Unit 5

Issues of Epistemology
.. Contents
“5.1 Introduction
5.2 Some Major Concerns of Epistemology
5.3 Rationalism
5.4 Empiricism
5.5 Idealism
5.6 Phenomenology: Bracketing Experience
5.7 Conclusion

Learning Objectives
It is expected that after reading Unit 5, you will be able to carry out the
following tasks.
% Gain familiarity with the issues of epistemology or theory of
knowledge
< Link the different currents in philosophy, namely, rationalism,
empiricism, idealism ‘and phenomenology with understanding the
social reality around us

5.1 Introduction
EpistemalugyO is a branch of philosophy that tries to understand the
nature, source and limits of knowledge. You may ask, why are we talking
about a branch of philosophy in a sociology course? While reading Unit 5,
you would find that the philosophical issues discussed here form the
foundations of explanations in theories about the social world. Units 6
and 7 clearly show the influence of philosophical ideas on the writings of
sociologists. In order to better understand the contents of these units, it
is a gqod idea to gain familiarity with the issues of epistemology.
Human beings have a tendency to want to explain and understand the
world around them, leading to a variety of explanations. It is very common
these days for a large section of humanity to look for explanations that
are scientific. But at one time such explanations brought the wrath of
the authorities, usually religious authority. As science made increasing
strides revealing in turn the secrets of nature over which humankind
tried to rule, the methodologies employed by the natural and physical
sciences came to rule as to what should be the best methods of acquiring
knowledge. Behind this quest for seeking knowledge were many issues
that were grappled by not only scientists and knowledge seekers, but
also people who ask philosophical questions.

As the Greek philosopher Aristotle rightly said, all philosophy originates

from the basic sense of wonder human beings experience and that this
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 Issues of
sense of wonder that leads to different explanations or theories. It is
Epistemology
therefore not surprising that on the question of knowledge there are
several contesting viewpoints. The question of what is true or adequate
knowledge in a way translates into an issue of scientific methodology. In
Unit 5 we will look at some broad issues concerning our understanding of
the social reality around us, with reference to particular philosophers in
the context of different schools. of thought.

After introducing some major concerns of epistemology in Section 5.2,

we will discuss the theories of rationalism, empiricism and idealism in
Sections 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5 respectively. These theories reflect the positivist
outlook to understand the social phenomena. Not everyone agreed with
the assumptions discussed in the three schools of thought namely
rationalism, empiricism and idealism. Many scholars looked for meaning
in observations they made. They focused on phenomenology which is a
school of thought taking us in new directions to understand the social
reality. The new developments have been discussed in Section 5.6.

5.2 Some Major Concerns of Epistemology

We are going to talk about some of the central concerns of epistemology,
which deal with issues such as what is the source of knowledge, what is
knowledge, how do we know which is truth and how is it different from
justification. In other words, epistemology is mainly concerned with the
nature, source, scope and limits of knowledge. The perspective adopted
in different schools of thought is tied up with an overall metaphysical
slant of that particular school.

You may ask what is metaphysics. Metaphysics, refers to the branch of

philosophy that attempts to understand the fundamental nature of all
reality, whether visible or invisible. It seeks a description so basic, so
essentially simple and inclusive that it applies to everything, whether
divine or human or anything. It attempts to tell what anything must be
like. So a metaphysician is trying to discover what underlies everything.
Though in sociology metaphysical questions do not concern us, while
discussing epistemology or issues related with knowledge, it is good to
keep in mind that many philosophical ideas about knowledge have a
metaphysical edge to them. For example, you will find that Kant’s notion
of ‘[Link] of one’s consciousness proves the existence of objects
outside one’ has a metaphysical slant to it (see Section 5 on Idealism).

When we look at the history of epistemology, we can discern a clear

trend, in spite of the confusion of many seemingly contradictory positions.
The trend indicates that theories of knowledge stress its absolute,
permanent character. For some philosophers the things we perceive are
more than sense perceptions; they are an interactive outcome of the
mind or soul.
Following the Renaissance (revival of art and literature in Europe, under *69%
 Research the influence of classical models in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries),
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two main epistemological positions or theories of knowledge dominated
philosophical inquiry into the theory of knowledge, namely, empiricism
and rationalism. Empiricism views knowledge as the product of sensory
perception. This theory holds that the origin of all knowledge is sense
. experience. The term also refers to the method of observation and
experiment used in the natural sciences.
Often, rationalism is contrasted with empiricism. Rationalism is a theory
which holds that the mind may apprehend some truths directly, without
requiring the medium of the senses. Let us first discuss the theory of
rationalism.

5.3 Rationalism
Greeks philosophers, mainly Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle, laid the
foundations of logical thinking. The principal teret of rationalism or
logical thinking is that truth can be best discovered through reason and
rational thought. Rationalists assume that the world is deterministic,
and that cause and effect hold for all events. They also assume that
these can be understood through sufficient understanding and thought.
A priori (from cause to effect) or rational insight is a source of much
knowledge. Sense experience, on the other hand, is seen as being too
confusing and tentative.
Logic and mathematics are classic rational disciplines, as is philosophy.
Rational argument is particularly attractive as it implies a superior
intellect, and we all use it regularly, although the truth of our assertions
is often open to question.

Prominent rationalists include Destartes, Spinoza and Liebniz (see Unit

1). We will be discussing the .ideas of Descartes, who was the most.
prominent of them all.
Descartes: | think, therefore | am
Descartes is regarded as the first “modern” thinker who has provided a
- philosophical framework for the natural sciences. Descartes attempts to
arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know as true
without any doubt. To achieve this, he employs a method called
methodological skepticism. He doubts any idea that can be doubted. He
gives the example of dreaming. In a dream, one’s senses perceive things
that seem real but do not actually exist. He argues that in a similar
manner one cannot rely on the data of the senses as necessarily true. )
Or, he says, perhaps an "evil genius” exists who is a supremely powerful
and cunning being and sets out to try to deceive Descartes from knowing
the true nature of reality. Given-these possibilities, Descartes asks, what
can one know for certain? '
Before coming to Descartes’ answer to the question, let us know a little -
©70% more about him (see Box 5.1). :
 Issues of
Epistemology
Tsox 5.1 René Descartes (1596-1650)
Descartes (also see B1.4) was born in a village in France in the year 1596. He
studied in a Jesuit school a wide range of subjects
and excelled in mathematics. Descartes made a number
of important contributions to mathematics and
physics. Most enduring of his contributions was the
foundation (with Galileo Galilei) of what is now known
as analytic geometry. In 1649 Descartes moved to
Stockholm at the request of Queen Christina of
Sweden, who employed him as a philosophy tutor.
Christina scheduled the lectures at 5 A.M. The early
hours and harsh climate took their toll on Descartes’ -
already weak health. He died shortly after in 1650. René Descartes
During his life, Descartes’ fame rose to such an extent (1596-1650)
that many Catholics believed he would be a candidate
for sainthood. As his body was transported from Sweden back to France, anxious
relic collectors along the path removed pieces of his body. By the time his body
reached France, it was considerably reduced in size. Descartes’ philosophy
developed in the context of Renaissance and early modern philosophy. Like the
humanists, he rejected religious authority in the quest for scientific and
philosophical knowledge.
e

Mathematicians consider Descartes of the utmost importance for his

discovery of analytic geometry. Up to Descartes’ time, geometry dealing
with lines and shapes, and algebra with numbers, appeared as completely
different subsets of mathematics. Descartes showed how to translate
{almost) all problems in geometry into problems'in algebra, by regarding
them as questions asking for the length of a line segment, and using a
coordinate system to describe the problem.
Descartes’ theory provided the basis for the calculus of Newton and
Leibniz, and in this manner for much of modern mathematics. This
appears even more astounding when one keeps in mind that the work
was just meant as an example to Discours de la Méthode.
Descartes methodology of pure reason and separation of mind and body
was a problem which continued to haunt methodologies of the social
sciences. In fact, Kant questioned this basic dualism in his book, Critique
of Pure Reason. Though Kant attempted to remove the dualism he could
not fully escape it. We will discuss this issue in Section 5 on Idealism.
Here, we proceed with another aspect of Descartes’ contributions. It
deals with his quest for ways of obtaining scientific and philosophical
knowledge.

To come back to the question ‘What can one know for certain?’, let us
now Jook at what Descartes has to say. Initially, Descartes arrives at only
a single principle; that is, if | am being deceived, then surely "I” must
exist. Most famously, this is known as Cogito, ergo sum, (“I think,
therefore | am”). In this manner, Descartes concludes that he can be
certain that he exists. But in what form? You perceive your body through *71e
 Research the use of the senses; however, in Descartes logic, these have previously
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proven unreliable. So Descartes proposes that at this point, he would
only say that he is a thinking thing. Thinking is his essence as it is the
only thing about him that cannot be doubted.
To further demonstrate the limitations of the senses, Descartes proceeds
with what is known as the Wax Argument. He considers a piece of wax
and his senses inform him that it has certain characteristics, such as
shape, texture, size, color, smell, and so forth. However, when he brings
the wax towards a flame, these characteristics change completely.
However, it seems that it is still the same thing; it is still a piece of wax,
even though the data of the senses inform him that all of its characteristics
are now different. Therefore, in order properly to grasp the nature of
the wax, he cannot use the senses and he must use his mind. Descartes
concludes, "Thus what | thought | had seen with my eyes, | actually
grasped solely with the faculty of judgment, which is in my mind.”
In this manner Descartes proceeds to construct a system of knowledge,
discarding perception as unreliable and instead admitting only deduction
as a method. Halfway through the Method (published in 1637, entitled in
French as Discours de la Méthode) he also claims to prove the existence
of a benevolent God, who, being benevolent, has provided him with a
working mind and sensory system, and who cannot desire to deceive
him, and thus, finally, he establishes the poisibility of acquiring knowledge
about the world based on deduction and perception. So it would appear
that for Descartes the ultimate certainty emanates from God. This
proposition of Descartes did not go too:well with the empiricists in
England. They were against the pure metaphysical facts. They brought
into focus the body and experience as being the source of knowledge.
Let us discuss about these ideas in detail in Section 5.4 on empiricism.

5.4 Empiricism
Empiricism surfaced as a reaction to rationalist arguments and the events
that were transforming the British society influenced the way it took
roots in the way Anglo-Saxons. perceived social reality. The first of
these events was the English civil war in which monarchy and feudalism
were challenged. The second was the increasing demand for individual
_ rights and equality among all human beings. The third was unprecedented
growth of commerce and science that was fuelled by inventions and
discoveries such as Boyle’s experiments to understand the basics of gases,
Leeuwenhoek’s use of the microscope to discover the world of bacteria,
and William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood. The laws of
motion established by Newton (who used Descartes’ theory in his calculus)
influenced the way the empiricists developed the arguments, which went
beyond Descartes’ rationalism. You may say that in a way, such empiricists
as John Locke combined the forces of experience and reflection. David
*72¢ Hume’s skepncism. and questioning on the other hand paved the way
for establishing the empiricist tradition in social inquiry. Hume concluded Issues of
Epistemology
what began with Locke, in laying the foundations for many methodological
questions that came up in the philosophy of the sciences. This is why we
will discuss their ideas in detail in this section. Before proceeding to the
details, let us have a few words to introduce empiricism.

The central principle of empiricism is that truth comes only from direct
experience. Words can only be understood if they are connected by their
recipient to actual experiences. The word ‘empirical’ comes from the
Greek word empeiria, meaning experience’, and its history goes back
to Plato and the Sophists (which has the same root as ‘sophisticated’).
British empiricism refers to the eighteenth century philosophical
movement in Great Britain, which maintained that all knowledge comes
from experience. As mentioned before, in contrast to the empiricists,
the rationalists maintained that knowledge comes from foundational
concepts known intuitively through reason, such as innate ideas. Other
concepts are then deductively drawn from these.

British empiricists staunchly rejected the theory of innate ideas and

argued that knowledge is based on both sense experience and internal
mental experiences, such as emotions and self-reflection. Let us see
what they have to say by examining some of the fundamental ideas of
John Locke and David Hume as the foremost representatives of British
empiricism.
John Locke: from sensation to reflection
Locke (for a biographical note on him see Box 5.2) was concerned with
materials out of which our knowledge is made. He wanted to examine
the character and limitations of human knowledge. In his book, An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke stated his central ideas.

Box 5.2 John Locke (1632-1704)

John Locke was one of the most respected British philosophers, Oxford academic
and researcher of medicine. He served as a physician to Lord Ashley Cooper, the
Earl of Shaftsbury and supervised an operation to remove
a cyst from Lord Ashley’s liver. The operation was
successful. He served as a government official in-charge
of collecting information about trade and colonies. He
was an economic writer, political activist, and a
revolutionary, whose cause ultimately triumphed in the
Glorfous Revolution of 1688. Much of Locke’s work is
characterized by opposition to authoritarianism. This
opposition is both at the level of the individual person
and at the level of institutions such as the government
and the church. He believed that there were no divine John Locke
rights for monarchs to rule, and that human beings are (1632:1704)
free and in this condition all human beings are equal.

For Locke the mind of a child is like a blank sheet of [Link] all ideas *73¢
 Research come from actual experience. The mind has no innate ideas, but it has
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innate faculties; it perceives, remembers, and combines the ideas that
come tq it. The mind desires, deliberates, and wills; and these mental
activities are themselves the source of a new class of ideas. Experience
is therefore twofold. On the one hand, there are ideas of sensations of
seeing, hearing, touching, etc., and on the other there are ideas of
reflection, which are thinking, believing, etc. The first ideas are simple
where the mind is passive and the second ones of reflection are more
complex and active. Such ideas reflect our awareness of our own mental
experiences (introspection).
As for the relation between the idea and the object one experiences,
Locke makes a further distinction. He argues that objects have qualities,
which produce an idea in the mind.
Locke said there were primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities
are qualities which are produced by the senses such as smell, color, taste
and sound. The secondary qualities are those which refer to bulk, hardness,
volume, etc.
According to Locke, the mechanical operations of nature remain hidden
to us. Careful observation and experimentation may support a reliable
set of generalisations about the appearances of the kinds of things we
commonly encounter, but we cannot even conceive of their true natures.
What we know essentially, according to Locke, is the nominal essence of
an idea or thing. Thus, common names for substances are general terms
by means of which we classify as we observe them to be. We can agree
upon the meaning of such terms even though we remain ignorant of the
real essences of the things themselves. Locke held that the extent of
our knowledge is quite limited; the most we can hope for is probable
knowledge.
He extends this argument to the general nature of knowledge and comes
up with a deceptively simple notion of knowledge as the perception of
agreement or disagreement of ideas. The result of all this is that our
knowledge is limited. As per Locke’s definition, we can achieve genuine
knowledge only when we have clear ideas and can trace the connection
between them enough to perceive their agreement or disagreement.
That doesn’t happen very often, especially where substances are at issue.
Locke’s efforts have therefore led to the sobering conclusion that
certainty is rarely within our reach; and therefore we must often be
content with probable knowledge or mere opinion. Locke ultimately
recommends that we adopt significantly reduced epistemological
expectations.
Hume takes another step and reduces one’s expectations of certainty of
knowledge by being skeptic to begin with.

John Locke influenced the way his contemporaries viewed the process of
*74¢ human understanding. Many of them disagreed with his ideas. His main
critique came from George Berkeley (1685-1753), who wrote two books Issues of
Epistemology
(Treatises Concerning the Principles of Human knowledge (1710) and
Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1734)), in his reply to
the views of John Locke. Quite contrary to Locke’s theories that the
fundamental essence of the world was matter, and mind was only a
passive instrument, George Berkeley placed mind first and asserted that
things exist only when they are perceived by a mind.
As pointed out earlier, John Locke had his supporters too. One of them
was the Scottish philosopher, David Hume, who applied Locke’s ideas in
a logical manner and argued that all thought is built up from simple and
separate impressions. Let us examine his ideas a little further.
David Hume: belief as a habit
David Hume (for a note on his contributions see Box 5.3) argued that as
human beings do in fact live and function in the physical world, we
should try to observe how they do so. According to Hume, the proper
goal of philosophy is simply to explain why we believe what we do.
I ee e A R )R
“ Box 5.3 DavldHume (1711-1776)
David Hume is generally regarded as the most important phllosopher ever to
write in English. Hume’s major philosophical works, A
Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), the Enquiries
Concerning Human Understanding (1748) and
Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), as well as
the posthumously published Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion (1779), remain widely and deeply
influential, despite their being denounced by many
of his contemporaries as works of skepticism and
atheism. While Hume’s influence fs evident in the
moral philosophy and economic writings of his close
friend Adam Smith, he also awakened Immanuel Kant David Hume
from his "dogmatic slumbers” and "caused the scales (1711-1776)
to fall” from Jeremy Bentham’s eyes. Charles Darwin counted Hume as a central
influence.

