role in this regard. This would require a paradigm shift in the arena of admitting students and appointing faculty so that the best stuff both at the student and faculty level is motivated to join the subjects of Social Sciences in order to ensure quality control and standard which seem to have deteriorated in the last four decades is restored. By attracting the best talent in the subjects of Social Sciences one can expect positive transformation in the state and societal patterns of Pakistan. (shrink)

Social science, as a social and intellectual institution, inherent in modernity, as well as the modern social systems and orders, is the prerequisite and manifestation of the reflexivity in the modern world. There are, however, some fundamental problems in modern social science, in terms of its specialized system and methodological paradigms and conceptions.

(1997). Super‐paradigms, art, and science: Romanticism and the birth of social science. The European Legacy: Vol. 2, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, pp. 749-754.

This volume explores the potential of employing a relational paradigm for the purposes of interdisciplinary exchange. Bringing together scholars from the social sciences, philosophy and theology, it seeks to bridge the gap between subject areas by focusing on real phenomena.Although these phenomena are studied by different disciplines, the editors demonstrate that it is also possible to study them from a common relational perspective that connects the different languages, theories and perspectives which characterize each discipline, by going beyond their (...) differences to the core of reality itself. As an experimental collection that highlights the potential that exists for cross-disciplinary work, this volume will appeal to scholars across a range of field concerned with critical realist approaches to research, collaborative work across subjects and the manner in which disciplines can offer one another new insights. (shrink)

David Laitin uses Bent Flyvbjerg’s Making Social Science Matter as a surrogate manifesto on behalf of the Perestroika movement’s campaign for methodological pluralism in political science. After an overview of Perestroika, I note my own vision for the movement, outline the most significant features of Flyvbjerg’s call for a revived social science, and provide a critique of Laitin’s attempt to assimilate Flyvbjerg’s analysis to his own vision for an improved political science. I conclude with a word about the (...) potential of Perestroika to build on Flyvbjerg’s insights to promote what I call “post-paradigmatic” social science. (shrink)

Nowadays, it seems that all disciplines have to pretend being “scientific” in order to ensure their credibility. But the “social sciences”, which aim at a better knowledge of the Human regarding what makes him its own kind, are they really sciences? Pretending to be so, do they not expose themselves to be qualified as “non-scientific” by the most critical minds in their time, just as did Karl Popper about psychoanalyses and theses on the psychological selfishness? In turn, (...) is it possible to pretend that the “social sciences” are not sciences while stating that their dignity requires them to ask for another paradigm, a much more subtle one? The present contribution will try to answer to these questions. It will start with the proposal to replace the inappropriate name of “social sciences” by another one, much more respectful of the methods which should be theirs, which would be “disciplines of the subject”. (shrink)

The self‐interest paradigm that has dominated and defined social science is being questioned today in all the social sciences. Frontline research is represented by C. Daniel Batson's experiments, which claim to present empirical evidence of altruism. Impressive though this is against the background of the self‐interest paradigm, its ultimate significance might be to illustrate the inadequacy of social science to deal with a transcendent reality like altruism.

So-called grand or paradigmatic theories—structural functionalism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, rational-choice theory—provide their proponents with a conceptual vocabulary and syntax that allows for the classification and configuring of wide ranges of phenomena. Advocates for any particular “analytical grammar” are accordingly prone to conflating the internal coherence of their paradigm—its integrated complex of definitions, axioms, and inferences—with a corresponding capacity for representational verisimilitude. The distinction between Theory-as-heuristic and Theory-as-imposition is of course difficult to negotiate in practice, given that empirical observation and measurement are (...) not entirely “theory neutral” or independent of prior analytical conceptualization. Nonetheless, the scientific cogency of any theory is ultimately evaluated by the substantive realism of its foundational assumptions and categorical designations; that is, the accuracy with which it identifies and tracks the determinant properties and processes of the phenomena to be explicated. The paradigm of sociocultural evolutionism—despite extensive revamping by contemporary proponents—does not carry warrant in this regard, as its recourse to an analytical grammar fashioned and derived from another discipline raises doubts about its empirical veridicality. This article revisits the contentious issue of remodeling social phenomena in accordance with biological categories and offers both a theoretical and a substantive critique of the “selectionist” paradigm. The transdisciplinary program of historical social science is affirmed by way of counterpoint. (shrink)

