Antipositivist Theories of the Sciences: Critical Rationalism, Critical Theory and Scientific Realism

288 Pages·1983·6.534 MB·English

by  Norman Stockman (auth.)

ANTIPOSITIVIST THEORIES OF THE SCIENCES
SOCIOLOGY OF THE SCIENCES
MONOGRAPHS
Managing Editors:
R. Whitley, Manchester Business School, University ofM anchester
L. Graham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
H. Nowotny, European Centre for Social Welfare Training & Research, Vienna
P. Weingart, Universitiit Bielefeld
Editorial Board:
G. B6hme, Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt
N. Elias, Universitiit Bielefeld
Y. Elkana, The Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation, Jerusalem
R. Krohn,McGill University, Montreal
W. Lepenies, Freie Universitiit Berlin
H. Martins, St. Antony's College, Oxford
E. Mendelsohn, Harvard University, Massachusetts
H. Rose, University ofB radford, Bradford, West Yorkshire
C. Salomon-Bayet, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifzque, Paris
1983
NORMAN STOCKMAN
University of Aberdeen, Dept. of Sociology
ANTIPOSITIVIST
THEORIES OF THE
SCIENCES
Critical Rationalism, Critical Theory
and Scientific Realism
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.
library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Stockman, Norman, 1944-
Antipositivist theories of the sciences.
(Sociology of the sciences monographs)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Science-Philosophy. 2. Positivism. 1. Title.
II. Series.
Q17S.s787 1983 501 83-13877
ISBN 978-90-481-8380-7 ISBN 978-94-015-7678-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-7678-9
All Rights Reserved.
© 1983 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1983
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover lst edition 1983
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utiIized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
T ABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
PART I: THE IDENTIFICATION OF POSITIVISM
1. Introduction 3
PART II: ANTIPOSITIVISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE
NATURAL SCIENCES
2. The Antipositivism of Critical Rationalism 19
3. The Antipositivism of Critical Theory 28
3.1. Critical Theory's Identification of Positivism 28
3.1.1. Relationships Between Positivism and Conven-
tionalism 34
3.2. Critical Theory's Critique of Positivism: The Kantian
Background 43
3.3. Critical Theory and the Natural Sciences: Beyond Kant
and Positivism 52
3.3.1. The Critique of Technical Reason 57
3.3.2. Habermas' Theory of the Technical Interest 64
4. The Antipositivism of Scientific Realism 72
4.1. Preliminaries on 'Realism' 72
4.2. Realism's Identification of Positivism 78
4.3. Realism's Critique of Positivism 81
4.4. Beyond Positivism: The Realist Theory of Science 85
5. Discussion: Antipositivism in the Philosophy of the Natural
Sciences 95
5.1. Conclusion to Part II 117
v
vi Table of Contents
PART III: ANTIPOSITIVISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE
SOCIAL SCIENCES
6. The Antipositivism of Critical Rationalism 121
6.1. Critical Rationalism and the Problem of Values 131
6.2. Critical Rationalism and the Problem of Meaning 135
7. The Antipositivism of Critical Theory 139
7.1. The Critique of the Doctrine of the Unity of Science 142
7.2. Latent Positivism in the Hermeneutic Sciences 151
7.3. Latent Positivism in the Critical Social Sciences 157
8. The Antipositivism of Scientific Realism 166
8.1. Realism's Identification of Positivism 166
8.2. Realism's Critique of Positivism 169
8.2.1. Realism's Critique of Positivist Naturalism 170
8.2.2. Realism's Critique of Positivist Antinaturalism 177
8.3. Beyond Positivism: Realism and Social Science 180
8.3.1 The Realism of Ethogeny 182
8.3.2. Realism and Marxism in Sociology 189
9. Discussion: Antipositivism in the Philosophy of the Social
Sciences 201
PART IV: POSITIVISM, ANTIPOSITIVISM AND IDEOLOGY
10. Positivism, Antipositivism and Ideology 233
11. The Concept of Ideology in Critical Rationalism 236
12. The Concept of Ideology in Critical Theory 240
13. The Concept of Ideology in Scientific Realism 247
14. Discussion: Positivism, Antipositivism and Ideology 251
Notes 260
Bibliography 266
Index 275
PREFACE
The sciences are too important to be left exclusively to scientists, and indeed
they have not been. The structure of scientific knowledge, the role of the
sciences in society, the appropriate social contexts for the pursuit of scientific
inquiry, have long been matters for reflection and debate about the sciences
carried on both within academe and outside it. Even within the universities
this reflection has not been the property of any single discipline. Philosophy
might have been first in the field, but history and the social sciences have
also entered the fray. For the latter, new problems came to the fore, since
reflection on the sciences is, in the case of the social sciences, necessarily
also reflection on themselves as sciences.