Hume’s analysis of human belief begins with a careful distinction among

our mental contents of impressions, which are the direct, vivid, and
forceful products of immediate experience. Ideas are mere copies of
these original impressions. For example, the color of the tree at which |
am now looking is an’ impression, while my memory of the color of my
mother’s hair is merely an idea. Since each idea must be derived from
an antecedent impression, Hume supposed, it always makes sense to
inquire into the origins of the idea by asking from which impressions it is
derived. .
The apparent connection of one idea to another is invariably the result
of ar association that we manufacture ourselves. We use our mental
oper: tions to link ideas to each other in one of three ways: resemblance,
contiguity, or cause and effect. (You can give such examples as this «75%
 Research animal looks like that animal; this book is on that table; moving this
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switch turns off the light, etc.) Experience provides us with both the
ideas themselves and our awareness of their associations. All human
beliefs result from repeated applications of these simple associations.
Such beliefs can reach beyond the content of present sense-impressions
and memory, by appealing to presumed connections of cause and effect.
But since each idea is distinct and separable from every other, there is
no self-evident relation. These connections can only be derived from our
experience of similar cases. Hume argues that causal reasoning can
never be justified rationally. In order to learn, we must suppose that our
past experiences bear some relevance to present and future cases.
Although we do indeed believe that the future will be like the past, the
truth of that belief is not self-evident. In fact, it is always possible for
nature to change, so inferences from past to future are never rationally
certain. Thus, in Hume’s view, all beliefs as a matter of fact are
fundamentally non-rational.
You may consider Hume’s favorite example about our belief that the sun
will rise tomorrow. Clearly, this is a matter of fact; it rests on our
conviction that each sunrise is an effect caused by the rotation of the
earth. But our belief in that causal relation is based on past observations,
and our confidence that it will continue tomorrow cannot be justified by
reference to the past. So we have no rational basis for believing that the
sun will rise tomorrow. Yet we do believe it.
Skepticism quite properly forbids us to speculate beyond the content of
our present experience and memory, yet we find it entirely natural to
believe much more than that. Hume held that these unjustifiable beliefs
can be explained by reference to custom or habit. That is how we learn
from-experience. When | observe the constant conjunction of events in
my experience, | grow accustomed to associating them with each other.
Although many past cases of sunrise do not guarantee the future of
nature, my experience of them does get me used to the idea and produces
in me an expectation that the sun will rise again tomorrow. | cannot
prove that it will, but | feel that it must.
Remember that the association of ideas is a powerful natural process in
which separate ideas come to be joined together in the mind. Of course
they can be associated with each other by rational means, as they are in
the relations of ideas that constitute mathematical knowledge. But even
where this is possible, Hume argued, reason is a slow and inefficient
guide, while the habits acquired by much repetition can produce a powerful
conviction that is independent of reason.
Our beliefs in matters of fact arise from sentiment rather than from
reason. For Hume, imagination and belief differ only in the degree of
conviction with which their objects are anticipated. Although this positive
answer may seem disappointing, Hume maintained that custom or habit
*76¢ is the guide of life and the foundation of all natural sciences.
 The primitive human belief, Hume noted, is that we actually see (and Issues of
Epistemology
hear, etc.) the physical objects themselves. But modern philosophy and
science have persuaded us that this is not literally true. According to the
representationalist philosophy, we have no direct experience of the
presumed cause! If we know objects only by means of ideas, then we
" cannot use those ideas to establish a causal connection between the
things and the objects they are supposed to represent.
In fact, Hume supposed that our belief in the reality of an external world
is entirely non-rational. It cannot be supported either as a relation of
ideas or even as a matter of fact. Although it is utterly unjustifiable,
however, belief in the external world is natural and unavoidable. We are
in the habit of supposing that our ideas have external referents, even
though we can have no real evidence for doing so.
Where does this leave us? Hume believed himself to be carrying out the
empiricist program with rigorous consistency. Locke honestly proposed
the possibility of deriving knowledge from experience, but did not carry
it far enough and Berkley noticed further implications. Next, Hume has
shown that empiricism inevitably leads to an utter and total skepticism.
According to Hume, knowledge of pure mathematics is secure because
it rests only on the relations of ideas, without presuming anything about
the world. Experimental observations (conducted without any assumption
of the existence of material objects) permit us to use our experience in
forming useful habits. Any other epistemological effort, especially if it
involves the pretense of achieving useful abstract knowledge, is
meahingless and unreliable.

The most reasonable position, Hume held, is a "mitigated” skepticism

that humbly accepts the limitations of human knowledge while pursuing
the legitimate aims of mathematics and the sciences. In our non-
philosophical moments, of course, we will be thrown back upon the
natural beliefs of everyday life, no matter how lacking in rational.

Hume thought that a human being is a bundle of different perceptions

and in that sense has no fixed identity. He criticised the idea that everything
has a cause. In fact, he doubted everything that we assume on the basis
of our common sense and also on the basis of scientific knowledge.
Philosophers have found it hard to answer his penetrating doubts. Hume
influenced philosophical debates about principles of knowledge.

As mentioned earlier, Hume has been described as awakening Kant from

his dogmatic slumber; it is partly as a reaction to Hume that Kant
attempted a theory of knowledge. He wanted to rise above the skepticism
of Hume to look for certainties, yet he was not in favor of the pure
rationalism of Descartes. Immanuel Kant took rationality of the human
mind to a transcendental level and this attempt put him in the category
of idealists.
In the next section we will carry forward our discussion of theories of T w77
 Research knowledge to cover the idealist approach to understanding the social
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reality around us. Before moving on to the next section, it is a good idea
to complete Reflection and Action 5.1 exercise for absorbing what John
Locke and David Hume have said about the ways of acquiring knowledge.

Reflection and Action 5.1

I
According to Locke our ideas about things come out of our experience of
sensations and reflections. And Hume takes it further by concluding that a lot of
what we think of as certainties are only habits.
What are you expected to do?
In the light of the above statements find out from at least five persons, including
those who haven’t been schooled in scientific explanations, as to how they will
explain the movement of the sun and how they perceive that the earth is round.
Write a short note of about five hundred words on their explanations and share
it with the fellow students and the academic counselor at your Study Center.

5.5 Idealism
In philosophy, idealism refers to a system of thought in which the object
of external perception is held to consist of ideas. Idealism holds that the
mind plays a key role in the constitution of the world as it is experienced.
In the history of thought you can discern different forms and applications
of idealism. Its most radical form has been rejected because it is equivalent
to solipsism. Solipsism. is the view that all reality is nothing but the
activities of one’s own mind and that in reality nothing exists but one’s
own self. Idealists generally recognise the existence of the external or
natural world and do not claim that it can be reduced to the mere
process of thinking. They believe that the mind is active and capable of
producing and sustaining modes of being that would not have existed
otherwise, such as law, religion, art and mathematics (See Box 5.4 for
the ideas of George Berkeley.)

Box 5.4 Idealism and George Berkeley

The eighteenth century Irish philosopher George Berkeley is closely identified
with the Idealist philosophy. He believed that all aspects
of everything of which we are conscious are actually
reducible to the ideas present in the mind. For example,
the idea of a chair or a cow already exists in our minds;
therefore, we recognise the chair or the cow when we
find it. Thus the observer does not conjure the external
objects (chair or cow) into existence. In fact, Berkeley
held that the true ideas of the external objects are caused
directly by God.
George Berkeley
(1685-1753)

*78¢ You may contrast idealism with realism, which is a doctrine that universals
or general ideas have objective existence and matter as an object of Issues of
Epistemology
perception has real existence. In this sense, idealism is a theory that
posits the primacy of spirit, mind, or language over matter. It includes
claiming that thought has a crucial role in making the world the way it
is. In other words, thought and the world are made for one another, or,
they make one another.
The eighteenth century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant further refined
idealism through his critical inquiry into the limits of possible knowledge.
Kant held that the mind forces the world we perceive to take the shape of
space-and-time. Hegel (1770-1831) thought that history must be rational
in something significantly like the way science is. You can say that “idealism”
denotes the belief that abstract or mental entities have some sort of
reality “independent” of the world. Plato thought that all properties and
objects we could think of must have some such independent existence.
Confusingly, this kind of idealism was once termed “realism”.

Immanuel Kant: a priori categories

As pointed. out earlier, Kant’s (for a biographical note on him see Box
5.5) aim was to move beyond the traditional dichotomy between
rationalism and empiricism. The rationalist had tried to show that we
can understand the world by careful use of reason; this guarantees the
undoubtability of our knowledge but teft serious questions about its
practical content. The empiricist, on the other hand, had argued that all
of our knowledge must be firmly grounded in experience; practical content
was thus secured, but it turned out that we could be certain of very
little. Both approaches had failed, Kant argued, because both were
premised on the same mistaken assumption. To correct this he wrote his
book, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781). In this book Kant explained
his ideas about the foundations of our knowledge of the physical world.
He had great faith in moral freedom, in human beings’ ability to choose
what is right.

Box 5.5 Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Immanuel Kant was born in Konisburg, Germany. He rarely ever left the small
town that he lived in. He grew in the background of pious religious upbringing.
Though he did not attend Church in his later years
he kept his German Puritanical upbringing intact.
Yet, he could not isolate himself from the skeptical
current of that time. The men whom he later aimed
to refute, and most of all Hume, influenced Kant.
One biographer, Durant (1961: 261-262), says that
Kant’s life "passed like the most regular of regular
verbs, rising, coffee-drinking, writing, lecturing,
dining, walking”. During these quiet years he wrote
on many things, physical as well as metaphysical.
He wrote about planets, earth, and volcanoes and immanuel Kant
on anthropology and even on pedagogy. (1724-1804)
L «79%
 Research In his book, The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant is not attacking pure
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reason as much as he is highlighting its limitations. He in fact wants to
exalt pure reason to transcendental level without the corrupting elements
of the senses. He is not totally against the role that the senses play nor is
he disavowing reason. What he does is to combine both empiricist and
rationalist elements. How does he achieve this? He makes distinctions
between where our knowledge originates and what kind of knowledge it
is. Understanding these distinctions (see Box 5.6) is important in order
to follow Kant’s explanations.

Box 5.6 Analytic and Synthetic Propositions and A Priori and Posteriori
Knowledge
In an analytical proposition, the predicate is contained in the subject. For example,
the cricket balls are round.
In a synthetic proposition, the subject and predicate are independent of each
other.
To explain further, Kant maintained that a priori knowledge comes purely from
reasoning independent of experience. For example, 2+2=4 is an example of a.
priori knowledge. A posteriori knowledge is based on sensory experience. For
example, the statement, ‘The bird is sitting on the tree.’ is based on sensory
experience.

Kant went on to explain exactly how the thought process worked.

According to him we have some intuitive categories such as space and
time, which are absolute and independent of and preceding sense
impressions. On the question of Berkeley’s problem of whether we will
ever know the reality or the essence of objects, Kant has no problem
with the existence of objects. As Osborne (1991: 103) expresses Kant’s
position, “The mere existence of my own consciousness proves the
existence of objects outside of me”. But Kant sets limits to knowledge
and distinguishes between phenomena and noumena® (see Box 5.7).

—_——
Box 5.7 Phenomena and Noumena
According to Kant, it is vital always to distinguish between the distinct realms of
phenomena and noumena. All of our synthetic a priori judgments apply only to
the realm of phenomena. While phenomena are the appearances, which constitute
our experience; noumena are the things themselves, which constitute reality, or
what he calls ding-and-sich (the thing in itself). Since the thing in itself would by
definition be entirely independent of our experience of it, we are utterly ignorant
of the noumenal realm.

In Kant’s view, the most fundamental laws of nature, like the truths of |
mathematics, are knowable precisely because they make no effort to
describe the world as it really is but rather prescribe the structure of the
world as we experience it. By applying the pure forms of sensible intuition
*80¢ and the pure concepts of the understanding, we achieve a systematic
view of the phenomenal realm but learn nothing of the noumenal realm. Issues of
Epistemology
Mathematics and the sciences are certainly true of the phenomena; only
metaphysics claims to instruct us about the noumena.

Let us at this point complete Reflection and Action 5.2 for fully grasping
Kant’s idea of noumena.

Reflection and Action 5.2

The noumena according to Kant are beyond our realm of knowledge. In the light
of this statement answer the following questions.
Questions .
« Do you think religion can be considered a noumena, as it is beyond the
scope of explanation?
<+ Do you feel that the scientific explanations are inadequate to explain religious
phenomena?
%+ Is there a contradiction between scientific explanation and matters of faith?
“* How do you explain the position of a scientist, who believes in supernatural
events like religious miracles?

So far we have discussed the ideas which are subsumed within the positivist
outlook for understanding social reality. As you have already gathered in
the units of Block 1 of the book, not everyone agreed with the assumptions
discussed above. Many philosophers searched for meaning in observations
they made. They focused on the processes by which we establish meanings
in phenomena. For them important issue concerns the way we come to
know about what is happening in the world outside ourselves.
Phenomenology‘ is a school of thought, which has influenced profoundly
the development of new approaches of making sense of social reality.
Let us discuss in the next section the main ideas of the philosophy of this
school.

5.6 Phenomenology: Bracketing Experience

The limited understanding of the phenomenal world that one was able to
obtain using the approaches discussed in the various sections of this unit
so far, gave impetus to the search for new approaches. Phenomenology
provided inspiration to such seekers. Phenomenology treats consciousness
as a given datum upon which we may build the foundations of claims to
knowledge. Here is a presumption of an unmediated access to
consciousness. The focus is on explaining the nature of practical
consciousness. The intention is to reject a priori ‘constructions and pay
attention to the description of experience. This involves a description of
the physical actions of the actors as well as their intentions and purposes,
the way they make classification, attribute senses and meanings to their
world. In many ways, these ideas of phenomenology found full expression
in ethnomethodolgy.. Let us find out where these ideas came from.

In the late nineteenth century, a group of Austrian philosophers grew ~81%

 Research dissatisfied with the excessive subjectivity fostered by the philosophy of
Methodologies
the later German idealists. The Austrian philosophers were against
excessive analysis of experiences. Instead of looking for causes and
theories they concentrated on experiences as they present themselves
to consciousness, without recourse to theory, deduction, or assumptions
from other disciplines such as the natural sciences.
Franz Bentano (1838-1917) was the first scholar to develop the basic
approach of phenomenology. Brentano claimed that the central concern
of philosophy is to understand the nature and content of awareness in
ways that illuminate the distinction between the mental and the non-
mental.
In his book, Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano (1874)
proposed that every mental act be understood to have a doubly significant
representational function. The function is to both designate itself
reflectively and a phenomenal object intentionally. Indeed, this distinction
between acts and their objects is the crucial distinction for Brentano,
since “intentionality is the mark of the mental”. One and the same
phenomenal object can be intended by mental acts of different
modalities, like believing, imagining, etc. Brentano held that although
each intentional act is itself subjective, its intention is an objective
thing or fact in the world.
A disciple of Brentano, Edmund Husserl carried forward Brentano’s ideas
and we will now discuss Husserl’s contribution to the development of the
new approach.

Edmund Husserl
Brentano heavily influenced the German philosopher Edmund Husserl
(1859-1938). Husserl introduced the term phenomenology in his book, A
General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1913; trans. 1931) and
held that the task of phenomenology was to study essences, such as the
essence of emotions. Husserl stated that only the essences of conscious
structures are the proper subject matter of phenomenology. As formulated
by Husserl, phenomenology is the study of the structures of consciousness
that enables consciousness to refer to objects outside it. Such a study
requires reflection on the content of the mind to the exclusion of
everything else. Husserl called this type of reflection the phenomenological
reduction. Because the mind can be directed toward nonexistent as well
as real objects, Husserl noted that phenomenological reflection does not
presuppose that anything exists, but rather amounts to a “bracketing of
existence”, that is, setting aside the question of the real existence of
the contemplated object.
What Husserl gathered when he contemplated the content of his mind
were such acts as remembering, desiring, and perceiving and the abstract
content of these acts, which Husserl called meanings. These meanings,
he claimed, enabled an act to be directed toward an object under a
@82
certain aspect; and such directedness, called intentionality, he held to be Issues of
Epistemology
the essence of consciousness. Transcendental phenomenology, according
to Husserl, was the study of the basic components of the meanings that
make intentionality possible.
The question arises whether there were scholars who used
phenomenological methods? We take one example of such a researcher.
His name is Martin Heidegger.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher, employed the methods of
phenomenology in pursuit of more comprehensive
metaphysical goals. In Heidegger’s full-fledged
existentialism., the primary task of philosophy is
to understand being itself, not merely our knowledge
of it. Many feel that Heidegger’s philosophy was
more of a statement on the existence of modern
alienated humankind rather than any philosophical
propositions. He felt that traditional learning focuses
on ‘what is’, whereas it may be far more
Martin Heidegger
illuminating to examine the boundaries of ordinary (1889-1976)
knowledge by trying to study ‘what is not’.

Heidegger (1963) held that it was only through the experience of

nothingness that you are truly aware of something. For him traditional
logic is no help, since it considers all negation as emanating from
something positive. Heidegger proposed that we must abandon logic in
order to explore the character of nothing as the background out of
which everything emerges. Carefully contemplating nothing in itself, we
begin to notice the importance and vitality of our own moods. Above all
else, nothing is what produces in us a feeling of dread. This deep feeling
of dread, Heidegger held, is the most fundamental human clue to the
nature and reality of nothing. Heidegger was making a statement on
ontology or existence rather than actually theorising on knowledge.
The phenomenological movement in philosophy had a great influence on
sociology. Such sociologists as Alfred Shutz have
adapted it to promote an understanding of the
relationship between states of individual
consciousness and social life. As an approach within
sociology, phenomenology seeks to reveal how human
awareness is implicated in the production of social
action, social situations and social worlds. Alfred
Schutz distilled from Husserl’s rather dense writings
Alfred Shutz
a sociologically relevant approach. Schutz (1972) set (1899-1959)
about describing how subjective meanings give rise
to an apparently objective social world, in which
the activities of everyday life have a duration or temporality. It comprises +83¢
 Research a continuity that remains throughout the waking hours of the individual’s
Methodologies
life. According to Shutz, individuals organise intentionality of their
activities in terms of their overall priorities,.

