Graduate Journal of Social Science

Articles

• Unifying social science: A critical realist approach

  Dominic Holland

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  • pp. 1–31

• The division of labour in the social sciences versus the politics of metaphysics: Questioning critical realism’s interdisciplinarity

  Jeroen Van Bouwel

  • Abstract

    I motivate the concept of styles of scientific investigation, and differentiate two styles, formal and compositional. Styles are ways of doing scientific research. Radically different styles exist. I explore the possibility of the unification of biology and social science, as well as the possibility of unifying the two styles I identify. Recent attempts at unifying biology and social science have been premised almost exclusively on the formal style. Through the use of a historical example of defenders of compositional biological social science, the Ecology Group at the University of Chicago from, roughly, the 1930s to the 1950s, I attempt to show the coherence and possibility, if not utility, of employing the compositional style to effect the synthesis of biology and social science. I also relate the efforts of the Ecology Group to those of investigators in the Sociology Department of the University of Chicago. In my conclusion, I discuss the usefulness both of employing the category of styles of scientific investigation in historical and philosophical studies of science, as well as the concept of compositionality in scientific studies. I end the paper with some tentative suggestions regarding the importance of compositionality for an analysis of human society.

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  • pp. 32–39

• An obstacle to unification in biological social science: Formal and compositional styles of science

  Rasmus Gronfeldt Winther

  • Abstract

    Some scholars claim that Critical Realism promises well for the unification of the social sciences, e.g., Unifying social science: A critical realist approach in this volume. I will first show briefly how Critical Realism might unify social science. Secondly, I focus on the relation between the ontology and methodology of Critical Realism, and unveil the politics of metaphysics. Subsequently, it is argued that the division of labour between social scientific disciplines should not be metaphysics-driven, but rather question-driven. In conclusion, I will therefore defend a question-driven pluralism as a guide for interdisciplinarity.

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  • pp. 40–100

• Social facts from an analytical perspective: The example of institutions as a unifying notion in the social sciences

  Marcel Scheele

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  • pp. 101–127

• Interdisciplinarity in the social sciences: Bateson’s problem, analytical philosophy and anthropology

  André van Dokkum

  • Abstract

    Two formal questions are relevant with respect to the question of unifying the social sciences: First, would this synopsis really be sufficient for the satisfactory and exhaustive investigation of the study objects, amongst which culture, society and mind? Second: Would it be possible to safeguard the consistency of the proposed synopsis?
    A rather underexplored area in socio-cultural anthropology and the social sciences in general is the body of questions that deal with the logical hierarchy of concepts. One of the few authors who paid attention to these questions was Gregory Bateson. The (im)possibility to distinguish levels in concept like ‘culture’, ‘society’ and ‘mind’ is relevant for the question whether or not the social sciences can be unified. As Bateson pointed out, logical hierarchy problems have been rarely systematically investigated, while it would have been most appropriate to do so with the help of analytical philosophy starting from Russell’s paradox.
    If concepts can be used as a reference for a studied object as well as the environment in which one studies, the question of how to deal with levels within social sciences becomes pertinent. I denote the quest for a theory dealing with the hierarchy of analytical levels in social sciences as Bateson’s problem. Analytical philosophy, with such scholars like Russell, Gödel and Curry, can be a great help when investigating Baseton’s problem. In doing so, I intend to demonstrate that Bateson’s problem is of such a nature that something like a common foundation for all social sciences is not very likely.

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  • pp. 128–150

• First and second order unification in the social and human sciences

  Peter Caws

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  • pp. 151–169