Reflection on the natural sciences and self-reflection by the social sciences
came to be dominated in the 1960s by the term 'positivism'. At the time
when this word had been invented, the sciences were flourishing; their social
and material environment had become increasingly favourable to scientific
progress, and the sciences were pointing the way to an optimistic future.
In the later twentieth century, however, 'positivism' came to be a word used
more frequently by those less sure of nineteenth century certainties. In both
sociology and philosophy, 'positivism' was now something to be rejected,
and, symbolizing the collapse of an earlier consensus, it became itself the
shibboleth of a new dissensus, as different groups of reflective thinkers, in
rejecting 'positivism', rejected something different, and often rejected each
other.
Yet this chaos has not been altogether unproductive. It has raised the level
of our awareness of the philosophical problems of the social sciences, and
has reminded us of the interrelationships between sociology and philosophy.
And this awareness is no less central to the sociology of the sciences than to
any other field of the social sciences.
The aim of this book is, therefore, to extract from the various 'positivist
disputes' what is of value to continued reflection and self-reflection in both
the natural and the social sciences, before a later generation forgetfully but
vii
viii Preface
with a certain justified impatience abandons these tortuous disputes to the
detritus of intellectual history. To this end, I have adopted as a method a
comparative exposition of three 'antipositivist' theories of the sciences,
drawing what is constructive from each rather than setting them at each
other's throats in polemical combat. Popper's critical rationalism made the
first break away from a self-confident 'logical positivism', rejecting its quest
for certainty and its inductive method, but also, and more fundamentally,
discovering the idea that the rules of scientific method are a social product,
an idea which Popper tried to capture with the concept of 'convention'.
Critical theory, especially in the form of Habermas' theory of knowledge
guiding interests, being dissatisfied with the apparent arbitrariness of this
'conventionalism', nonetheless also takes the essentially Kantian step of
insisting that scientific knowledge is human knowledge; thus the rules of
scientific method are to be understood in relation to aspects of the knowing
human subject. The third antipositivist theory of science, the realist theory,
claims that other writers, including Popper and Habermas, have built their
theories of knowledge on a mistaken account of scientific method, and that
scientific realism provides a different and more adequate account.
Yet I have also tried to carry the debate beyond this constructive exposi
tion. I have interpreted the realist theory of science not, as its proponents
suggest, as a more correct account of scientific method tout court, but as
a theory of method which is appropriate to a more recent phase in the
historical development of certain natural sciences. I have therefore sketched
out a synthesis of ideas drawn from all three antipositivist theories of the
sciences, the core of which is the thesis that rules of scientific method, while
not arbitrary conventions, do change historically in relation to changes in
both the material and the social conditions of scientific inquiry. The implica
tions of this thesis seem to me to be quite different for the social sciences
than for the natural sciences, and to reinforce the 'antinaturalism' of the
critical theorists rather than the 'naturalism' of many scientific realists.