The short note on phenomenology in this unit is just to give you an idea
of what has engaged the attention of knowledge seekers besides the
issues of empiricism, rationalism and idealism.

5.7 Conclusion
In this unit we attempted to present some of the main ideas regarding
the theories of knowledge. The influence of these philosophical ideas is
wide ranging. You would have already found references to some of these
ideas in the units of Block | of the book and you are likely to encounter
them in subsequent units as well. The focus on the salient ideas
associated with the quest to make sense of the world around us has
hopefully given you an introduction to epistemological issues at the back
of methodologies in social science research.

Further Reading &

Nagel, Ernest [Link] Structure of Science. Routledge: London (For
problems of epistemology)

—_—
o —

* 844
Unit6
Philosophy of Social Science
Contents
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Foundations of Science
6.3 Science, Modernity and Sociology
6.4 Rethinking Science
6.5 Crisis in Foundation
6.6 Conclusion

Learning Objectives
It is expected that after reading the Unit 6, you will be able to answer
the following questions
<3
What were the diverse philosophical influences on sociology?
e
o< What are the major currents of thinking in sociology like the
positivist tradition and interpretative thinking?
< How were Enlightenment and the project of modernity idealised
in sociology?
4 How was modernity shattered by the post-modernist critique?

6.1 Introduction
Social science or, to put it more specifically, sociology is a formal body of
knowledge that has grown, evolved, created a community of scholars,
and established a distinctive tradition of learning. This is possible because
it has a method, a set of principles or guidelines for observing the social
reality, and constructing a systematic body of knowledge. In other words,
it has a philosophy.
You can make out that here we are using the word philosophy not in the
metaphysical or spiritual sense of the term. By philosophy we mean a
way of seeing and observing, a way of thinking, arguing and arriving at
truth. It is, therefore, important to understand the philosophy of social
science. Only then can you comprehend how social scientists think, argue
and construct the knowledge of society, and how it differs from the
other branches of knowledge. A bouple of examples would make it clear.
You may have read epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
These are extraordinarily rich narratives that give you a glimpse of
social history. But then, when modern historians write the history of the
ancient period, their way of constructing history is qualitatively different
from these epics. They may have used these epics as possible sources,
but they are not storytellers, their goal is not to adore, glorify or condemn
certain characters, or mythologise the past. They seek to remain neutral’,
rely on all possible facts, and write about the politico-economic life, «85%
 Research social formations, tools and technologies used in the given period. Modern
Methodologies
history, it is therefore argued, is not fiction, or a narrative, or mythical
“account. Instead, it is a kind of science based on hard facts and empirical
evidence.
Likewise, when M.N. Srinivas (1966) came forward with the notion of
‘Sanskritisation’, a process that indicates how the lower castes emulate
the norms, values, practices of the forward castes, it was based on hard
empirical evidence. It was, therefore, different from the textual account
of the rigid and immobile caste system. In other words, the sociological
reading of caste, which is based on a field view, is qualitatively different
from the way it is being seen in the scriptures.
As a matter of fact, mythologies, folk tales, epics, travelogues and
literature are innumerable sources from which we come to know about
human society. But what give a distinctive identity to modern social
science are its philosophy, its method of enquiry, and its ways of acquiring
knowledge. No wonder you often say that history is not mythology,
cultural anthropology is not travelogue, sociology is not journalism, and
political science is not an election speech. This is not to suggest that
mythology and travelogue, or journalism and election speeches, are
domains of falsehood. The point we are trying to make is that the
methodology of social science is qualitatively different. It is a formal,
structured body of knowledge having its own technical idioms and
vocabulary, and distinctive ways of collecting data and arriving at
generalisations. Social scientists, it is argued, are “objective” and “value-
neutral”; they rely on hard empirical facts, and the social science account
is, therefore, not an ideological, subjective, valorisation or condemnation
of social reality. It is often believed that understanding this methodology
is like comprehending the very philosophy of modern science that gave
an identity to social science. In this unit you would learn about this
intellectual trajectory: how modern social sciences grew and evolved

6.2 Foundations of Science

We call it social science. But what is science? Science, you often tend to
believe, is objective. Science is based on facts;
science needs rational and dispassionate analysis,
not an emotional or sentimental judgment. In
order to make sense of the philosophic [Link]
modern science, we would briefly refer to two
distinguished thinkers, Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
and René Descartes (1564-1650), because it is
generally agreed that their contributions in the
Francis Bacon seventeenth century provided the foundations of
(1561-1626)
modern science.

+86¢ Bacon taught us the first important lesson of objectivity.: how to spell
out the book .of nature [Link] is, how to observe it without any pre- Philosophy of
Social Science
selection and bias. For Bacon, there are many delusions that act as
obstacles and divert us from truth. As a result, we confuse the reality
with our own subjective idea of it. We must overcome all these delusions
that Bacon regarded as the ‘idols of mind’. There are four species of
idols that Bacon (1970: 89-96) identified.
< Idols of the tribe: These idols are common to the human species
as such, and emanate from the typical human weakness: our urge
to see what we like to see in the world, our search for regularity,
and our obsession with our own beliefs. Human minds, Bacon (1970:
92) argued, are like ‘uneven mirrors’ that distort the reality.
Superstitions and prejudices continue to prevail because of these
idols. In fact, the human being’s ‘feelings imbue and corrupt his
understanding in innumerable and sometimes imperceptible
ways’. )
<& Idols of the den: These idols, unlike the idols of the tribe, are
unique to specific individuals. Each individual has his/her own
dispositions and idols. Some, for instance, are inherently optimistic,
some are pessimistic, and some strive for antiquity; some love
change and innovation. All these individual peculiarities tend to
affect one’s ways of seeing, and hence distort the reality.
< Idols of the market: These idols are those that emanate out of
human interaction, and cause severe linguistic confusion. Our
language often proves to be inadequate to describe the reality as
it is. No wonder, Bacon (1970: 94) said that ‘the great and solemn
disputes of learned men often terminate in controversies about
words and names’.
< Idols of the theater: These are those idols ‘that have crept into
men’s minds from the various dogmas of peculiar systems of
philosophy’ (Bacon 1970: 90).

For Bacon, these idols are essentially obstacles and must be overcome.
Only then is it possible to see and observe the world without bias. In
other words, nature exists out there, and it is only pure empiricism (not
contaminated by our feelings and sentiments) that can grasp it. And this
objective knowledge, he believed, would enable human beings to establish
their superiority over nature. It is in this sense that knowledge is indeed
power. And the relationship between the knower and the known is detached
and impersonal; the vulnerability of the self of the knower is controlled,
and the act of knowing becomes a dispassionate exercise.
If Francis Bacon provided the foundations of empiricism or what is known
as the method of induction, Rene Descartes taught us the fundamental
lessons of rationalism (or deductive reasoning). Descartes privileged the
mental and intellectual, and argued that it was through clear ideas, or
pure rationality, that human beings could arrive at truth and became
<« 87
%
free from all uncertainties and errors. For him, the sense could not be
 Research
reliable source of knowledge; the senses could deceive one. As a result,
Methodologles
in an act of meditation, Descartes (1641: 439-440) began to doubt
everything that he learned through the senses.
| will assume therefore that not God, who is supremely good and the source of
truth, but rather some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning who
has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. | shall think that the sky,
the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the
delusions of dreams, which he has devised to ensnare my judgment. | shall consider
myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely
believing that | have all these things.

Yet there was one thing Descartes felt certain about. Even if a demon
deceived him, the fact that he was being deceived confirmed his existence
as a thinking being. Descartes (1641: 440) wrote,
| have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no
earth, no mind, and no body. Does it follow that | too did not exist? Not if |
convinced myself of something, then | certainly existed. But there is a deceiver
of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me.
In that case | too undoubtedly exist, even if he is deceiving me; and let him _
deceive as much as he can, he will never bring it about that | am nothing so long
as | think that | am something. So after considering everything very thoroughly, |
must finally conclude that this proposition / am, / exist, is certainly true whenever
it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.

In other words, as Descartes argued, ‘man is a thing that thinks’. This

led him to privilege the indivisible mind that makes one think, and
separate it from the non-thinking body. While one cannot separate oneself
from one’s mind, one can, however, exist without one’s body! Descartes
(1641 467) said,
There is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the
body is by its very nature always divisible. For when | consider the mind or myself
in so far as | am merely a thinking thing, | am unable to distinguish any parts
within myself. | understand myself to be quite single and complete. Although the
whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, | recognise that if a foot or
arm or any other part of the body is out off, nothing has thereby been taken
away from the mind.

For Descartes, this mind/body dualism is absolutely important. The

message he conveyed was clear. What provides solid foundations is a
distinctively clear/ rational thought emanating from the indivisible,
integrated, coherent mind. And this rational thought is pure, abstract,
disembodied, completely dissociated from the senses, from pain and
pleasure, from feelings and emotions.

Needless to add, these two fundamentals, namely, objective empiricism

and disembodied rationality, gave a momentum to modern science. But
then, it was the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century (it was a
logical culmination of European Renaissance, Reformation and Industrial
Revolution (for details see Box 6.1 and Block 1 of ESO 13 of IGNOU’s B A
programme) that was really a turning point, a breakthrough that
generated a new way of seeing, and celebrated the science of Bacon,
w88
¢
Descartes and Newton as the most cherished and legitimate body of Philosophy of
Social Science
knowledge.

Box 6.1 The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment refers to an intellectual movement, primarily in France and
Britain, that spans approximately one hundred years from the 1680s to 1789.
Preceding and setting the stage for the Enlightenment were writers and scientists
who investigated the natural world and systems of thought, writers such as Galileo
Galilei, Issac Newton, Francis Bacon, and René Descartes. Enlightenment writers
include Hobbes, Locke, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. The French writers
were sometimes called the philosophers. The leading representatives were
religious skeptics, political reformers, cultural critics, historians and social theorists
(Zeitlin 1990:1).

In contrast to systems of thought where the sacred had dominated and

where questioning was discouraged, Enlightenment thinkers viewed
human reason as dominant. No subjects of study were to be forbidden,
there were no unaskable questions, with all aspects of human life
appropriate for examination and study. In doing this, Enlightenment
thinkers combined the philosophic tradition of abstract rational thought
of Descartes and other philosophers with the tradition of experimentation
or empirical philosophy from Galilei, Newton, Bacon and others. The
result was a new system of human inquiry that attacked the old order
and privileges, put emphasis and faith on science, the scientific method
and education, and acquired the practical function of asking critical
questions about existing institutions and demanding that the unreasonable
ones, those contrary to human nature, be changed. All social obstacles to
human perfectibility were to be progressively eliminated. (Zeitlin1990: 2).
The writings of the Enlightenment profoundly affected politics and the
development of sociology. The French Revolution (1789) and the American
Revolution (1776) had many causes but many Enlightenment ideas and
ways of thinking had a great effect on these political and social changes.
The slogans of “liberty, equality, fraternity” and “life, liberty, and pursuit
of happiness” state the political ideals of these revolutions and reflect
the ideas of Enlightenment thought.
Possibly it is hard to speak of a singular/unifying Enlightenment agenda,
because the philosophers, such as Voltaire (1694-1778),
Monstesquieu(1689-1755), Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
and Adam Smith (1723-1790), did not necessarily speak
the same language. Nevertheless, from these
Enlightenment philosophers it is not altogether
impossible to identify a series of the following salient
Adam Smith
features of the new thinking. (1723-1790)
K3
e Instead of a God ordained society, Enlightenment spoke of the
rri-nacy of reason. It fought a great battle against Christianity,
89@
 Research
Methodologies particularly its implicit notion of originals in and imperfectability.
Voltaire asserted that human beings were neither good nor evil
as such; instead, the specificity of circumstances would matter a
great deal in unfolding the potential of human
beings (as mentioned in Mary 1996). In other
words, it is possible for human beings to shape
their destiny and create a better world. In that
sense, the Enlightenment agenda was future-
oriented and optimistic.

> Its optimism was sustained by its epistemology:

its spirit of critical enquiry. ‘Our age’, wrote Immanuel Kant
(1783), ‘is in a special degree, the age of criticism,
and to criticism everything must submit’. Nothing was therefore
taken for granted. This criticality gave a new momentum,enabled
humankind to come out of the trap of closed/dogmatic thinking,
and finally revealed a positive relationship between reason and
freedom, science and truth.

ixg This criticality was not necessarily negative in nature. As a matter

of fact, it destroyed as well as constructed. It did not oppose the
ethical/spiritual core of Christianity. It opposed only the closed/
dogmatic character of Christianity and provided the foundations
of a new world based on a secular/liberal worldview. In other
words, the roots of modernity: a project that celebrates
scientificity, rationality and individuality could be found in the
Enlightenment agenda itself. It was progressive. It believed in a
linear/historical progress, which gave a new dynamism to the
exploration of knowledge, innovation and experimentation.

¢ Asfar as the knowledge of human society was concerned, the philosophy

of the Enlightenment gave a new direction, as outlined below.
i) Society exists out there readily amenable to empirical
observation.
ii) This knowledge of society can be objective and universal, and
hence cumulative and progressive.
if) This knowledge is [Link] and superior to ideological
distortions and religious beliefs.
iv) This knowledge is positively useful for the restructuring of
human society.
Let us now discuss in more detail the interface between science, modernity
and sociology.

6.3 Science, Modernity and Sociology

It would not be wrong to say. that the modern social sciences emerged
out of this epistemological optimism. It was, therefore, not surprising
*90¢ that right from its inception modern sociology, to take a specific example,
was guided by these two philosophic foundations: a) objective/universal Philosophy of
Socfal Science
science, and b) progressive and historically inevitable modernity. Sociology
saw itself as a science: a scientific study of society. As an objective,
value neutral and empirical science, it differentiated itself from religion,
metaphysics and commonsense. As you have been learning about positivism
and even classical sociology and the way both grew in the late nineteenth-
and-early twentieth-century, you would discover the immense impact of
Enlightenment philosophers on sociology and its methodology. Likewise,
sociology emerged in order to make sense of the new age. Sociology, it
is often said, was a product of Enlightenment modernity (Nisbet 1967).
Not solely that. The leading sociologists of the late ninetieth and early
twentieth century, from Auguste Comte to Karl Marx, were the children
of modernity. In their own specific ways, they celebrated the new age
and wrote substantially about it. We would take some examples to make
this point clear (see Box 6.2 for examples).

Box 6.2 Examples of Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx

Emile Duekheim
First, recall Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), who wrote The Rules of Sociological
Method (1895, English translation published in1938/ 1964). He believed in the
scientific study of society, and wanted sociology to project itself as a science of
social facts, not a political/partisan ideology. And one of his major writings, The
Division of Labour(1893, English translation published in 1964 ), was an attempt to
conceptualise the formation of modern industrial societies characterised by
heightened differentiation, specialisation and a complex form of division of labor.
He made a distinction between such a modern society with its ‘organic solidarity”
and a simple and/ or traditional society having ‘mechanical solidar‘ty. g

Karl Marx
Second, think of Karl Marx (1818-1883), who believed in the Enlightenment
aftirmation of scientific reasoning. He seemed to be heavily influenced by Newton
(1642-1727) and Darwin (1809-1882). And it is now well known that he sought to
dedicate the second volume of Capital (1867) to Charles Darwin. Marx’s
‘scientificity’ could be seen in his urge to discover the ‘iron laws’ of capitalist
development, his inclination to plead for universal generalisations like ‘the history
of hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle’ and the distinction
he made between historical materialism @ and ideology® . Ideology, he argued
almost like Francis Bacon, distorts and falsifies the reality, whereas the science
of historical materialism enables us to see the reality as it is: how the mode of
production seeks to govern the socio-cultural life and resultant conflicts and
contradictions in society. Marx’s affinity with modernity could be seen in his
faith in historical progress, in science, in urbanity. No wonder, he didn’t appreciate
the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ or ‘oriental despotism’, and saw immense
possibilities in the British rule in India because it enabled us to overcome our
isolation and stagnation, and experience the light of modern civilisation!

It is not our contention to argue that these thinkers were blind champions
of modernity. They were great scholars, and immensely sensitive. They
could see the pathologies of modernity. You already know that Durkheim
veas czacerned about anomie®: the growing normlessness in modern *91
e
 Research societies (see Block 3 of ESO 13 of IGNOU’s B A programme). You also
Methodologies
know that Marx was a great humanist who critiqued the fragmented
character of capitalism, and its alienation®. And you are also aware that
Max Weber, yet another great sociologist of the classical era, spoke of
the pathos of disenchantment' inherent in the modern age. But you
need to appreciate the essential point. Even when they saw problems
with modernity, they did not want to regress to a non-modern age.
Instead, they retained their faith in the foundations of modernity and
science, and sought to accomplish the agenda of modernity by making it
more humane and egalitarian.