Presenting the key concept of 'ovular space' as opposed to 'rectilinear' spatial concepts as a new paradigm for social analysis, the authors put forward a wide-ranging social and cultural critique based on a utopian vision of a new social organization. They argue for a reversal of the 'masculinism' that has predominated throughout human history to date. They analyze the origins and structures of this predominant cultural form and describe phenomena that indicate that this pattern is shifting with (...) changes in gender roles. They emphasize that their approach is not biologistic or essentialist and that their argument is based on the psychosocial reaction to biological factâ??based on a fundamental opposition between 'formal-rational thinking, prototypical of the male mind' and 'female, ovular thinking, expressing itself in empathy', which they regard as a key component of social change in contemporary society. Gender Space and Power discusses the problems relating to 'masculinist' bias in these subject areas and indicate some possible new approaches. (shrink)

We aim, in this paper, to discuss how far the ethical framework for assessing medical research, generalized into other institutional settings, is also appropriate for social science research, particularly qualitative research. Recently, researchers have raised concerns about ‘ethics creep’, incompatibility with participatory methodologies and the exclusion of service users. Researchers are increasingly raising questions as to whether the processes of governance and the paradigmatic assumptions pervading research ethics committees are fit for purpose when they deliberate on non-clinical research that (...) uses social science methods. We review whether ethical scrutiny by research ethics committees is asking the wrong questions and holding research to the wrong standards. (shrink)

History, as a science, has been developing in the context of a concrete epoch of scientific paradigms and types of scientific rationality. The period of constitutionalization of social and humanitarian knowledge and history refers to the middle of the 20th century, to the epoch of a triumphal approach of positivism. The formation of a ‘classical‘ historical science was connected with the fact, that history was not considered to be an art any more. It was proclaimed, that history should (...) be based on natural sciences, dealing with real facts. The review of a ‘classical‘ scientific paradigm of history was stated in the 19th-20th centuries and it was connected with the confirmation of a principal difference between social, humanitarian and scientific knowledge. The discussion of the method and the language of science took the central place. Nonclassical paradigm of social and humanitarian science began to form. At this period, it develops the concept of ‘humanitarian story‘. At the end of the 20th century, the historical science entered postclassical period. This circumstance was accompanied by new methodological approaches with the basis on social and philosophical discourse. Integrative paradigm in history, which is based on the principle of additionality, has been forming. Within this paradigm, history becomes stereoscopic acquiring the character of ‘social and humanitarian‘ history. (shrink)

The anti-causal prophecies of last century have been disproved. Causality is neither a ‘relic of a bygone’ nor ‘another fetish of modern science’; it still occupies a large part of the current debate in philosophy and the sciences. This investigation into causal modelling presents the rationale of causality, i.e. the notion that guides causal reasoning in causal modelling. It is argued that causal models are regimented by a rationale of variation, nor of regularity neither invariance, thus breaking down the (...) dominant Human paradigm. The notion of variation is shown to be embedded in the scheme of reasoning behind various causal models: e.g. Rubin’s model, contingency tables, and multilevel analysis. It is also shown to be latent – yet fundamental – in many philosophical accounts. Moreover, it has significant consequences for methodological issues: the warranty of the causal interpretation of causal models, the levels of causation, the characterisation of mechanisms, and the interpretation of probability. This book offers a novel philosophical and methodological approach to causal reasoning in causal modelling and provides the reader with the tools to be up to date about various issues causality rises in social science. (shrink)

