Language, form, and inquiry: Arthur F. Bentley's philosophy of social science

569 Pages·1984·1.37 MB·English

by  James F. Ward

Language, Form, and Inquiry : Arthur F.
title:
Bentley's Philosophy of Social Science
author: Ward, James F.
publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
isbn10 | asin: 0870234250
print isbn13: 9780870234255
ebook isbn13: 9780585233697
language: English
Bentley, Arthur Fisher,--1870-1957, Social
subject
sciences--Philosophy.
publication date: 1984
lcc: H59.B44W37 1984eb
ddc: 300/.1
Bentley, Arthur Fisher,--1870-1957, Social
subject:
sciences--Philosophy.
Page iii
Language, Form, and Inquiry
Arthur F. Bentley's Philosophy of Social Science
James F. Ward
The University of Massachusetts Press Amherst, 1984
Page iv
Copyright © 1984 by
The University of Massachusetts Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Ward, James F., 1947
Language, form, and inquiry.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
I. Bentley, Arthur Fisher, 18701957. 2. Social
sciencesPhilosophy. I. Title.
H59.B44W37 1984 300'.I 83-18006
ISBN 0-87023-425-0
Publication of this book was assisted by the American
Council of Learned Societies under a grant from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Page v
Contents
Preface ix
1 1
Introduction: Philosophy and Social Science
2 15
The Intellectual Matrix of Bentley's Social Science
3 45
The Process of Government and the Reconstruction of
Social Science
4 77
The Group Interpretation of Politics
5 107
Social Science and the Problem of Knowledge
6 129
The Logic of Scientific Inquiry
7 161
Bentley's Behavioral Science
8 195
Pragmatism as Behavioral Naturalism
9 217
Conclusion: Inquiry and the Limits of Form
Appendix: The Arthur F. Bentley Manuscript Collections 235
Notes 239
Bibliography 261
Index 271
Page vii
Acknowledgments
Some of the material in this book has appeared in different form in the
American Journal of Political Science (1978) and the Journal of the
History of the Behavioral Sciences (1981). I am grateful to the editors
of these journals and to the University of Texas Press and the Clinical
Psychology Publishing Company respectively for permission to
reprint.
My debts are few but deep. Professor Frank Grace of the University of
Michigan, to whom this book is dedicated, has shaped my thinking
more decisively than anyone else. Professor Judith N. Shklar of
Harvard University helped me refine a number of my thoughts on
Bentley. I would like to thank Professor Sidney Ratner of Rutgers
University and Mr. Jules Altman for their permission to make use of
the Bentley manuscript collections housed in the Lilly Library,
Indiana University, as well as for their informative reminiscences of
Bentley. Ms. Saundra Taylor, Curator of Manuscripts for the Lilly
Library, was invaluable during my research there. Finally, I would like
to thank Mr. Richard Martin and Ms. Pam Campbell of the University
of Massachusetts Press for their assistance.
Page ix
Preface
Arthur F. Bentley has an honored, if misunderstood, place in the
history of American academic political science, but his true stature as
a philosopher of social science has never been properly recognized. In
this study I propose to recover Bentley's teaching through a critical
examination of his work as a whole and to present his views as
accurately as possible. I do not speak for myself or present my own
views on most of the issues with which his work is concerned.
Moreover, I do not suggest that social science should be reoriented
along Bentleyan lines. My belief that his views merit patient study and
serious consideration does not entail their advocacy. Rather, I mean to
clarify the central issues in Bentley's work and to explore his teaching
on its own terms. I do not claim to know better than Bentley what
social science should be and I have not attempted to correct his
mistakes in the light of some superior teaching. This does not mean
that he is beyond criticism or that his enterprise was successful. As I
see it, the only proper basis for such assessments must be a correct
account of his teaching. This study is not the last word on Bentley or
on the basic problems of social science. I am not convinced that all
philosophical issues in social science can or must be addressed
through the study of Bentley. Recognition of the limits of his
enterprise is as necessary to an adequate grasp of it as recognition of
his own intentions.
There are several claims I want to make for Bentley's work. I believe
that his writing constitutes one of the most profound and penetrating
bodies of reflection on the nature and problems of social science
available to us. It deserves to be considered as such by students of the
history and philosophy of social science. The most important

Page x
lesson to be learned from it is that the question of the possibility and
nature of social science is not self-contained. It cannot be raised,
much less explored properly, apart from sustained reflection on the
nature of science and on the problem of knowledge. I am in agreement
with Bentley in at least this respect. Social science is condemned to
parochialism and intellectual incoherence to the extent that it remains
closed to what can only be rightly called philosophic inquiry. For
Bentley, social science is essentially incoherent if it cannot explain
itself. His work may be understood as an inquiry into the conditions of
coherence and thus of intelligibility. It was intended to be fundamental
in a way that most philosophies of social science, whether produced
by social scientists or philosophers, are not.
Bentley's project may be summarized briefly. The systematic study of
all human things, among which must be included all things designated
as "social," can and must be made scientific, an imperative Bentley
never doubted. Unlike many proponents of this view, Bentley was
concerned with what gave science its authority. In this concern, I
believe, as Bentley himself believed, that his inquiry parted company
with that of most major figures in the history of social science. The
decisive features in which the authority of science consisted had never
been understood, whether by friends or enemies of the idea of a social
science, precisely because they were taken as self-evident. A genuine
or scientific social science cannot develop as long as social scientists
believe that a definitive understanding of science is readily available
either in philosophy or in the self-understanding of the natural
sciences. Thus, the issues with which the best minds in the social
sciences have been concerned necessarily lead, in Bentley's opinion,
beyond the conventional boundaries of social science. Few social
scientists were willing to follow such a path.
The scope of Bentley's enterprise is the most important reason that so
many accounts of his work are deficient. In order to understand him as
he understood himself, one must be willing to follow him into
disputes in logic, epistemology, philosophy of mathematics, and
philosophy of science. In addition, one must be prepared to consider
the possibility that fundamental problems in these areas share with
basic issues in social science certain common features. For most
social scientists, wary of autodidacts and possessed of professional
self-consciousness, such a course may seem eccentric. For Bentley it
seemed necessary. Bentley's intransigence and a measure