As you can see, science with its central principles of objectivity,

universalisation and causal explanation did have a tremendous impact on
the formation of modern social science. This, however, does not mean
that there was absolute agreement on the ‘unity of method’. True,
positivism, a dominant mode of sociological enquiry in the nineteenth
and early twentieth century, did not see much qualitative difference in
the study of nature and socio-cultural domain. But then, there were
many who differed, and pleaded for a separate mode of enquiry in social
and cultural sciences. Its roots could be seen in Immanuel Kant (1724-
1804), one of the leading Enlightenment philosophers. While meditating
on nature, he spoke of the two distinct principles— a) the physical
component being enslaved by the senses, and b) the moral component
that strives for truth, justice and beauty (Seidman 1983). No wonder,
one aspect of the Enlightenment social theory that spoke of human
beings’ conditioning gave birth to material/ structural analysis, and the
other mode of enquiry that spoke of human beings’ freedom gave
importance to voluntarism, human agency, creativity and reflexivity.

Herein lies the point of departure. There are social scientists who would
argue that unlike an object in the physico-chemical or biological world,
the human being is a creative/reflexive creature, and human society is,
therefore, a domain of meanings, not just an
‘external thing’ constraining us. In other words,
human society, it is argued, has to be seen as a
product of creative accomplishment on the part of
the social actors. The task of social science is to
understand and interpret these meanings. Max
Weber, as you will learn in Unit 7, emerged out of
this philosophic tradition. For Weber (1949),
sociology is an interpretative study of the subjective
meaning complex of social actions. He regarded it
e o as verstehen®, a method of understanding the
conscious/subjective meanings social actors attach
to the world. It was in this sense that Weber saw beyond mere economism,
and interpreted early capitalism° as a domain of meanings that the
proponents of Protestantism or Calvinism attached to the world (for
©92
¢ details Block 4 of ESO 13 of IGNOU’s B A programme).
 Philosophy of
Well, Weber did speak of the human agency. But this does not mean that
Social Science
his sociology was "subjective” in nature. Instead, he sought to unite the
interpretative study of subjective meanings with an objective causal
analysis. He was not against the basic tenets of science: objectivity,
value neutrality and causal explanation. What he was objecting to was
the positivist urge to equate society with nature, and undermine the
domain of meanings. He was therefore talking about ®ideal types’,
which were more like models rather than exact scientific laws.
In the twentieth century the the tradition of interpretative sociology
was further developed through phenomenological and ethno-
methodological traditions (Giddens 1976). The central thrust of these
traditions is that the world is largely a world
experienced by human beings, and the task of
social science is to describe, understand and make
sense of this world: how people themselves define
and construct it. Alfred Schutz (1899-1959), a
major proponent of the phenomenological
tradition, spoke of the inter-subjective world in
which people interact, communicate and
understand one another through the process of Alfred Schutz
typification.: a process that enables people to fix (1899-1959)
and define one another, and have a shared role-expectation. It is through
this process of typification, that a meaningful and stable social order is
possible. For Schutz (1972) the everyday world in which people interact
is the paramount reality. It is taken far granted. And that makes society
possible. But then, there are other realms, like the realm of dreams, or
the realm of scientific theorising, in which people experience the world.
All these finite provinces of meaning have their own notions of time and
space, and shifts from one realm to the other involve ‘shock’. But then,
for Schutz (1972), the paramount reality is most important, and all of us
have to come back to it and experience the world as direct/ real actors.
Sociology, for Schutz (1972), must describe and understand how people
experience the world. This means that sociology must take people’s
descriptions and definitions seriously.
It is in this sense that sociological constructs are ‘second order constructs’.
Likewise, Harold Garfinkel (1967) spoke of ethno-methodology, or
‘people’s methodology’. The task is to describe how people themselves
define their world, not to “explain it in terms of some context-free,
abstract, universal generalisation. In other words, in these traditions
you are witnessing a shift from abstract explanation to meaningful
understanding, from universality to specificity, from theory to description,
from structural causes to people’s lived experiences.

Let us complete Reflection and Acion 6.1 to fully grasp the notion of
construction of meaning.
,
>93¢
 Research
Methodologies Reflection and Action 6.1
Hygiene is an example of social construction. What might be considered hygienic
pure and proper in one culture might be considered improper or unhygienic in
another culture. What might be considered a tradition might be a crime according
to some. For instance, female circumcision in parts of Africa is a custom for some
cultures, but many oppose it as an act of violence. In India, when Sati, the
burning of the widow, was performed, in Rajasthan, in 1986 , it was upheld by a
section of the community as valorisation of womanhood and tradition while it
was considered a criminal act by the Indian State.
While there are typical and peculiar social constructions very relative to one’s
culture, so much so that understanding them might involve interpreting them in
one’s own cultural logic, there are also such aspects of society which are
universally found among cultures and across cultures.
in the light of the above examples and statements, write down answers the
following questions on a separate sheet of paper.
Questions
“* Can one be value-neutral in situations such as female infanticide and sati?
¢ If meanings are relative to the cultures that construct them, then is it
possible to compare two differently oriented cultures?
** Can you think of more examples of such relative constructions of meanings?
The two traditions of social science, positivist and interpretative, have a point of
convergence, because both these traditions emerged out of Enlightenment
modernity. In the positivist tradition you can see the Enlightenment affirmation
of the legitimacy of scientific explanation. And in the interpretative tradition
you can find the affirmation of the Enlightenment optimism centered on human
beings’ agency and their ability to create their own world.

But then, as you would learn, these very foundations are in a crisis, since
all these modern principles, scientific objectivity, historical progress,
coherent/rational self, and the agency/ freedom of the actor, are
doubted, particularly with the advent of post modernity. And it has
caused a severe philosophic crisis, and sociology has to cope with it.

6.4 Rethinking Science

Before you learn more about the challenges that post-modernists have
posed to the discipline, it is important to devote some attention to the
philosophy of science (see Unit 1). Science, as you have already learnt,
provided the foundations of modern social science. But then the very
notion of science has undergone dramatic changes in our times, and the
philosophers of science have made us rethink science. No wonder, this
intense debate on the nature of science did have its impact on the
philosophy of social science. It is, therefore, important that you learn
something meaningful about this debate.
Let us begin with Karl Popper (1902-1994), a leading philosopher of
science in the twentieth century, who changed our understanding of
science and society. Popper grew up in Vienna, taught in New Zealand
and England, encountered logical positivism and Marxism, and came
*94
% forward with his distinctive idea of science (Popper 1972). He was heavily
 Philosophy of
influenced by the changes in physics that emerged out of Einstein’s
Social Science
theory of relativity; it revealed that
Newtonian physics, which was dominant for
more than two hundred years, could be
interrogated. This led him to plead for the
relative character of science. Science is not
something solid and stable, or eternally valid.
Instead, science, for him, is a set of
conjectures subject to falsification and
refutation. No wonder, as Popper (1972: 37) #
asserted, the creation of the scientific status Karl Popper
of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability (1902-1994)
or testability. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event,
he reminded us, is non-scientific. Contrary to popular belief, irrefutability
is not a virtue of science. The challenge confronting the scientific
community is not to search for confirmations/ verification; of the existing
theory, but to search for falsification and refutation. It is not at all
necessary to absolutise or sanctify any particular source of knowledge,
be it Baconian empiricism or Cartesian rationality, and think that the
knowledge gained through it is a domain of absolute certainty. This
would lead to dogmatic thinking and generate a false belief that the
world is full of verifications of the existing theory. Popper, however,
critiqued this dogmatic thinking, and argued that science could progress
only through an open culture promoting the spirit of refutability and
falsifiability. See below a quotation from Popper (1972: 27).
So my answer to the questions how do you know? What is the source or the basis
of your assertion? What observations have led you to it? would be: | do not know:
my assertion was merely a guess. Never mind the source, or the sources, from
which it may spring, there are many possible sources and | may not be aware of
half of them; and origins or pedigrees have in any case little bearing upon truth.
But if you are interested in the problem which | tried to solve by my tentative
assertion, you may help me by criticising it as severely as you can, and if you can
design some experimental test which you think might refute my assertion, | shall
gladly, and to the best of my power, help you to refute it.

It is only through this culture of “critical rationalism” that science

progresses. Science is inherently critical and democratic, perpetually
progressing through trial and error, conjectures and refutations. But
pseudo~science° is dogmatic; it is too certain of its explanatory power,
it sees only confirmations and verifications. With this understanding of
science Popper critiqued logical positivism, determinism and Marxism.
For instance, Marxism, Popper alleged, is not genuinely interested in
falsifiability. Instead, it is dogmatic, desperately striving for confirmations
and verifications. Popper (1972: 35) said:
A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming
evidence of his interpretation of history; not only in news, but also in its
presentation, which revealed the class bias of the paper — and especially of
course in what the paper did not say. * 954
 Research Moreover, Marxism as a doctrine of histon‘cismo, as Popper (1972: 337)
Methodologies
argued, is inclined to large-scale historical prophesies. But then, ‘the
kind of prophecies which Marxism offers are in their logical character
more akin to those of the Old Testament than to those of modern
physics’. This sort of prophecy is possible only in a domain that is well
isolated, stationary and recurrent, say the solar system. But unlike the
solar system, human society cannot be separated from our deeds. Society,
far from being repetitive, is perpetually changing, evolving and growing,
‘The fact that we can predict eclipses does not, therefore, provide a
valid reason for explicating that we can predict revolutions’ (Popper
1970: 340).
In other words, Karl Popper gave a new meaning to science. He sought
to free science from positivistic certainties. Science, for him, is relative;
science is like myth-making. And what promotes science is not the
arrogance emanating from cognitive certainty, but a spirit of humbleness
that encourages the possibility of falsifiability and refutability.
Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) was yet another major philosopher of science
who taught us about normal science and its
inherent conservatism, and extraordinary science
leading to scientific revolutions. For Kuhn, normal
science relies on the centrality of the paradigm
that a particular scientific community takes for
granted. To use Kuhn’s, (1970: 10) own words,
‘paradigms are some accepted examples of
actual scientific practice, examples which include
law, theory, application, and instrumentation
Thomas Kuhn together, that provide models from which arise
(1922:1996) particular coherent traditions of scientific
research’. A paradigm, in other words, provides the background, and
directs the trajectory of normal science. Its power lies in its ability to
attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of
scientific activity. It was in this sense that Newton’s Principa and Optics,
Franklin’s Electricity and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity acted as
paradigms at different junctures of scientific history. For Kuhn, normal
science does not seek to refute, falsify or interrogate the prevalent
paradigm. Instead, it seeks to actualise the potential of the paradigm
itself, and resolve all residual ambiguities through further elaboration,
experimentation and fact-gathering activities. Kuhn (1970: 23-24) said,
Normal science consists in the actualisation of that promise, an actualisation
achieved by extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays
as particularly revealing, by increasing the extent of the match between those
facts and the paradigm’s predictions, and by further articulation of the paradigm
itseif.
Kuhn characterised this entire process as a 'puzzle solving’ activity. The
reason is that the problems normal science investigates are more like
96<
puzzles that can be solved only through the rules provided by the paradigm
itself. Whatever does not fit into the paradigm is kept aside. Kuhn Philosophy of
Social Science
(1970: 37) elaborated:
A paradigm can insulate the community from those socially important problems
that are not reducible to the puzzle form, because they cannot be stated in
terms of the conceptual and instrumental tools the paradigm supplies. One of
the reasons why normal science seeks to progress so rapidly is that its practitioners
concentrate on problems that only their own lack of ingenuity should keep them
from solving.

No wonder, the centrality of the paradigm, the commitment to it, and

its specificity give a concrete direction to science. It becomes a profession
with its specific adherents and specialists, with its journals and
publications. And, paradoxically, it is this conservatism that leads to the
cumulative progress of normal science. But then, there are situations
when the crisis/ anomaly begins to confront the scientific community. It
may arise because of the persistent failure of normal science to make
sense of the new phenomenon. This crisis situation leads to extraordinary
science. It is extraordinary because, unlike normal science, it
acknowledges the crisis, interrogates the established paradigm, and dares
to become innovative. Kuhn (1970: 90-91) held,
Confronted with anomaly or with crisis, scientists take a different attitude toward
existing paradigms, and the nature of their research changes accordingly. The
proliferation of competing articulations, the willingness to try anything, the
expression of explicit discontent, the recource to philosophy and to debate
over fundamentals, all these are symptoms of a transition from normal to
extraordinary research.

And eventually, it is this extraordinary science that leads to a ‘paradigm

shift’ resulting in scientific revolutions. It was the way Einstein, to take
a specific example, made a revolution in physics. The revolutionary or
new paradigm is incompatible with the earlier one. Indeed, Kuhn
repeatedly emphasised on the ‘incommensurability of paradigms’. There
are substantial differences between successive paradigms. For instance,
in one solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded
in a flat, the other in a curved matrix of space. The result is that the
two groups of scientists. see different things when they look from the
same point in the same direction.

It is not easy for the scientific community, as Kuhn reminded us, to

accept the new paradigm, because massive conservatism/ dogmatism
characterises the community of normal scientists. It is, however,
important to realise that, despite this resistance, the new paradigm
succeeds in attracting more and more adherents, and eventually establishes
its hegemony. The new paradigm appeals because it is said to be ‘neater’,
‘more suitable’, or ‘simpler’ than the old.
What are the implications of this understanding of science for us? Normal
sc¢ience, because of the centrality of the paradigm, is extremely focused.
It is also narrow and conservative because it does not wish to see beyond
the paradigm. Things are, however, different in other creative fields s970
 Research like music, graphic arts and literature, and even the social sciences, the
Methodologies
field that, unlike natural science, cannot be said to have a hegemonic
paradigm to follow. No wonder, in these fields learners are made aware
of competing and often incommensurable approaches, and they must
ultimately choose for themselves. An example would make this difference
clear. Students of physics working on optics would feel so confident
about the dominant paradigm that they would find no reason to entertain
any other competing theory. That is precisely what the success of a
paradigm is all about, its ability to defeat all competing approaches. But
imagine students of sociology working on religion. For them, there is no
hegemonic paradigm. Instead, they are likely to be aware of multiple,
competing and even incommensurable approaches to religion, say, the
Durkheimian, Weberian and Marxist approaches. This makes social science
more ‘open ended’ and fluid.
Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994) was another leading thinker who critiqued
the hegemony of scientific method. No method,
even the most successful one, for Feyerabend
(1982), has the right to subdue and marginalise
other methods. No wonder, he refused to give
his consent to scientismo, that is, the belief
that science is the only valid form of knowledge.
Instead, he revealed the politics of science, its
relationship with power, and the way through
propaganda and other strategies it murdered all
P’“x:{zfi;’;’f"" alternative forms of knowledge. Scientism, he
insisted, would go against the true spirit of a
democratic society, because democracy should imply the plurality of
knowledge systems, methods and traditions of enquiry. Each tradition,
each fairy tale, each story, for Feyerabend (1982), has its validity. Nothing
is dead or meaningless. It is important that we embrace an ‘anarchist
theory of knowledge’ implying that everything is possible.
You may be wondering why we are discussing so much the philosophy of
science. If you think deeply, you would realise that it is meaningful for
social science. There are two lessons that you can learn.

i) Positivism that seeks to legitimise the ‘certainty’ of science gets

eroded. For Popper, science is like a conjecture subject to
refutation; for Kuhn, science is conservative, and prevails because
scientists too, like any other group of people, are being guided
by peer group pressure and other socialising forces; and for
Feyerabend, science has its own history of domination and
violence. In other words, it speeds the process of de-legitimisation
of the positivistic foundation of social science.
ii) With the demystification of science, sociology tends to become
more sensitive to the plurality of methods and traditions. It acquires
» 98 & the courage to come out of the shadow of natural science.
 In order to fully grasp the arguments presented above, let us complete Philosophy of
Social Science
Reflection and Action 6.2 and then proceed with the discussion on crisis
in foundations of the social sciences.

| Reflection and Action 6.2

||
Science as the only legitimate explanation is coming under increasing criticism.
While it is acknowledged that science and technology have made immense progress
and have made efforts to solve many of human problems such as hunger and
disease and have tamed to some extent the wrath of the elements of nature,
| they have not been able to solve all of human problems, questions and search for
| meanings. This inability of science is one reason given for the increasing presence
| of religion in the everyday lives of people the world over. And if science is not
| the only legitimate explanatory avenue then what are the alternatives?
|
| Some firm believers of Christianity contend that "evolution
is a fantasy that
| scientists
and other secularists
cling to because it explains
humankind
through a
| rocess other than God's divine hand”. They wish “the creation angle could be
| worked
into the school curriculum somehow as another possible explanation. It
| could even be presented as a._"theory”..” (source: [Link]
| In the context of the above statements, write the answers to the following
| questions on a separate sheet of paper.
, Questions
| “* Do you think the rising religiosity among people has anything to do with the
| fact that science does not answer all our questions and needs?
| *» Should we be offering an alternative explanation to understand the deeper
question of existence in our school curriculums, as some Christians have
| argued it?
| “* What according to you is a proper explanation which is worthy of being
| considered as a theory or as a part of a social science discipline?

*SPECIAL NOTE FOR THE COUNSELLOR OF M A SOCIOLOGY FOR AN ACTIVITY

DURING THE COUNSELLING SESSION: Please, form a discussion group from the
learners of M A Sociology at your Study Center and discuss the last question in
the group. Organise a debate on this topic and prepare a programme for
broadcasting by Gyanvani in collaboration with the IGNOU Regional Centre in
your area.