These essays by a major epistemologist reconfigure philosophical projects across a wide spectrum, from mind to metaphysics, from epistemology to social power. Several of Goldman's classic essays are included along with many newer writings. Together these trace and continue the development of the author's unique blend of naturalism and reliabilism. Part I defends the simulation approach to mentalistic ascription and explores the psychological mechanisms of ontological individuation. Part II shows why epistemology needs help from cognitive science - not only (...) to evaluate cognitive agents but also to illuminate the practices of epistemic evaluators. Parts III and IV explain how philosophical projects can be reshaped through interchange with social science. An epistemological study of scientific activity exploits the economic paradigm, and philosophical tools are applied to analyze power in society. (shrink)

The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics in the Social Sciences is an in-depth exploration of ethics across multiple different fields. Editors Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry collate entries from global experts to provide an incisive look into applied ethics on both methodological and theoretical bases. Covering a vast array of disciplines, this prescient Encyclopedia analyzes the many roles that applied ethics plays in the social sciences. Entries scrutinize the various manifestations of ethics across a range of (...) disciplines and subdisciplines such as animal studies, criminology, and global health. The entries on sociology, social psychology, welfare economics, and corporate social responsibility discuss historical development through ethical concepts, while entries such as conflict studies, strategic management and future studies seek to predict future paradigm changes. On the theoretical level, the framing of research questions also entails ethical choices, which is emphasized in the entries for archaeology, food system studies, global health, and migration studies. This thought-provoking Encyclopedia is a crucial resource for scholars of economic thought and methodology, legal philosophy, human rights, politics and public policy research, and sociology and sociological theory. It will also benefit those researching and working across the social sciences more broadly. Key Features: Flexible interdisciplinary approach. International point of entry into applied ethics in the social sciences. 57 authors representing a wide variety of fields in the social sciences. 35 in-depth entries organized alphabetically for accessibility and ease of navigation. (shrink)

In this exciting Handbook, Ian Jarvie and Jesús Zamora-Bonilla have put together a wide-ranging and authoritative overview of the main philosophical currents and traditions at work in the social sciences today. Starting with the history of social scientific thought, this Handbook sets out to explore that core fundamentals of social science practice, from issues of ontology and epistemology to issues of practical method. Along the way it investigates such notions as paradigm, empiricism, postmodernism, naturalism, language, agency, (...) power, culture, and causality. (shrink)

This volume offers selected papers exploring issues arising from scientific discovery in the social sciences. It features a range of disciplines including behavioural sciences, computer science, finance, and statistics with an emphasis on philosophy. The first of the three parts examines methods of social scientific discovery. Chapters investigate the nature of causal analysis, philosophical issues around scale development in behavioural science research, imagination in social scientific practice, and relationships between paradigms of inquiry and scientific (...) fraud. The next part considers the practice of social science discovery. Chapters discuss the lack of genuine scientific discovery in finance where hypotheses concern the cheapness of securities, the logic of scientific discovery in macroeconomics, and the nature of that what discovery with the Solidarity movement as a case study. The final part covers formalising theories in social science. Chapters analyse the abstract model theory of institutions as a way of representing the structure of scientific theories, the semi-automatic generation of cognitive science theories, and computational process models in the social sciences. The volume offers a unique perspective on scientific discovery in the social sciences. It will engage scholars and students with a multidisciplinary interest in the philosophy of science and social science. (shrink)

Certain critical accounts of conventional research practices in business and the social sciences are explored in this essay. These accounts derive from alternative social paradigms and their underlying assumptions about appropriate social inquiry and knowledge construction. Among these alternative social paradigms, metatheories, mindscapes, or worldviews are social constructionist, critical, feminist, and postmodern or poststructural thinking. Individuals with these assumptions and values for knowledge construction are increasingly challenging conventional scholarship in what has been (...) referred to as paradigm debates or wars. Issues of incommensurability or cross-paradigmatic communication potentials, as well as reflexivity, are raised in terms of moral education and development potentials for applied social science fields. Barriers and suggestions for increased moral development in academic and professional communities are discussed. In particular, moral forums in which participants have enhanced intrapersonal and interpersonal communication skills appear to be needed to surface and share often taken-for-granted assumptions concerning moral knowledge construction. (shrink)