Finally, I have briefly related this partly philosophical, partly sociological
account of scientific method to recent, more practical, controversies about
the possibly 'ideological' role of science in contemporary societies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have helped me in various ways over the years in which this
book was being put together. Reinhard Kreckel, Peter McCaffery, and Peter
Halfpenny read and commented on the whole of an earlier draft. I have
learned much from them and enjoyed their encouragement. Discussions
with William Outhwaite and Roy Bhaskar have also been a stimulation, as
have those with colleagues and generations of students in the Department of
Sociology at Aberdeen, and participants in the History and Philosophy of
Science Seminar at Aberdeen, especially Andrew Wear. Richard Whitley, as
well as aiding me in the production of this book as editor of the series, also
gave me an opportunity some years ago to present an early version of these
ideas to the B.S.A. Sociology of Science Study Group, when Ted Benton
acted as a challenging discussant. I am grateful to them all. I also want to
thank Jeanette Thorn for her excellent typing, Aileen Balfour for unstinting
aid in preparing the typescript, and Ellen Wilkinson for secretarial assistance.
Special thanks are due to my wife, Tina, who read every word and gave
me every encouragement while I was writing this book.
I should also take responsibility for my translations from the original
German texts in my quotations from the following works: H. Albert: 1968,
Traktat wer kritische Vernunft, Mohr, Ttibingen; J. Habermas: 1970, Zur
Logik der Soziaiwissenschaften, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.; R. Kreckel: 1975,
Soziologisches Denken: eine kritische Einjiihrung, Leske Verlag, Opladen;
K. Lenk (ed.): 1967, Ideologie, Luchterhand, Neuwied and Berlin; H.
Schnadelbach: 1969, 'Was ist Ideologie?' DasArgument SO;H. Schnadelbach:
1971, Erfahrung, Begriindung und Reflexion: Versuch uber den Positivismus,
Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.; A. Wellmer: 1967, Methodologie als Erkenntnis
theorie, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.
Finally, permission to quote from the publications listed below is ac
knowledged here with gratitude:
Adorno, T. W., Albert, H., Dahrendorf, R., Habermas, J., Pilot, H., Popper,
K. R.: 1976, The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, translated by
ix
x Acknowledgements
Glyn Adey and David Frisby, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., London
(German text: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, Darmstadt).
Albert, H.: 1968, Traktat iiber kritische Vernunft, J. C. B. Mohr (paul Sie
beck), Tiibingen.
Benton, T.: 1977, Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies,
Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., London.
Bhaskar, R.: 1978a, A Realist Theory of Science, second edition, Harvester
Press, Brighton, Sussex.
Bhaskar, R.: 1978b, 'On the possibility of social scientific knowledge and the
limits of naturalism', Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 8, pp.
1-28.
Habermas, J.: 1971, Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science,
and Politics, translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro, Heinemann Educational
Books Ltd., London (German text: SUhrkamp Verlag, FrankfurtjM.), and
Beacon Press (1970), Boston.
Habermas, J.: 1972, Knowledge and Human Interests, translated by Jeremy
J. Shapiro, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., London (German text:
Suhrkamp Verlag, FrankfurtjM.), and Beacon Press (1971), Boston.
Harre, R.: 1970, The Principles of Scientific Thinking, Macmillan, London
and Basingstoke, and the University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Harre, R. and Secord, P.: 1972, The Explanation of Social Behaviour, Basil
Blackwell Publisher, Oxford.
Keat, R. and Urry, J.: 1975, Social Theory as Science, Routledge and Kegan
Paul Ltd., London.
Marx, K.: 1975, Early Writings, edited by Quintin Hoare, translated by
Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, Penguin Marx Library (© Rodney
Livingstone, 1974; © Gregor Benton, 1974; © Lawrence & Wishart, 1973,
1971). Quotations from pp. 209, 322, 355 and 421 reprinted by kind
permission of Penguin Books Ltd., Harmondsworth, and Random House
Inc., New York.
Popper, K.: 1968, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (© 1959 Karl R. Popper),
Hutchinson, London, and Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, New York.
Schnadelbach, H.: 1971, Erfahrung, Begriindung und Reflexion: Versuch iiber
den Positivismus, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt/M.