6.5 Crisis in Foundation

It is, however, the advent of post-modernity that has caused a severe
crisis to the philosophic foundation of the social sciences. As you already
know, social science or sociology was a product of Enlightenment
modernity. Its foundations lay in its adherence to scientific objectivity,
its belief in reason and progress and its acceptance of the supremacy of
western modernity. Post-modernity deconstructs all these foundations,
and asserts that there is no universal truth, there is no culture that can
claim itself to be superior to others, and the world is a site of differences.
In other words, for post-modernisis, there is no grand truth on science,
progress and modernity. Instead, there are multiple voices, and the very
notion of a rational/ coherent subject is questioned (Harvey 1989).
*99
%
 Research There are many reasons for the disillusionment with the project of
Methodologies
modernity. The experience of war, violence and totalitarianism in the
twentieth century, the growing assertion of the colonised people, and
the resultant decline in the legitimacy of western power, the arousal of
subaltern voices, the proliferation of new technologies of communication,
and the rising consumer culture making a distinction between ‘high’ and
‘low’ meaningless— all these factors, as you would learn, led many sensitive
thinkers in the West to rethink and interrogate the very foundations of
modernity. The question is: what are its implications for sociology? In
MSO 001, you would learn more about post-modernity. Nevertheless, it
is not difficult to identify some implications as shown in Box 6.3.

—e
Box 6.3 Implications of P¢>st-mtx$ernismo for Sociology
Sociology, from Comte to Marx, was heavily influenced by science. Its objectivity,
its universality and explanatory power. Hence sociology was seen as different
from ideology/ narrative/ fiction/ metaphysics. Sociology as a science of society
was thought to be more objective and true, a piece of reliable knowledge. But
then, for post-modernists, science has lost its sole claim to truth; science itself
is being seen as yet another narrative, a story, and an ideology. And, therefore,
science cannot be seen as the master narrative. There is no master truth, no
totalising theory. Instead, in this world of multivocality there are diverse stories
and truths. It is a world without consensus, without coherence, without a meta-
theory.

<> Hence all these modern sociologies with their totalising claims,
Comte’s law of three stages, Durkheim’s division of labor leading to
organic solidarity, Weber’s modernity as widespread rationalisation, and
Marx’s theory of class analysis, lose their significance. And sociology
becomes, to use Zygmunt Bauman’s (1987) words, “merely an act of
translation of multiple traditions without any claim for legitimating the
grand truth”. And as science is being deprived of its validity claim
sociologists in the post-modern setting become free to play with
innumerable sources: narratives, life histories, fictions, popular cinema
and music.
- Post-modernists questioned the sanctity of knowledge as an
objective quest for truth. As Michel Foucault would argue, knowledge is
never separated from power, and power from knowledge (discussed in
Sheridan 1980). For example, psychiatry can be seen as an integral
component of a disciplinary society. With its notion of ‘normalcy’ it
seeks to modulate /control sexuality or madness. It is like formulating a
concept like discourse® that embodies knowledge as well as power, and
has a principle of exclusion and inclusion. Hence we have a discourse on
madness or sexuality that allows psychiatrists, doctors and other
‘normalising judges’ to categorise people as ‘mad’ or ‘sexually deviant’.
In other words, everything is constructed, and there is no natural/
1004 permanent truth. Furthermore, the idea of an emancipatory modern
society gets challenged, and we are told about a disciplinary society Philosophy of
Socfal Science
characterised by a widespread network of surveillance machinery.

Yes, post-modernists have caused a severe crisis. For them, there is no

foundational truth (as put forward by Bacon and Descartes) that can
prove to be objective, there is no universal/ totalising theory (like
Marxism) that can overcome local contexts and heterogeneity, and there
is no “superior” method (like science or positivism). Here is a situation,
a typical post-modern condition, leading to relativism, incoherence and
schizophrenia.
But then, there are social scientists who do not give their consent to
post-modernism, even when they see problems with modernity and
science. And this debate goes on. As you progress you will learn more
about it and also participate in the debate.

6.6 Conclusion
In this unit we have tried to understand the philosophical bases of the
social sciences and how different epistemological and metaphysical issues
dealt within philosophy have had a bearing on various perspectives and
methodologies of the social sciences. As you can see from the discussion
in this unit, there has been no single paradigm or theory which has
dominated the social sciences, including sociology. Though sociology was
influenced by natural science and its methodologies, especially in its
early stages, in an attempt to establish itself as a discipline, it has
realised that the subject matter of sociology, involving as it is human
beings, is not amenable to generalisations and laws of the Newtonian
kind. With the discovery of increasingly different worldviews and particular
cultures, it became difficult for sociologists to come up with universal
explanations. Even if they did, the same came under heavy criticism.
The increasing need to represent plurality has produced a new wave of
critique leading to a post-modernist’s valorisation of many methods and
in that almost everything is acceptable.

Further Reading@
Phillip, Derek L. 1973. Abandoning Method. Jossey-Brass: New York
(For a critique the epistemological foundations of common research
procedures)
Coser, Lewis A. 1969. Sociological Theory. Macmillan: London (For a
general collection of key passages from classic writings in sociological
theory) .

—_—
% o— 101
 Unit7
Positivism and its Critique
Contents
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Heroic Science and Origin of Positivism
7.3 Early Positivism
7.4 Consolidation of Positivism
7.5 Critiques of Positivism
7.6 Conclusion

Learning Objectives
It is expected that after reading Unit 7 you will be able to learn and
discuss the fallowing themes.
<+ . Positivism and its influence on sociology
< The contributions of Comte and Emile Durkhiem
“ Acritique of positivism
< Emergence of ‘reflexive sociology’

7.1 Introduction
You have already become familiar in Unit 6 with an overview of the
philosophy of social science. At this juncture, it would be a good idea for
you to focus and concentrate on specific issues and modes of enquiry. In
Unit 7 we are going to discuss positivism, a method of enquiry that
sought to give immense cognitive prestige to the discipline, and wanted
to convipce its adherents that sociology too could be a science and follow
the scientific methodological principles of empirical observation, deductive
reasoning, and formulation of laws or universal generalisations (see Box
7.1 for salient features of positivism). As a matter of fact, this self-
perception of sociology as a science sought to serve the following three
purposes—:
< It separated sociology as an empirical science from humanities
and philosophy.

< It gave a professional identity to the sociologist who ought to

overcome the limiting identities emanating from caste, class and
gender, and think in a more objective/rational/ universal fashion.

4 The knowledge it would acquire would help us to reconstruct our

society, and create a better world.
Section 7.2 traces the origin of positivism and Section; 7.3 and 7.4
discuss the early developments in positivism and its consolidation. Though
positivism became a powerful sociological method, it had its critics. In
102+
Section 7.5 we show that positivism has now lost much of its appeal.
T Boxx 7.1
7.1 Salient
Sation Features
Features of Positiviem
of Positivism N -]| Positivism
and its Critique
The salient features of positivism can be characterised as follows. g
“» It believes in the unity of method. Sociology is not different from the natural |
sciences as far as the method of enquiry is concerned, |
< It celebrates objectivity and value neutrality. It, therefore, separates the |
knower from the known, subjectivity from objectivity, and fact from value. i
¢ Sociology is not commonsense. It rests on explanatory principles, which |
give a universal character to the discipline. I
<+ Sociology is a formal and organised body of knowledge, characterised by |
specialised skills and techno-scientific vocabulary.
<« Sociology can strive for abstraction and generalisation. Human experiences ‘
can be explained through law-like generalisations. |
< The scientific knowledge of society can be used for social engineering. |i
|

7.2 Heroic Science and Origin of Positivism

Herein lies an important question. Why did positivism grow at a certain
juncture of history, and establish itself as the leading voice in the discipline?
You already know how modern science was evolving, arousing immense
optimism, and becoming hegemonic. The scientific thinking emanating
from Bacon, Descartes and Newton, and scientific inventions and
discoveries were altering the cultural/intellectual landscape of Europe.
And eventually, the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century (see Box
7.2), as you have already learnt, was a turning point. It meant celebrating
a new age of reason, objectivity and criticality. It was like coming out of
the medieval order, religious influences, and asserting that scientific
thinking would enable us to create a better world. it was difficult to
escape the influence of the age. It was difficult not to be influenced by
the spectacular success story of science. Science became knowledge
itself: real, objective and foundational! And to survive in such a milieu
was to accept science and its ascending power.

Box 7.2 Triumphs of Natural Sciences in the Eighteenth Century

The Enlightenment witnessed a period of spectacular triumphs in the natural
sciences. Beginning with Issac Newton (1642-1727) =
and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), natural science began
a conquest of the natural world, which was a
staggering success. This success did not go unnoticed
in the social sciences. Rather, as many commentators
have noted, the social sciences were born in the
l shadow of these triumphs. Furthermore, the
methodological lessons that the natural sciences
were teaching seemed to be very clear: if the methods ‘
of the natural science are strictly adhered to then “
the spectacular success of these sciences could be Galileo Galiled [
matched in the social sciences. The social sciences (1564-1642)
had only to await the arrival of their Newton (Hekman |
ii
1986: 5). |
+ 103«
 Research Details in Box 7.2 possibly explain the origin of positivism. The assumption
Methodologies
was that the identity of sociology as "true
knowledge” could not be established without
adopting the method of the natural sciences.
There was yet another important factor. The
new age characterised by the Industrial
Revolution, expanding trade and commerce, and
emergent bourgeoisie altered power relations
in the West. it was the time that witnessed the
Issac Newton assertion of the new elite: technologists,
(1642-1727) scientists and capitalists. They saw immense
possibilities in science, and were strong
adherents of a positivistic/ scientific culture and mode of enquiry. Yes,
there were dissenting voices, say, the voices emanating from
romanticism® that critiqued the worship of science and reason, and
pleaded for imagination, subjectivity and creativity (as pointed out by
Gouldner 1970). But then, the language of science was irresistible. The
politico-economic establishment was sustaining it. Science was going to
stay, and positivism was its inevitable consequence.

The entire phenomenon can be understood better if you reflect on the

self-perception of science. For instance, it is argued that science is a
radical departure from common sense (Nagel 1961: 1-14). Well, common
sense may not necessarily be false. But common sense, unlike science, is
seldom accompanied by a search for systematic explanations — the
explanations derived from solid factual evidence. For instance, before
the advent of modern science people knew the function of the wheel.
But it was only modern science that provided us with an explanatory
principle like the frictional force to make sense of the operation of
wheels. Likewise, the principles formulated by Newton could explain
innumerable facts: the behavior of the tides, the paths of projectiles,
and the moon’s motion. It is also argued that, unlike the indeterminacy
of common sense, the language of science is more specific, focused and
pointed. It abhors all sorts of vagueness. Even though the poets may
speak of infinite stars, it would be argued, astronomers are interested
in calculating and measuring their exact number. Furthermore, science,
unlike common sense, is a distant, detached and abstract exercise.
Whereas common sense has an intimate relationship with our everyday
world, science is essentially neutral. You may enjoy the color of the
sunset: but then, the electromagnetic theory, which provides a systematic
account of optical phenomena, retains its remoteness and abstraction.
In fact, science deliberately neglects the immediate values of things.
That is why; it is argued that science is primarily critical in spirit. Whereas
common sense tends to take things for granted, science problematises
even our most cherished beliefs. This does not mean that common sense
is neccssarily false and science is true. What distinguishes science is its
+104~
 Positivism
critical spirit, its insistence on empirical evidence. Here we quote the and its Critique
words of Nagel (1971: 13).
The difference between the cognitive claims of science and common sense,
which stems from the fact that the former are the products of the scientific
method, does not connote that the former are invariably true. it does follow
that while common sense beliefs are usually accepted without a critical evaluation
of the evidence available, the evidence for the conclusions of science conforms
to standards such that a significant proportion of conclusions supported by
similar structured evidence remains in good agreement with additional factual
data when fresh data are obtained.
Many were articulating this supremacy of science as a more reliable,
objective and critical knowledge. For instance in Box 7.3 we bring to you
Merton’s (1972) four institutional imperatives of science.

Box 7.3 Merton’s Four Institutional imperatives of Science

% Science is universal. The validity of a scientific statement does not depend
on any particularistic criterion. It is against all sorts of ethnocentrism. It is
valid for all.
<« Science implies the communism of knowledge: Scientist, it is argued,
want nothing more than esteem and recognition. Scientist’s findings and
discoveries, far from remaining a private property, become a collective
heritage. It is this shared culture that enables science to evolve, grow and
progress dramatically.
% Science demands disinterestedness: a process of rigorous scrutinisation
and examination of one’s findings without any bias.
<+ Science is organised skepticism that distinguishes it. Everything for
science is an object of critical enquiry. There is nothing sacred or profane.
Science investigates, examines and problematises everything. That is the
success story of science.

In the self-perception of science as given in Box 7.3, you see a positive

story: a positive affirmation of the virtues of science, its ability to
construct objective, empirical, critical and universal knowledge, which is
free from personal/ political bias and prejudice. In a way, it is a heroic
notion of science. Positivism was also an affirmation of this positive/
heroic science. It was positive because it meant certainties of science.
And it also meant a positive attitude towards life: using science for
improving our lot.

7.3 Early Positivism

Positivism, as you can gather, emerged out of a situation in which there
was tremendous optimism centered on the cognitive power of science.
As mentioned in Unit 6, you also know that modern sociology evolved at
a specific juncture of European history when the entire social landscape
altered because of the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment and the
French tevolution. It was indeed a new age, and sociology as a formal/
+105¢
 Research academic discipline was trying to make sense of it. In fact, the roots of
Methodologles
early positivism could be found in the first half of the nineteenth century
in France. Imagine the state of post-revolutionary France. There was a
significant change in the domain of knowledge. The separation of science
and philosophy became inevitable; new scientific journals started
appearing, and a close link between science and industry was established.
It was felt that there was a single scientific method applicable to all
fields of study. Possibly Saint Simon (1760-1825), one of the early
sociologists, articulated this aspiration rather sharply. A scientist, he
felt, is one who predicts, and it is this power of prediction that gives
him the power. He, therefore, pleaded strongly for extending the scientific
outlook from the physical sciences to the study of human beings. !t was
an urge to create some kind of a social physics so that sociology could
accomplish its historical mission: completing the unfinished agenda of
the Industrial Revolution.
Indeed, this close affinity with science gave birth to positivism. Auguste
Comte (1798-1857), the founder of modern
sociology, established positivism as the most
cherished doctrine of sociology (see also Unit 1).
Yet, like Saint Simon, Comte too was witnessing
the revolutionary transformation. In a way, he
saw the contradiction between the two social
forces: theological/ military and scientific/
industrial. Like a visionary, he felt that this
- contradiction could be resolved onty by the triumph
(1760-1825) of the scientific/ industrial society. Scientists, as
he saw all around, were replacing theologians as
the moral guardians of the new social order, and industrialists were
replacing the warriors. Not solely that. Comte too shared the
Enlightenment assertion that it was possible for science to grasp the
warkings of the world. He betieved that positivist or scientific knowledge
was the inevitable outcome of the progressive growth of the individual
mind as well as the historical development of human knowledge.
From 1871 to 1823 Comte and Saint Simon collaborated so closely that it
was almost impossible to distinguish the contributions of the two. It was
at this juncture that they spoke of social physics, and the need to
discover natural and immutable laws of progress which are as necessary
as the law of gravity. But then they separated, and eventually Comte
emerged as an independent scholar. It was during 1830-1892 that he
published six volumes of Course of Positive Philosophy. And finally, during
1851-1854, he published four volumes of System of Positive Politics.

What made Comte immortal in the discipline was his celebrated ‘law of
three stages’ (see also Unit 1). First, he spoke of the theological stage:
a stage in which the mind explains phenomena or mundane occurrences
by ascribing them to the unfathomable gods. The fact is that without
106
some guide one cannot begin to make systematic observations. And Positivism
and its Critique
sciences in their infancy could not escape the questions relating to the
essences of phenomena and their ultimate origins to which theological
answers are most appropriate. Second, he spoke of the metaphysical
stage in which abstract forces, powers and essences, rather than spiritual
forces, are considered responsible for worldly affairs. And finally, as
Comte argued, there was a positive or scientific stage in which we
abandon the search for ultimate origins, purposes, or abstract ferces,
and become more concrete and focused: we observe the relations between
phenomena, and arrive at laws because the aim of positive philosophy
is to consider all phenomena as subject to invariable natural laws (see
the examplg in Box 7.4).

—
Box 7.4 An Example to Understand the Deeper Meaning of Comte’s Law of ‘
Three Stages
Let us take a simple illustration to comprehend the deeper meaning of these
three stages of knowledge. Imagine fire as a phenomenon. It is possible to explain
it, as the Vedic hymns suggest, as a manifestation of a powerful deity called Agni.
Now Comte would have argued that explaining fire as a manifestation of Agni is a |
theological explanation. But suppose one goes beyond these Vedic rituals, and
enters a higher stage of contemplative/abstract thought, and sees fire as something
symbolising human beings’ quest for truth and purity: buming all egotistic passions
and impulses. Yes, Comte would have argued that it is a metaphysical explanation.
But then, if you argue that fire is just a physico-chemical phenomenon that can
-be explained in the form of a natural law, Comte would have argued that you
have finally arrived the positive stage. In other words, positivist knowledge is
empirical and universal; something that is concrete and demonstrable. Here is a
piece of knowledge without a metaphysical/ theological significance. It demystifies
the world. So when you see the rains, you need not explain it as /ndra’s blessing;
nor do you see it as a manifestation of man’s poetry to overcome the dryness of
his being. Instead, the rains you see, in this positivist stage, can be explained in
terms of the scientific principles of heat, cloud formation and water cycle!