This article explores predominant uses of theory in social science research in relation to the approach of phenomenological philosophy. While phenomenology is sometimes interpreted as one theoretical or methodological paradigm amongst others in the field of qualitative research, this article explores key thinkers within the philosophical tradition of phenomenology to argue that this tradition can raise challenges for predominant conceptions of research and theorizing in the social sciences and certain philosophical idea(l)s that can be connected to them. (...) The distinctive nature of phenomenological description is outlined, and new possibilities for qualitative research are sketched. Also considered is the question of whether qualitative research should seek to enshrine the intellectual virtues of the arts, and resist the inclination towards the scientific -- and scientistic -- drive to theorize. (shrink)

My dissertation traces the consequences following for social science from an analysis of the nature of its object domain, which I call "socio-historical reality." In particular, I hope thereby to dissolve many misconceptions about the character of social science. ;Influenced by Dilthey, I propose an "individualist" account that analyzes socio-historical reality as nothing but interrelated everyday lives, which themselves consist in series of actions that are governed by practical intelligibility and performed in interconnected settings. This analysis differs from (...) traditional versions of individualist social ontology because in elaborating Heidegger's idea that action is governed by practical intelligibility, and in emphasizing the role of setting in ongoing action, it offers a novel account of the ingredients out of which socio-historical reality consists. These ingredients are: actions, the entities found in settings, a broad range of factors such as rules, paradigms, ideas, goals, and normal practices, which are articulated by entities in settings and determine what it makes sense to people to do, and concrete relations between these phenomena, for example, chains of actions and commonalities in the factors mentioned under . An important consequence of my account is that socio-historical reality does not contain unexperienceable types of entities. ;This analysis of the object domain of social science has implications for the constitution of overarching social formations , the nature of social causality, and the character of social science. I maintain, for example, that all social science should be verstehende, though not necessarily interpretive; that it is unlikely that social science will discover laws governing what happens in socio-historical reality; that much of contemporary social science unknowingly and illegitimately uses fictions in its accounts; and that explanation in social science refers ultimately to individual actions and does not rest on laws or generalizations. (shrink)

The Claims of Common Sense investigates the importance of ideas developed by Cambridge philosophers between the World Wars for the social sciences concerning common sense, vague concepts and ordinary language. John Coates examines the thought of Moore, Ramsey, Wittgenstein and Keynes, and traces their common drift away from early beliefs about the need for precise concepts and a canonical notation in analysis. He argues that Keynes borrowed from Wittgenstein and Ramsey their reappraisal of vague concepts, and developed the (...) novel argument that when analysing something as complex as social reality, theory might be simplified by using concepts which lack sharp boundaries. Coates then contrasts this conclusion with the view shared by two contemporary philosophical paradigms - formal semantics and Continental post-structuralism - that the vagueness of ordinary language inevitably leads to interpretive indeterminacy. Developing a link between Cambridge philosophy and work on complexity, vague predicates and fuzzy logic, he argues that Wittgenstein's and Keynes's ideas on the economy of ordinary language present a mediating route for the social sciences between these philosophical paradigms. (shrink)

Machine learning (ML) models recently led to major breakthroughs in predictive tasks in the natural sciences. Yet their benefits for the social sciences are less evident, as even high-profile studies on the prediction of life trajectories have shown to be largely unsuccessful – at least when measured in traditional criteria of scientific success. This paper tries to shed light on this remarkable performance gap. Comparing two social science case studies to a paradigm example from the natural (...) sciences, we argue that, in addition to explanation, prediction is an important goal of social science – and we identify constraints that impede pure ML prediction from being successful in that field. As a remedy, we outline elements of an integrative modelling approach that combines explanatory models and predictive ML models. (shrink)