Not all branches of knowledge, argued Comte, reach the positive stage
simultaneously. The ‘lower’ sciences, like astronomy, mechanics, chemistry }
and biology, develop fast. These are lower sciences because these are
less complex, less dependent on the other sciences, and their distance
from human affairs is far greater. But sociology, being more complex,
and more near to everyday life, reaches the positive stage quite late.
Comte was, however, hopeful that even for sociology the time had finally
arrived. It could now project itself as a positive science, analyse social
phenomena, and discover the laws governing the relations among them.
Sociology, for him, is the queen of the sciences because without the
guidance of its laws, the discoveries of the lower sciences could not be
utilised to their maximum advantage for humanity.
;’:cereharr: ::/o kv‘ndsbof sd:ncesb, namely, analytic and synthetic.
Physics
:h>mistry
can be said to i i
among isolated phenomena. Bio\:g;r:(z;;cth::: :Zec::seey it
'eftabllSh lfiws
is impossible
 Research to explain an organ apart from the living creature as a whole. Likewise,
Methodologies
according to Comte, sociology is synthetic because everything, be it
religion or state, has to be studied in the context of the entire society.

It is not difficult to draw the implications of positivism. There is no free

will in mathematics and physics. Likewise, as Comte thought, there is
no free will in sociology. Sociology. Comte believed, could determine
what is, what will be, and what should be. In other words, social
phenomena are subject to strict determinism.
Let us understand what it means. Even a child learning elementary
mathematics would tell you that 2+2=4. if you and | want it to be
different, it cannot be altered. In other words, 2+2= 4 is an iron law,
say, like the law of gravitation. It prevails irrespective of our subjective
states of mind.
That is precisely the kind of knowledge positivism is striving for. Suppose
as a Marxist you put forward a sociological law that socialism is inevitable
because that is the way history progresses. You are arguing like a positivist,
and equating Marxism with an invariable natural law like the law of
gravitation that exists, no matter what kind of life projects you and |
have, and what kind of thoughts we cherish.
Yes, Comte was a great proponent of science. He believed in the essential
Enlightenment notion of progress and in the arrival of the new age of
scientific objectivity. Yet, let us not forget that Comte was also a great
moratist. He was deeply concerned about social order and its moral
foundation. In fact, he sought to use positivist sociology to reconstruct
his society. No wonder, positivist sociology, for him, would act like a
religion, of course a secular religion for humankind. This led Nisbet
(1967:58) to comment that ‘positive sociology for Comte is simply
medievalism minus Christianity’. Look at the state of the French society
Comte was confronting. True, the revolution was a turning point. But
then, it also led to new problems, which, as he felt, were quite disturbing.
For instance, he could not give his consent to the prevalent ‘anarchy’
leading to exaggerated individualism. It was, for him, a disease of modern
civilisation. Nor did he give his consent to those who pleaded for divorce
rights. His anxiety was that it would lead to the breakdown of the
centrality of the family; it would also weaken the community. This moral
crisis, or the crisis of order, was something that must be resolved. And it
was his conviction that the new positivist sociological knowledge could
fulfill the void, and serve the therapeutic function of religion. No wonder,
he was equally concerned about social static or restoration of order. In
fact, if you think deeply, you would realise that Comte’s positivism
conveyed the interesting message that science, despite the progressive
role it played, was also an integral component of the Establishment, ‘an
ideology of order’!

*108¢
 Positivism
7.4 Consolidation of Positivism and its Critique
Auguste Comte provided the intellectual foundation of positivist sociology.
And possibly it was this French tradition that gave birth to one of the
most distinguished classical sociologists, Emile Durkheim (1858-1917).
Durkheim consolidated and elaborated positivist sociology. In a way, the
Rules of Sociological Method that he published in 1895 gave a new
momentum to the discipline. The subject matter of sociology, he
repeatedly emphasised, is the domain of social facts that cannot be
comprehended by any other discipline. it is, therefore, important to
know how he defined social facts.
You can understand it better through an example from your everyday
life. Imagine one fine morning you choose to walk barefoot. Nobody has
compelled you to do so; it is your free choice, your own decision. But
then, imagine one evening you decide to visit a temple, and offer your
prayers. Before entering the temple you remove your shoes, wash your
hands, and walk barefoot.
Do you see a qualitative difference in these two experiences? Yes, there
is a significant difference. In the second case you are not really free.
Well, you may argue that it is you who have chosen to walk barefoot
inside the temple complex. But that is because you have internalised the
prevalent practice so well that it looks almost natural and spontaneous.
Imagine what would have happened had you tried to enter the temple
without removing your shoes. You would have experienced severe
constraint and resistance. From the temple authorities to the other
devotee: all would object to your act and regard it as an insult to the
sacred space. In other words, walking barefoot inside the temple is a
fact that exists out there as a thing. It has an independent force that
transcends your own will. If you disobey the practice, you would be
forced, coerced, isolated or ridicuted. Such facts, according to Durkheim,
are called social facts.
Everybody eats, drinks and sleeps. But not all such facts can be called
social. Then, there would be no differerce between biological/ physiological
facts and social facts. In fact, there are some distinctive features of
social facts. First, social facts exist outside you. Imagine a tree that you
are seeing from your window. It has a reality of its own. Even if you
close your eyes and refuse to see it, the tree exists as it is. Likewise,
Durkheim (1964: 1) explained that
When 1 fulfill my obligations as brother, husband, or citizen, when | execute my
contracts, | perform duties which are defined, externally to myself, and my acts,
in law and in custom. Even if they conform to my sentiments and | feel their
reality subjectively, such reality is still objective, for | did not create them; |
merely inherited through my education.

These facts are indeed different. The currency you use in your economic
exchange, the language you speak in the process of communication, the
+ 109+
 Research rituals you celebrate as a member of a religious community, all these are
Methodologies
social facts. Their existence does not depend on your or my will. As
Durkheim (1964: 2) put it, 'here are ways of acting, thinking, and
feeling that present the noteworthy property of existing outside the
individual consciousness’.
Second, social facts are endowed with coercive power. True, in our
everyday life we do not experience this constraint. The reason is that,
because of habit, socialisation and interna[isation, we tend to experience
social facts as natural and spontaneous. But then, as Durkheim (1964: 2-
3) reminded, ‘if | do not submit to the conventions of my society, if in
my dress | do not conform to the customs observed in my country and in
my class, the ridicule | provoke, the social isolation in which | am kept,
produce, although in an attenuated form, the same effects as a
punishment in the strict sense of the word’.
Third, social facts as things need to be distinguished from their individual
manifestations. In fact, Durkheim held that social facts ‘acquire a body,
a tangible form, and constitute a reality in their own right, quite distinct
from the individual facts which produce it’. For example, codified legal
and moral rutes, or articles of faith wherein religious groups condense
their beliefs; none of these can be found entirely reproduced in the
applications made of them by individuals. Yet, sociologically it is important
to categorise their tangible, crystallised aspects as social facts, not their
individual manifestations.
The meaning of ‘social’ in social facts is, therefore, clear. As Durkheim
(1964: 3) stated, ‘their source is not in the individual, their substratum
can be no other than society, either the political society as a whole or
someone of the partial groups it includes, such as religious denominations,
political, literary, and occupational associations’.

To sum up, you can borrow Durkheim’s (1964: 13) own words, and
conclude:
A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the
individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general
throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right
independent of its individual manifestations.

You can understand Durkheim’s scientific sociology better if you look at

the ‘rules’ he prescribed for studying social facts. One such rule which
has often been talked about is that it is absolutely necessary to observe
social facts as things. What does it mean? A thing is a thing because its
facticity cannot be altered even if you and | want it. It is in this sense
that external objects like a tree, a table and a chair exist as things. If
you wish to observe a thing as it is, you should not confuse it with your
own ideas and sentiments. A tree needs to be seen as a tree, even if you
hate trees. In other words, almost like Francis Bacon, Durkheim would
argue that our ideas and sentiments or ‘idols’ should not prevent us
+110%
 Positivism
from seeing a thing as it is (see Unit 6 for the discussion of Bacon’s and its Critique
ideas). A sociologist must follow this fundamental lesson of scientific
objectivity. Take, for instance, marriage as a social fact. As an individual,
you may not like the institution of marriage. But when as a sociologist
you plan to study marriage as a social fact, retain your objectivity,
separate your own likes and dislikes from facts, and see it as a thing
codified in marriage laws, religious traditions and social customs. In
other words, it is like separating the knower from the known facts from
values. It is similar to the way a physicist studies the behavior of atoms,
or a geologist studies the formation of mountains. Durkheim (1964: 30)
elaborated further.
Social facts...qualify as things. Law is embodied in codes; the currents of daily
tife are recorded in statistical figures and historical monuments; fashions are
preserved in costumes; and taste in works of art. By their very nature they tend
towards an independent existence outside the individual consciousness, which
they dominate. In order to disclose their character as things, it is unnecessary
to manipulate them ingeniously.

Likewise, Durkheim recalled Rene Descartes, and reminded us of the

need for overcoming all presuppositions. For Durkheim (1964: 32) it is
like overcoming ‘inferior’ faculties like emotions, sentiments and feelings.
Only then is it possible for the sociologist ‘to emancipate himself from
the fallacious ideas that dominate the mind of the layman’. No wonder,
Durkheim (1964: 35) pleaded strongly for a scientific vocabulary in the
discipline. Sociologists must avoid the indeterminacy of common sense
language, and be clear about the specificity of the concept they use.
The subject matter of every sociologicat study should comprise a group of
phenomena defined in advance by certain common external characteristics, and
all phenomena so defined should be included within this group.

It is equally important to avoid all sorts of vagueness while studying/

observing an object. The physicist substitutes for the vague impressions
of temperature and electricity by the visual representations of the
thermometer and the electrometer. Likewise, when a sociologist studies
social facts, s/he should not be carried away by their individual
manifestations. Instead, it is important to find their expression in tangible
and crystallised forms; for example, in legal codes, moral regulations,
popular proverbs, statistical figures and religious conventions. Take an
example. Suppose you are studying caste as a social phenomenon. It is
possible that Ambedkar and Gandhi might have experienced and responded
to caste hierarchy in different ways. But if you are practicing Durkheimian
positivist sociology, you need not to be carried away by these individual
manifestations. Instead, your task is to see caste as a thing, a structure
rooted in codified laws, religious sanctions and social customs.

An important characteristic of science is its explanatory power. As sociology

is scientific, it must explain social facts. For Durkheim, sociological
explanations are objective and independent and cannot be reduced into
psychotogical terms. It was in this sense that Durkheim (1964: 102) =111
 Research made an interesting point that ‘a whole is not identical with the sum of
Methodologies
its parts’. It acquires an independent character that is qualitatively
different from those of its component parts. Society is, therefore, not
identitical with the sum of individuals. It is, of course, true that without
individuals there is no society. But society transcends the individual.
While explaining social facts, it is important to understand the supremacy
of the collective over the individual. Durkheim (1964: 104) clarified that
The group thinks, feels, and acts quite differently from the way in which its
members would were they isolated. If, then, we begin with the individual, we
shall be able to understand nothing of what takes place in the group. In a word,
there is between psychology and sociology the same break in continuity as
between biology and the physiochemical sciences. Consequently every time that
a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychological phenomenon, we
could be sure that the explanation is false.

It was in this sense that Durkheim, as his other substantial works suggest,
provided sociological explanations for social facts like suicide, division of
labor and moral education. In fact, as Durkheim (1964: 110) categorically
stated, ‘the determining cause of a social fact should be sought among
the social facts preceding it and not among the states of individual
consciousness’. Likewise, the function of a social fact needs to be seen
in its relation to some social end. Take, for instance, punishment as a
social fact. For Durkheim, its cause is the intensity of the collective
sentiments that the crime offends. Likewise, its function is to maintain
these very sentiments at the same degree of intensity. No wonder, for
him, when the teacher punishes the child its function is not to cause
physical suffering to the concerned child but to restore the sanctity of
moral order in the classroom. To explain a social phenomenon, as
Durkheim argued, is to find its cause as well as its function. And both
cause and function are essentially social, not to be reduced to the individual
psyche.
The craft of scientific sociology that Durkheim constructed gave a new
momentum to the discipline. Sociology, he asserted, must come out of
the influence of philosophy, and establish itself as a science. The principle
of causality, he believed, can be applied to social phenomena. And sociology,
as a result, would be free from ideological analysis; it would be neither
individualistic, nor socialistic. Instead, sociology would be an objective
study of social facts. This objectivity might reduce the ‘popularity’ of
the discipline. But then, as if speaking like a prophet, Durkheim (1964:
146) said,
We believe, on the contrary, that the time has come for sociology to spurn
popular success, so to speak, and to assume the exacting character befitting
every science. It will then gain in dignity and authority what it will perhaps lose
in popularity...Assuredly, the time when it will be able to play this role successfully
is still far off. However, we must begin to work now, in order to put it in condition
to fill this role some day.

Let us not forget that Durkheim, despite his strong plea for scientific
+112¢ sociology, was deeply concerned about the moral foundation of society,
its stability and order. Possibly modern/ industrial societies, and their Positivism
and its Critique
implicit differentiation, specialisation and division of labor made him
confront a new problem. Gone are the days of simple societies
characterised by ‘mechanical solidarity’. But then, can modern societies
survive merely through egotistic individualism and selfish interests? No
wonder, he evolved a strong critique of utilitarianism and its celebration
of the atomised individual trying to maximise one’s pleasure. Instead,
Durkheim continued to retain his belief in the moral supremacy of the
cotlective, and he saw that the increasing differentiation in a modern
society, paradoxically, would lead to more and more mutual dependence
and create ‘organic solidarity’. It was this consistent search for the
basis of moral order that led him to explore the domain of religion and
of the sacred, and school and moral education. In a way, in both Auguste
Comte and Emile Durkheim you are witnessing an endeavour to reconcile
positivist sociology with social order and stability.
Positivism, it seems, is both an assertion of science as well as a quest for
order and stability. Does it mean that science is yet another form of
ideology? (See Unit 1, where a similar question has been answered in the
affirmative.)
Let us now complete the Reflection and Action 7.1 exercise to check our
own understanding of Durkheim’s idea of social facts.

Reflection and Action 7.1 |

For Durkheim social facts are external and coercive and social facts should be |
treated as things to be studied through concrete expression in legal codes
religious expressions, proverbs, customs etc. Based on the above notion of social |
facts, write on a separate sheet of paper your answers to the following questions. |
Questions |
+* What can be given as examples, based on your own experience, to |
substantiate Durkhiem’s statement that social facts are coercive? |
¢ Do you think that human beings are constantly seeking to escape the binding |
aspects of society; if they do so, in what way do they achieve this? Give |
examples. |
< After collecting a few proverbs relating to gender relations, find out in
what way do they capture the status of women? |

7.5 Critiques of Positivism

Yes, in the French sociological tradition you saw the evolution and
consolidation of positivism. But then it reached the other parts of the
world and became a powerful sociological method. Positivism had its
appeal. It sought to give a ‘scientific status’ to the discipline. The search
for precision, objectivity, causality and value neutrality made it acceptable.
This positivist social science found its logical culmination in the cult of
numbers, in the mathematisation of social phenomena, in the urge to
reduce qualitative human experiences into quantified statistical figures.
And it has also its remarkable achievements. - +113%
 Research But then, you can guess that not everyone can feel comfortable with
Methodologies
positivism. First, it is possible to say that what is applicable in the
domain of nature is not necessarily applicable in the domain of human
society. Because, unlike nature, society consists of self reflexive agents
who think, argue, contest, and through their practices and actions
transform the world. Hence society cannot be subject to abstract/
universal generalisations. Positivism, it is alleged, undermines the
creativity, reflexivity and agency of social actors. As you have already
learnt in Unit 6, interpretative sociology was a refreshing departure
from the positivist tradition.
Second, it can also be argued that the so-called ‘ethical neutrality’ of
positivism reduces it to a mere technique, separated from moral/ political
issues. And, paradoxically, it is precisely the politics of positivism. The
establishment to legitimise itself often uses its scientific nature. In other
words, positivism can prove to be pro-establishment, status-quoist, non-
critical and non-reflexive. In the twentieth century this critique of
positivism came rather sharply from critical theorists, or the adherents
of the Frankfurt School Marxism. What is asserted is that science has
lost its emancipatory power. Instead, science itself has become an integral’
component of the establishment. In fact, the experience of war, large-
scale violence, the growth of fascism, the spread of the “culture industry”,
and the emergence of the ‘authoritarian personality’, in other words,
the darkness of the twentieth century led these thinkers to speak of the
‘dialectic of enlightenment’. No wonder, from Adorno to Horkheimer to
Marcuse, the central thrust of their argument was that positivist science
was nothing but a form of instrumental rationality leading to domination
and manipulation of human and natural resources. They critiqued this
instrumental rationality, and pleaded for a more critical, reflexive,
qualitative and emancipatory social science.
Third, as you have already learnt in Unit 6, post-modernists deconstruct
the very foundation of science. No wonder, for post-modernists, positivism
loses its cognitive power and legitimacy. And in a way the distinction
between objective science and subjective narrative gets eroded, sociology
becomes yet another narrative filled with biographies and life histories,
and a non-positivist/ post-modern sociology does not look fundamentally
different from cultural studies!
As you understand, positivism emerged at a time when sociology was
trying to establish itself as a science. And positivism continues to have
its appeal (as was also pointed out at the end of Unit 4). But then, with
the passage of time, with new experiences leading to disillusionment
with the so called 'neutrality’ of science, and with new sensitivity to
reflexivity and creativity, we see the growing critique of positivism.
Positivism has indeed lost much of its appeal. You can understand this
changing intellectual milieu if you concentrate on the following two specific
critiques of positivism.
~114¢
A) Reflexive sociology resisting methodological dualism Positivism
and its Critique
Reflexive sociology, as put forward by Alvin W. Gouldner (1920-1980), is
a meaningful alternative to positivism. Gouldner (1970), an American
sociologist, wrote with a high degree of moral sensitivity, and critiqued
positivism. He warned us of the methodological dualism® implicit in
positivism. This dualism separates the knower from the known, subject
from object, fact from value. Not solely that. It views that if the
sociologist engages politically, emotionally and aesthetically with the object
of his/ her study, the ‘scientific nature’ of the discipline would suffer.
This cold objectivity, as Gouldner (1970: 496) would argue, is essentially
an expression of alienation, that is, the alienation of the sociologist
from his/her own self. It is like looking at sociological knowledge as just
a piece of amoral technique.
Methodological Dualism is based upon a fear; but this is a fear not so much of
those being studied as of the sociologist’s own self. Methodological Dualism is, at
bottom, concerned to constitute a strategy for coping with the feared
vulnerability of the scholar’s self. It strives to free him from disgust, pity, anger,
from egoism or moral outrage, from his passions and interest, on the supposition
that it is a bloodless and disembodied mind that works best. It also seeks to
insulate the scholar from the values and interests of his other roles and
commitments, on the dubious assumption that these can be anything but blinders.
It assumes that feeling is the blood enemy of intelligence, and that there can be
an unfeeling, unsentimental knower.

Gouldner (1970: 493), however, pleads for methodological monismfi,

and asserts that the separation between the knower and the known
must be overcome, because you cannot know others without knowing
yourself. That is why, self-reflexivity is absolutely important. To know
others a sociologist cannot simply study them, but must also listen to
and confront himself/ herself. Knowing is not an impersonal effort but
*a personalised effort by whole, embodied men’. Reflexive sociology
invites methodological monism, and, therefore, alters the very meaning
of knowledge. it does not remain merely a piece of information. Instead,
it becomes an awareness! It generates self-awareness and new sensitivity.
Reflexive sociology, you would appreciate, is heavily demanding. Unlike
positivist sociology in which you can remain ‘neutral’ and ‘apolitical’,
reflexive sociology demands your moral commitment and ethical
engagement. You cannot separate your life from your work. Gouldner
(1970: 495) wrote,
Reflexive Sociology, then, is not characterised by what it studies. It is distinguished
neither by the persons and the problems studied nor even by the techniques
and instruments used in studying them. It is characterised, rather, by a relationship
it establishes between being a sociologist and being a person, between the role
and the man performing it. Reflexive sociology embodies a critique of the
conventional conception of segregated scholarly roles and has a vision of an
alternative. It aims at transforming the sociologist’s relation to his work.

Take an example. Suppose you wish to study the phenomenon called

*slum culture’. A way of doing it is, of course, a highly positivistic/
technical research. You hire research assistants, send them to the +115¢
 Research particular slum with a questionnaire, and instruct them to distribute
Methodologies
copies of it after random sampling. The data you gather get classified
and quantified, and you make your conclusions. These are the conclusions
derived from ‘hard’ facts. And never do you feel the need to engage
yourself as a person with the slum. In other words, your dispassionate
exercise is not different from the way a mathematician solves a puzzle,
or a scientist works in a lab.
Now Gouldner’s: reflexive sociology would oppose this kind of research.
Instead, it would make you reflect on your own self and your politics and
morality. Possibly you are urban, upper class, English speaking and relatively
privileged. What does it mean for you to understand the slum culture?
fsn’t it the fact that their suffering cannot be separated from your
privilege? Can you understand them without questioning this asymmetrical
power? These questions born out of self-reflexivity would possibly create
a new sociology which, far from objectifying the world, tries to create a
.new one. Possibly new trends in sociological research emanating from
feminist and Dalit movements resemble this sort of reflexive sociology.
Because in these research trends one sees not just technical objectivity,
but essentially a high degree of empathy, an urge to understand suffering,
and a striving for an alternative praxis.
B) Agency and structure: process of structuration
Another significant critique of positivism has come from Anthony Giddens,
a leading sociologist of our time. Giddens’ (1976) book, New Rules of
Sociological Method, is a turning point. it is a text in which he studied
the intellectual trajectory of the discipline, and negotiated with
interpretative traditions, and reflexed on a set of new rules. It does
offer an alternative to positivistic/ scientific sociology. Giddens is
categorical about the fact that nature and human society are two different
realms of enquiry. Nature is not a human production, but society is
being perpetually created, renewed and altered by human agents. That
is why there are limits to natural science methodology in sociology. In
sociology, argues Giddens (1976: 13), "those who still wait for a Newton
are not only waiting for a train that won’t arrive, they’re in the wrong
station altogether’. This seems to be the reason why he began his
intellectual conversation with phenomenological/ ethno methodological
traditions, the way these ‘interpretative’ sociologies seek to understand
meanings, that is, the meanings that conscious human actors attach to
the world, and construct their knowledge of the everyday world they live
in. Although, for Giddens, there are possibilities in these traditions, we
need to see beyond. Because the meaning you and | attach to the world
has to be situated in a social context, and asymmetrical resources and
capabilities often characterise this context. Take an example. imagine
yourself as a student in the classroom. It is, of course, true that you are
not a puppet-silently performing the prescribed ‘rote’. Instead, you are
a creative agent attaching meanings, and creating an inter-subjective
*116% world called the classroom.
 But, then, there is a problem. Your agency/ freedom is not unlimited. Posttivism
and its Critique
Because differential/ unequal resources might characterise the classroom:
teacher versus student. Even a simple site like the classroom is, in fact,
a site of conflict and contestation. Giddens (1976), therefore, argues
that interpretative sociology alone is not sufficient; it is equally important
to be aware of the complex relationship between the agency and structure.
This critical/ creative engagement with methodological issues led him to
put forward a set of rules which can be summarised as follows.
First, sociology is not concerned with a "pre-given” universe of objects.
Instead, sociology deals with a world that is constituted or provided by
the active daings of subjects. It is in this sense that "the production and
reproduction of society has to be treated as a skilled performance on
the part of its members’ (Giddens 1976: 160). Let us understand it.
Suppose you are studying a phenomenon called caste. Even a rigid system
like caste, you realise, is not pre-given. Instead, human agents are
perpetually creating and transforming what we call a caste society. That
is why, lower caste movements or Dalit movements or divergent reforms
take place, and the social reality that sociologists study remains perpetually
vibrant and alive. It is a skilled performance which is in perpetual flux.
Second, although society is a skilled performance, the creativity of the
social actor, as you have just learnt, is not unlimited since all of us,
irrespective of our creativity, are historically located social actors, working
under certain conditions. It is in this context that we ought to be aware
of the limits/ constraints provided by the social structure. But then,
what is interesting about Giddens (1976: 161) is that he is talking about
the duality of structure®. ‘Structure must not be conceptualised as
simply placing constraints upon human agency, but as enabling’. An
example would make this point clear. Imagine that you are speaking a
language. No matter how creative you are, you cannot speak whatever
you wish. You have to follow the grammar: a set of rules. But then, it is
not just an experience of constraint. Language also enables you to speak.
Moreover, a living language is not static; through their linguistic expressions
and practices people make changes in the structure of the language.
This is what Giddens (1976: 161) regards as the process of structuration®
and says that for him, "to enquire into the structuration of social practices
is to seek to explain how it comes about that structures are constituted
through action and, reciprocally, how action is constituted structurally’.
In a way, the process of structuration enables him to overcome the
duality of structure and agency. Yes, you cannot imagine yourself without
the ‘rules’ that the structure provides. But at the same time, you are
- not a puppet. You can innovate, experiment, and alter the structure.
Third, Giddens asserts that a sociologist cannot escape the language
that lay actors use to make sense of their world. That is why, meaningful
sociological research requires immersion® in the form of life which the
sociologist seeks to study. Immersion does not, however, mean that the
G117
 Research saciologist has to become a ‘full member’ of the community. This only
Methodologles
means the ability ‘to participate in it as an ensemble of practices’.
And finally, sociological concepts, asserts Giddens, are based on double
hermeneutic®. The reason is that social actors themselves have already
interpreted society as being a skilled performance, and hence the
sociologists further reinterpret it within their theoretical schemes,
mediating ordinary and technical language. About hermeneutics you will
read in Unit 8.
These debates and contestations, you need to realise, have enriched the
discipline. And it is important that you become aware of these multiple
voices within the discipline.
Let us at the end of our discussion, complete the Reflection and Action
7.2 exercise.

| Reflection and Action 7.2 |

| Structures are as much constraining as enabling, people constantly innovate and ]
| interpret the given structures. |
| Explain the above statement with an illustration from a contemporary situation |
| and write a short note on the process of structuration. Discuss your note with |
L fe
fellow learners of M A Sociology at your Study Center.

*tisa request to the Academic Counselor to organise an essay competition on

this topic and send the top ten essays to the Coordinator of MSO 002. The best
* essay will have a surprise appearance.

7.6 Conclusion
In Unit 7 we have discussed the antecedents of positivism in the context
of tremendous strides made in the sciences and of the general milieu of
Enlightenment. Auguste Comte is considered the founder of sociology
for he tried to conceive of similar methodology for the social sciences
and the study of society. Positivism, as we can see, had a tremendous
impact on sociology and‘in some ways helped establish it as a discipline.
The propositions and theories of Comte have, however, been refined
especially in the case of Durkhiem. He, by far, has been responsible for
defining the subject matter of sociology and in ltaying out the rules to
study society. Subsequent thinkers have critiqued his visualisation of an
overarching coercive society, but Durkhiem still lays out a road map for
us to follow and be clear in distinguishing individual acts from societal
acts. The subsequent methodologies and perspectives in sociology
attempted to privilege the agency of the individual. We have discussed
Giddens’ work as an example of this approach. Another critique that
came strongly against positivism came from Gouldner, who felt that
positivism with its methodological coldness separates the knower from
the known and therefore he pleads for a reflexive sociology. Many in the
+118¢
 Positivism
social sciences, especially in social anthropology, have recommended and its Critique
reflexiveness. The issues of who represents whom has come under severe
debate not only in anthropology but also in the general debates in the
social sciences. With the post-modernist critique of unilinear theories
there is an increasing tendency to look for multi-vocality. The question
that can be asked in this context is what relevance do theories, which
support generalising tendencies, have in the globalising world?

Further Reading @
Allan Kenneth 2005, Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory, Seeing
the Social World, Sage Publications (Pine Ford Press): New York.

(The book uses ideas of modernity and post-modernity to help student

understand how the theoretical, historical perspectives apply to their
own time period.)
Giddens, Anthony 1984. The constitution of Society, Outline of the Theory
of Structuralism, Polity Press: Cambridge (Chapter 1 on Elements of the
Theory of Structuration [Link] 6 on Structuration Theory, Empirical
Research and Social Critique)

—_—
0 o—

+119¢
 Unit 8
Hermeneutics
Contents
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Methodological Disputes in the Social Sciences
8.3 Tracing the History of Hermeneutics
8.4 Hermeneutics and Sociology
8.5 Philosophical Hermeneutics
8.6 The Hermeneutics of Suspicion
8.7 Phenomenology and Hermeneutics
8.8 Conclusion

Learning Objectives
It is expected that after reading Unit 8 you will be able to discuss the
following themes of the hermeneutics perspective in the social sciences.
L3 Location of hermeneutics in methodological disputes in the social
sciences
< History of hermeneutics
< Links between hermeneutics and sociology
< The position of investigator in interpretation of tradition
< Explanatory understanding in hermeneutics
o
< Critical or depth interpretation

8.1 Introduction
Unit 8 on Hermeneutics is the last Unit of Block 2 of Book 1. Block 2
deals with the philosophical foundations of social research. As mentioned ~
in Unit 5, we are taking up a detailed discussion of Hermeneutics in Unit
8. Hermenutics (the interpretation of tradition) is a part of the
methodological quest to understand the social reality. As it has been
applied as a method in sociology, we need to look at its location in the
scene of methodological disputes in the social sciences and trace its
history for learning of its significance in sociological inquiry.
You will find that not much work in sociology in India has the applied
hermeneutics approach, but its application is quite popular in areas
where tradition is perceived as significant in the lives of the people.
Wherever there is a new interpretation of the tradition, application of
hermeneutics becomes a necessity. Unit 8 is going to provide a new tool
in your hands. Hope, you ‘will make use of it in your researches.
After introducing in Section 8.2 methodological disputes in the social
sciences the unit traces in Sections 8.3 and 8.4 the history of hermeneutics
and shows its relationship with sociology. In the end it discusses
+120¢ philosophical ideas of hermeneutics.
8.2 Methodological Disputes in the Social Hermeneutics

Sciences
Two main traditions have dominated the philosophy of social science for
quite some time now, the divide being between those for whom sociat
science is the explanation of social phenomena through a search for
causes, and those for whom social science is the understanding and
interpretation of the meaning of social action. This dispute over the
nature of socfal science has a long history during which it has manifested
itself in many forms.
There was the dispute over methods (Methodenstreit) of the 1890s in
Germany in economics and Carl Menger (1B41-1921), the neo classical
Austrian economist, insisted that the exact laws of theoretical economics
were identical in form to those of the natural sciences such as mechanics.
Gustav Schmoller (1838-1917), of the German younger economic history
school, roundly opposed Carl Menger (see Bryant 1985). Schmoller was
also a member of the Society for Social Policy (Verein fur Sozialpolitik),
which had been set up in 1872 at Eisenach as a reform movement. The
Society (Verein) never took up concrete political programmes, instead it
published several studies of specific concrete problems in the socio-
economic sphere. For these studies, Schmoller advocated an inductive,
empirical and historical approach in opposition to the deductive and
abstract approach of Menger.
At this point, some neo-Kantian philosophers entered the debate and
the dispute became generalised from a conflict over the methodology of
economics to a conflict about the nature of social science (see Box 8.1).

Box 8.1 Conflict over Methodology of Social Science

Windelband (1848-1915), of the Heidelberg neo-Kantian school, in his Rector’s
address of 1894, distinguished the nomothetic natural sciences from the
ideographic human sciences (see also Box 1.5 in Unit 1). This difference, according
to him, was not due to nature or society being the object of study of these
sciences, the difference was the result of these sciences having distinct cognitive
interests and goals. The natural sciences have a technical goal and interest
while the human sciences have a practical goal and cognitive interest.

Another important debate over the methodology of the social sciences in

Germany was the debate on the value and purpose of scientific research
(Werturteilsstreit), which began in 1903 and lasted for over a decade,
and in which a famous participant was Max Weber. Weber cut through
the debate in his own particular way, although he numbered himself
among the descendants of the historical school (Schmoller, Windelband)
For him the social world was composed of unique objects and singular
configurations. He did not reject causal analysis as inappropriate to the
soc’al s f2rces. Believing in the ‘value relevance’ of all social action,
Weber saw the method of ‘interpretative understanding’ as essential to 1214
 Research social science, but he also said that it had to be complemented by causal
Methodologies
analysis. Not only did Weber’s category of ‘value relevance’ not exclude
causal analysis, it also did not exclude Weber’s advocacy of a ‘value-
free’ social science and this was the issue that he debated with Schmoller
in the early 1900s (Weber 1949).
Finally, there was the post Second World War debate on positivism or
positivist dispute (Positivismusstreit) in Germany, which began in 1961
with Popper’s opening address to the German Sociological Association at
Tubingen (see Bryant 1985 and also Adorno et. al. 1976)). Popper
presented twenty-seven theses on the logic of the social sciences, and
Adorno answered him. The debate was to be between a supposedly
positivist methodology advocated by Popper and Adorno’s anti-positivist
stance, but Popper spiked the proceedings somewhat by claiming himself
to be a critic of positivism. In spite of this, the dispute continued with
Habermas coming in on the side of Adorno (1903-1969) and continuing
the attack on Popper’s methodology as positivist, and Hans Albert (1904-
1973) defending this methodology. In this debate too, as in the earlier
ones, one side insisted on the human/historical/cultural/social sciences
having their own methodology, distinct from that of natural science.
The name given to this distinct methodology of the human sciences was
hermeneutics.

8.3 Tracing the History of Hermeneutics

In a way, the story of hermeneutics is much older than these
methodological disputes. Should we begin this story of hermeneutics as a
methodology for the social sciences with the figure of Hermes, who
brought the messages of the Greek gods to mortals? As a messenger, did
Hermes just repeat verbatim the words of the gods to the mortals, or
did he first have to “interpret” what the gods said, to “understand”
their words, before he could convey their ‘meaning’ to the mortals.
(The Greek word, "hermeneus” means an interpreter.)
This concern with godly things remained when hermeneutics, the science
of interpretation, resurfaced during the Reformation®. Hermeneutics
really came into its own during the Reformation when, against the Catholic
insistence on church authority and tradition in matters of understanding
and interpreting the Holy Scriptures, Protestant reformers had to come
up with alternative principles of the interpretation of the Bible. Did the
church’s insistence on its functionaries being the arbiters of the meaning
of Christian religious texts imply that these religious texts were incomplete
in themselves, and one had to go outside of them to a priest to discover
their meaning? The recovery of the classical texts during the Renaissance
had also led to a humanist hermeneutics, and the twelfth century interest in
the Justinian® legal code generated its own hermeneutics of jurisprudence.
The person responsible for bringing all these elements together, and known
©122%
as the father of modern hermeneutics, was Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Hermeneutics
While Schleiermacher (see Box 8.2 Schleiermacher on Hermeneutics) held
his chair in Protestant theology at the University of Berlin between 1810 and
1834, he taught a course on hermeneutics.