Karl Mannheim's contribution to a conceptual framework towards establishing objective knowledge in the social sciences has been overlooked and neglected. The paper discusses and reevaluates particularly Mannheim's concept of relationism which he used for clarifying the possibility of a "dynamic synthesis of perspectives" as the task of sociology of knowledge. One of the functions of Mannheim's conceptual framework was to narrow the gap between the techno-scientific or empiricist paradigm of knowledge and the humanistic-hermeneutical paradigm by a set of (...) mediations which shifted the emphasis from facts to the way of looking at them through concepts and terms which are never purely experiential, i.e. independent of interpretation. The author stresses the epistemological fertility of the relationist model of truth in view of recent insights of sociology of science. (shrink)

This paper is intended to elaborate the anthropocentric paradigm in the study of Islamic law which is done for two reasons. The first is the increasing trend of theocentricism within various puritan communities. This trend rejects the contextualization of Islamic law and has the potential to produce radical movements in the name of religion. The second is that, Islamic law studies is still rarely associated with the issues of legal paradigms, even though they are considered as the foundation in (...) the establishment of Islamic law. Thus, this paper is written as an attempt to make the prophetic social science paradigma an analytical tool for puritans’ Islamic law epistemology. This study reveals that the epistemological demystification is very important for the study of contemporary Islamic law. There are two steps in carrying out epistemological demystification: the first is the transformation of the basic structure of Islamic law. This transformation requires a shifting issue from theocentric to the anthropocentrism. The transformative theoanthropocentric paradigm as the basic legal structure has the capability to contextualize Islamic law which is not only relevant to the Muslim community, but also to the community as a whole. The second is the development of a theoretical framework. Concerning with this, Kuntowijoyo offers analytic-synthetic theories which accommodate a demystified vision as a link to a transformative theological foundation. (shrink)

This paper aims at presenting the critique of both the quantitative and the qualitative research methodologies for social sciences in general and organizational sciences in particular. Quantitative and qualitative research models have been dominant over the second half of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, it has become a growing concern that a dichotomy between them should be overcome by combining them into a methodological pluralism. Positivism is the epistemological ground of quantitative methodology whereas phenomenology is the same with (...) qualitative. It will be argued that for methodological pluralism, neither positivism nor phenomenology can suffice alone. This paper presents a comparison and analysis of both positivism and phenomenology with the intention of working out their fundamental presuppositions. The purpose of this investigation is to look for the possibility of outlining a theoretic paradigm for the practice of methodological pluralism. (shrink)

The article explores the transformative impact on human and social sciences in response to anticipated societal shifts driven by the forthcoming proliferation of artificial systems, whose intelligence will match human capabilities. Initially, it was posited that artificial intelligence (AI) would excel beyond human abilities in computational tasks and algorithmic operations, leaving creativity and humanities as uniquely human domains. However, recent advancements in large language models have significantly challenged these conventional beliefs about AI’s limitations and strengths. It is projected (...) that, in the near future, generative AI models will adeptly replicate individual qualities, desires, beliefs, opinions, and the essence of human identity and consciousness to a degree that is nearly indistinguishable from that of humans. This lends support to the connectionist approach to understanding consciousness, suggesting an inherent similarity between biological and artificial neural networks. The discussion posits two innovative areas of scientific inquiry: “mathematical anthropology” and “multi-dimensional calculus of value.” The former suggests that viewing human nature through a mathematical and calculative lens not only preserves but enriches our understanding of the complexity of anthropological experience and its perceived contradictions. The latter hypothesis explores how mathematical models could facilitate various social interactions. The advanced simulation capabilities of neural networks suggest that traditional social and political frameworks face a growing vulnerability to AI-driven manipulations. This trend underscores the urgency of developing social interaction models that incorporate explicitly defined calculative rules. In conclusion, the paper advocates for a paradigm shift in how mathematics is perceived – not merely as a tool for computation but as a foundational science for crafting sophisticated models. In conclusion, the article advocates for transitioning from perceiving mathematics solely as a science of computation to viewing it as a discipline dedicated to constructing various formalized models, thereby deepening our insight into the complexities of human and social phenomena. (shrink)