Box 8.2 Schleiermacher on Hermeneutics

Schleiermacher believed that human beings have a linguistic disposition and their
linguistic competence enables them to understand the utterances of others. He
considered hermeneutics an art and believed that every utterance, whether
spoken or written, contemporary or historical,
could be understood through an interpretation.
Every utterance was an embodiment of the
speaker’s thought, and this thought could onty
be embodied in language. Understanding and
interpretation, therefore, always had two
aspects or components, namely, a grammatical
or linguistic component and a psychological or
divinatory component. According to
Schleiermacher (1819: 74), “Just as every act of
speaking is related to both the totality of the
language and the totality of the speaker’s
thoughts, so understanding a speech always
involves two moments: to understand what is
said in the context of the language with its Schlejermacher
possibilities, and to understand it as a fact in (1768-1834)
the thinking of the speaker.”
e

Schleiermacher (1819: 75) insisted that "these two hermeneutical tasks

are completely equal, and it would be incorrect to label grammatical
interpretation the ‘lower’ and psychological interpretation the ‘higher’
task”. Grammatical interpretation corresponds to
the linguistic aspect of understanding. This
dimension is tied to the hermeneutical circle of
part and whole, for it involves a consideration of
the relation between an isolated expression or work
and the pre-given totality of language or literature.
Psychological interpretation, on the other hand,
is a divinatory dimension that attempts to recover
Hermes, a
the individuality and originality of the speaker or Greek God
the writer, to recreate the creative act.

The goal of understanding is to ‘understand the text at first as well and

then even better than its author’. Since we have no direct knowledge of
what was in the author’s mind we must try to become aware of many
things of which he himself may have been unconscious, except insofar as
he reflects on his own work and becomes his own reader. Moreover with
respect to the objective aspects, the author has no data other than we
heve (ah eiermacher 1819: 83).
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 Research
Methodologies 8.4 Hermeneutics and Sociology
Having reached the stage of the rules of interpretation, to interpret well
we have to linguistically contextualise the utterances of the writer, as
well as historically contextualise the writer. We are still puzzled. What do
the rules of the interpretation of texts have to do with sociology? Don’t
they belong instead to such disciplines as literary criticism? The answer
to these questions is, in the words of Thompson (1981: 37), “In the
wake of their work, the text to be interpreted was no longer a mere
fragment of classical or Christian literature, but rather history itself as
the document of the achievements and failures of humanity.” Thompson’s
words echo the great German historians, Leopold von Ranke (1795-
1886) and Gustav Droysen (1808-1884). When history itself became the
story or the text that was the object of study, it was only a small step
from this vantage point to view social practices and social institutions as
text analogues, the meaning of which had to be interpreted.
Defining sociology in this way would have, however, seemed meaningless
to Auguste Comte (1798-1857 ), the founder of sociology, who published-
his Course of Positive Philosophy in six volumes between 1830 and 1842.
For Comte (see Box 8.3 Comte’s View of Sociology), all phenomena are
subject to invariable natural laws; in so far as human phenomena are
concerned, the fundamental laws are the laws concerning the human
beings’ intellectual history, the evolution of the way of thinking of human
beings about themselves and the world around them.

—— ——
Box 8.3 Comte’s View of Sociology ]
Comte saw sociology as the culmination of an intellectual history, which began
from Theology to Metaphysics to Sociology. This law of the three stages, like the
law of gravity, had been at work since the beginning of the human being’s life on
earth; each branch of our knowledge has passed successively through three
different theoretical conditions, namely, the theological or fictitious, the
metaphysical or abstract, and the scientific or positive. In the theological state,
the mind supposes all phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of
supernatural beings, and in the metaphysical state, the mind supposes abstract
forces, veritable entities, inherent in all beings. In the positive state, the mind
has given over the vain search after Absolute notions, the origin and destination
| of the universe and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of
their laws, that s, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance (see
Gordon 1991). Varlous disciplines like physics and biology had passed through the
theological and the metaphysical stages and had now become scientific. If sociology
followed the route of these sciences, it would also achieve a scientific status.

It was against a position like Comte’s that in 1883, Withelm Dilthey

(1833-1911) published his Introduction to the Human Sciences in 1883,
in which he argued that it was unfortunate that while the human sciences
had successfully freed themselves from the domination of theology and
metaphysics, they had succumbed to the domination of the natural
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sciences. Dilthey opposed Comte by positing a methodological divide Hermeneutics
between the natural sciences (the Naturwissenschaften) and the human
sciences (the Geisteswissenschaften) which include the social sciences.
Human beings are certainly part of nature, but unlike other natural
objects like stones, air and trees, they are imbued with consciousness.
They have an inside and when they do something, that something has a
meaning for them, just as when an author writes something, he intends
to convey some meaning through his writing. How can we know social
action without the recovery of its meaning for its actors? When Dilthey
asked this question, hermeneutics jumped from being a method of
interpreting texts to being the method for the social sciences, and this
jump fore-grounded the question of what is it that is assumed in
conceptualising social action as a text. Then the task was to interpret
the text and understand its meaning.
According to Dilthey, understanding is a category of human life. When
human beings act, they act according to their reading of the situation in
which they are. In order to understand their action, we have to first
understand their understanding of the situation in which they acted.
Dilthey argued that the formal methods of interpretation in the human
and the social sciences are derived from these ‘elementary forms of
understanding’ that are characteristic of everyday human life and social
interaction. Dilthey (1883: 154) held, "Understanding arises, first of all,
in the interests of practical life where people are dependent on dealing
with each other. They must communicate with each other. The one
must know what the other wants. So the first elementary forms of
understanding arise.”
For Dilthey, the object of understanding is always a ‘life-expression’.
Life expressions are of three classes, namely,

L3 The first of these classes are cohcepts, judgements and larger

thought-structures.
> Actions form another class of life expressions.
> The third class is the ‘lived experience’.
The understanding of any expression of life takes place in the medium
of ‘objective mind’. Taking over the Hegelian category of ‘objective
mind’, Dilthey (1883: 155) writes, “For even the work of genius represents
ideas, feelings and ideals commonly held in an age and environment.
From this world of objective mind the self receives sustenance from
earliest childhood. It is the medium in which the understanding of other
persons and their life-expressions takes place.”
Elementary forms of understanding give rise to higher forms of
understanding. Even though understanding takes place in the medium of
objective mind, “the subject matter of understanding is always something
individual.... We are concerned with the individual not merely as an example
of man in general but as a totality in himself” (Dilthey 1883: 158). Even
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 Research when one accepts Dilthey’s insistence on the ‘intrinsic value’ of the
Methodologies
individual, one is uneasy about how his adopted category of ‘objective
mind’ fits with his emphasis on the individual. Dilthey’s categories of
objective mind and of the human being as a totality in himself or herself
are analogous to Schleiermacher’s distinction between the linguistic and
psychological components of understanding. For both these thinkers, a
central issue is that of how these two aspects of understanding fit
together.
It is interesting to note that this dilemma of Dilthey’s hermeneutics is
matched by the structure-agency debate generated by structural-
functionalism. Till the 1960s, the Parsonian model of structural-
functionalism, which used a causal form of explanation, dominated
sociology, particularly of the Anglo-American variety. The nineteen sixties
saw a revolt against this model, in the form of ethnomethodology,
symbolic interactionism and hermeneutics. Both ethnomethodology and
hermeneutics insisted that instead of explaining social action by citing
either structures or intentions as causes, the social scientist needed to
understand the meaning of the action. For ethnomethodology, if the
route to meaning lay through intentions, this still meant that intentions
were not causes, instead they were the creators of meaning. For
hermeneutics on the other hand, these meanings were derived not so
much from intentions as from social and cultural practices (Alexander
1987).

8.5 Philosophical Hermeneutics

Getting back to our main story, while Dilthey’s methodological concerns
were further developed by Enrico Betti (1823-1892), Hans-Georg Gadamer
(1900-2002) took the discussion of hermeneutics to a different plane.
Gadamer argued that if one were to take seriously the claim of
understanding being a category of life, then one could not see
hermeneutics narrowly as a methodological tool, but one had to instead
speak of ‘universal’ hermeneutics, since all human experience has a
hermeneutic dimension. In an unselfconscious manner, we are engaged
in the hermeneutic task of understanding all the time, but we only
become conscious of it when we have an experience of misunderstanding,
when we feel that we have not read the situation correctly. Just as
breathing is a constant part of us as long as we live, so is ‘understanding’
a part of our being in the world. in the introduction to Truth and Method,
Gadamer (1975) categorically stated that the hermeneutics he was
developing was not a methodology of the human sciences. The philosophical
questions of Truth and Method were: "what is understanding, and how
is understanding possible?” Gadamer (see Box 8.4 Gadamer’s Conception
of Understanding) defined hermeneutics as the “basic being-in-motion
of There-being which constitutes its finiteness and historicity and hence
1264 includes the whole of its experience of the world”. ..The study of
 hermeneutics is thus the study of Being, and, ultimately, the study of Hermeneutics
language, because “Being that can be understood is language” (as quoted
in Hekman 1986: 94).
———
| Box 8.4 Gadamer’s Conception of Understanding
In Truth and Method, Gadamer found fault with both the Enlightenment and the
Romantic conception of understanding as being based on a false opposition
between reason and tradition, or between judgment and prejudice. Understanding
is not a matter of judgments alone; nor do prejudices always lead to
misunderstanding. Similarly, if the canons of rationality enable one to understand
only to make sense in the context of certain traditions, then the tradition is not
a matter of simple inertia. It is instead "...constantly an element of freedom and
of history itself. Even the most genuine and solid tradition does not persist by
nature because of the inertia of what once existed. It needs to be affirmed,
embraced, and cultivated. It is, essentially, preservation, such as is active in atl
historical change. But preservation is an act of reason. ... . At any rate, preservation
is as much a freely chosen action as revolution and renewal.” (Gadamer 1975).

In his thinking about hermeneutics, Gadamer, much more than Dilthey

and Schleiermacher, also problematised the position of the investigator.
For Gadamer, ‘any interpretations of the past, whether by a historian,
philosopher or linguist, are as much a creature of the interpreter’s own
time and place as the phenomenon under investigation was of its own
period in history. The interpreters are always guided in their understanding
of the past by their own particular set of prejudices. Acts of understanding
or interpretation require the overcoming of the strangeness of the
phenomenon to be understood and its transformation into an object of
familiarity in which the horizon of the historical phenomenon and that
of the interpreter become united.” This fusion of horizons between the
object and subject of study is possible because the historical object and
the hermeneutic operation of the interpreter are both part of the
overriding historical and cultural tradition or continuum, which Gadamer
calls effective history (for more on fusion of horizons and effective
history, see Dostat 2002).

8.6 The Hermeneutics of Suspicion

Our next thinker who has made a contribution to hermeneutics is Jorgen
Habermas (1929-). Since Habermas came to hermeneutics from a
Marxism mediated by the Frankfurt school, his methodological principles
show the influence of both Marxist and Freudian theory. For Habermas,
the history of the human sciences shows that human beings pursued
knowledge in order to fulfill three interests, namely,
- The knowledge constitutive interest of the empirical-analytic
sciences is in technical control.
4 The knowledge constitutive interest of the cultural sciences is
practical. 1274
 Research L3 The knowledge constitutive interest of the critical sciences is in
Methodologles
emancipation.
Positing a relation between the logical-methodological rules of a science
and its knowledge constitutive interests, Habermas argues that the
methodological structure of Freudian psychoanalysis is paradigmatic for
a critical science of society. Habermas calls the method of psychoanalysis
a form of "depth hermeneutics’; which incorporates explanation and
understanding into a science oriented towards methodological self-
. reflection. (We will learn a little later Ricouer has labelled Habermas’
method of psycho-analysis as ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’). Successful
psychoanalytic practice is defined in terms of the patient himself or
herself being able to understand and overcome his or her neurosis. This
idea can be generalised to the position that human beings, unlike objects
in nature, have a consciousness and an understanding of what it is that
they are doing. If the social scientist does not want to stay limited to
this understanding, she or he is also not to ignore it by calling it false
consciousness.
Habermas uses his category of depth hermeneutics to contest Gadamer’s
concept of phitosophical or universal hermeneutics. Habermas allows that
understanding the meaning of something that seems unfamiliar can
come about when that unfamiliar action is placed in its historical and
social context. But in the case of what he calls "systematically distorted
communication’, he points to the problem of lack of understanding
which remains even when the action is contextualised. We can use the
example of a neurosis — say the compulsive washing of hands ~ to
illustrate the point. If we seek to understand the meaning of someone
constantly washing hands, over and above the placing of that someone
in her or his social horizon, we need to also unearth the event which
triggered that neuroses in the person. In order to understand this case,
we have to first explain it (see Box 8.5).

Box 8.5 Habermas’ Concept of Explanatory Understanding 1;

Habermas (1985: 305) came up with the category of ‘explanatory understanding’
‘ and said that “The What — the meaningful content of the systematically distorted
expression — cannot be "understood” if the Why —
the origin of the symptomatic scene in the conditions
responsible for the systematic distortion itself - cannot
be "explained” at the same time.. explanatory
understanding, as a depth-hermeneutical deciphering
of specifically inaccessible expressions, presupposes
not only, as simple hermeneutical understanding does,
the trained apptication of naturally acquired
communicative competence, but a theory of
communicative competence as well. Such a theory
Jorgen Habermas concerns itself with the forms of the inter-subjectivity
(1929-) of language and the causes of their deformation.”
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Wanting to employ depth hermeneutics as a resource for the emancipatory Hermeneutics
interest of the critical sciences, Habermas asks us to be conscious of the
problem of the understanding turning into reconciliation in Gadamerian
hermeneutics. Unless we are conscious of the possibility of ‘systematic
distortions’, the ‘strangeness of the phenomenon’ might be overcome
not through explanatory understanding but through reconciliation.

8.7 Phenomenology and Hermeneutics

Finally, in his hermeneutics, Paul Ricoeur carries this Habermasian tum
back to explanation further. In his ‘The Model of the Text’, first of all, in
order to prove the relevance of heimeneutics
as a method to the social sciences, Ricoeur shows
human action as having the same structure as a
written text. Ricoeur (1971) first distinguishes
between spoken and written discourse. In written
discourse, unlike in an oral conversation, the
link between the author and the meaning of
what the author has written, as well as the link
between the meaning of what is written and
the specific interlocutor to whom it is addressed, Paul Ricoeur
is broken. Like written discourse, human action 1913-2005
is also detachable from its author; it has
consequences of its own, it always goes beyond its relevance to its initial
situation, and it can be seen as addressed to an infinite number. These
various similarities are sufficient to warrant the treatment of action as
a text, and so to justify the distinctive status of a hermeneutical discourse
on human action.
Like Habermas, Ricoeur also sees psychoanalysis as a type of hermeneutics.
But this hermeneutics, Ricoeur points out, is not a hermeneutics of.
faith; it is, rather, a hermeneutics of suspicion. Whereas the hermeneutics
of faith is animated by a willingness to listen and by a respect for the
object as a revelation of the sacred, the hermeneutics of suspicion is
animated by a skepticism towards the given and a rejection of respect
for the object.

It is not only psychoanalysis that questions the authority of the meaning

producing subject - so does structuralism: the objective meaning of a
text is something other than the subjective intention of the author, and
5o the problem of the right understanding can no longer be solved by a
simple return to the alleged intention of the author. Not that
hermeneutics, even in the hands of Schleiermacher and Dilthey, ever
reduced meaning to intentionality, but what is new in Ricoeur is that he
begins to speak of the transition ‘from Understanding to Explanation’
and ‘from Explanation to Understanding’. Ricoeur (1971) argues that
we should consider structural analysis to be a necessary stage between a
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 Research ‘naive’ interpretation and a ‘critical’ interpretation, between a ‘surface’
Methodologies
interpretation and a ‘depth’ interpretation. The final movement in the
dialectic of interpretation thus culminates in an act of understanding
that is mediated by the explanatory procedures of structuralist analysis.

8.8 Conclusion
An application of hermeneutics refers to making end use of a traditional
text, like the judge interprets and applies the law to a case, or the
preacher interprets and applies a religious tenet to a contemporary
moral issue. In this sense, hermeneutics is visible all around us and we
hope that you are going to find some use of hermeneutics in your
researches. In the units that follow, you will rea&'fgabout contemporary
perspectives used in sociological research. it will be interesting for you
to discover the application of hermeneutics in some of the contemporary
social research.

Further Reading@
Bauman, Z. 1978. Hermeneutics and Social Science. Columbia University
Press: New York
Bernstein, R. 1983. Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science,
Hermeneutics and Praxis. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia
Bleicher, J. 1980. Contemporary Hermeneutics - Hermeneutics as
Method, Philosophy and Critique. Routledge & Kegan Paul
Bruns, G. L. 1992. Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern. Yale University
Press: New Haven
Grondin, J. L. 1994. Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics. Yale

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