In this exciting Handbook, Ian Jarvie and Jesús Zamora-Bonilla have put together a wide-ranging and authoritative overview of the main philosophical currents and traditions at work in the social sciences today. Starting with the history of social scientific thought, this Handbook sets out to explore that core fundamentals of social science practice, from issues of ontology and epistemology to issues of practical method. Along the way it investigates such notions as paradigm, empiricism, postmodernism, naturalism, language, agency, (...) power, culture, and causality. (shrink)

As concepts, communication and information are very closely related, but they also designate more than their usual conceptual meaning when they are called upon in social theories as well as in philosophical theories about the reality and the truth of social life; information and communication are then designating physical events or event like objects of the observable reality, which will be hereafter described as a procedural ontologization of information. Why do they have this role and how do they (...) play it in contemporary social sciences and philosophy of social sciences? This article questions the scientificity of these concepts in these theoretical contexts. It wants to propose a framework for an epistemology of communication and information that is critical about the cybernetician paradigm in the social sciences. It presents this paradigm’s main features: informational ontology and probabilistic sociality. It offers a critique of this paradigm’s epistemological and methodological pretensions. It finally exposes the basis of an alternative philosophical theory of communication that wants to support the thesis that the cybernetician paradigmatic communication theory is not scientifically productive; and that it cannot be used in social scientific theoretical contexts without being dramatically redesigned and reoriented towards new goals. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Marcel Mauss’s “Essay on the Gift” (1925) is not only intended to inaugurate a new paradigm on the terrain of ethnology and anthropology, but at the same time to make the gift a kind of novum organum of the social sciences and of moral and political philosophy itself. In the first part, I reconstructed the critique that M. Merleau-Ponty and C. Lefort have made to Lévi-Strauss’s “structuralist” reading of Mauss, and, in a (...) second part, I emphasised the importance that M. Hénaff assigned to the ceremonial gift of traditional societies as an intentional procedure of public mutual recognition between groups. But, using some of A. Caillé’s indications, I explain that this device of mutual recognition and alliance, characteristic of the gift cycle (giving/receiving/ reciprocating) also applies in modern societies whenever legal-political institutions become sclerotized and lose their legitimacy in the face of new actors in political action (newcomers or new arrivals, to use the Arendtian category of natality in a broad sense). (shrink)

The tenets of critical and social realism are well supported in the literature. However, researchers following a realist paradigm have concerns about the lack of methodical guidance for qualitative...

The main purpose of this paper is to explore Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of social science. To this end, the paper sheds light on the main epistemological presuppositions that undergird Bourdieu’s defence of reflexive sociology as a scientific endeavour. The predominant view in the literature is that, in most of his writings,Bourdieu has a tendency to embrace a positivist conception of social science. When examining Bourdieu’s conception of social science in more detail, however, it becomes clear that the (...) assumption that he remains trapped in a positivist paradigm does not do justice to the complexity of his multifaceted account of social science. In order to illustrate the complexity of Bourdieu’s conception of social science, the following analysis scrutinises ten epistemological tensions which can be found in Bourdieu’s writings on the nature of knowledge production. In view of these epistemological tensions, a more fine-grained picture emerges which demonstrates that Bourdieu invites,and indeed compels, us to reflect upon the complexity of the various tension-laden tasks posed by the pursuit of a critical social science. (shrink)

James Bohman has succeeded in reinvigorating the old debate over explanation and understanding by situating it within contemporary discussions about sociological indeterminacy and complexity. I argue that Bohman's preference for a paradigm based on Habermas's theory of communicative action is justifiable given the explanatory deficiencies of ethnomethodological, rational choice, rule-based, and functionalist methodologies. Yet I do not share his belief that the paradigm is preferable to less formalized models of interpretation.