The Qualitative-Quantitative Distinction in the Social Sciences PDF
Preview The Qualitative-Quantitative Distinction in the Social Sciences
THE QUAUTATIVE-QUANTITATIVE DISTINCTION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editor ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University Editorial Advisory Board ADOLF GRÜNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SYLVANS. SCHWEBER, Brandeis U niversity JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARXW. WARTOFSKY,Baruch College ofthe City University ofNew York VOLUME 112 THE QUALITATIVE QUANTITATIVE DISTINCTION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Edited by BARRY GLASSNER Department olSociology, University olConnecticut and JONATHAN D. MORENO Division 01 Humanities in Medicine, SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Qualitative-quantitative distinction in the social sciences / edited by Barry Glassner and Jonathan D. Moreno. p. cm. - (Boston studies in the philosophy of science : v. 112) ISBN 978-90-481-8460-6 ISBN 978-94-017-3444-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-3444-8 1. Social sciences-Methodology. 1. Glassner, Barry. 11. Moreno, Jonathan D. 111. Series. Q174.B67 vol. 112 [H61] 501 s---dc 19 [300'.72] 88-23159 CIP printed on acid free paper All Rights Reserved © 1989 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Origina11y published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1989 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized 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 owners. Dedicated to the memory of Richard S. RUDNER (1921-1979) Professor of Philosophy, Washington University Editor, Philosophy of Science (1959-1974) Author, Philosophy of Social Science (1966) TABLE OF CONTENTS BARRY GLASSNER and JONATHAN D. MORENO / Introduction: Quantification and Enlightenment 1 PETER CA WS / The Law of Quality and Quantity, or What Numbers Can and Can't Describe 13 CHARLES W. SMITH/ The Qualitative Significance of Quantitative Representation 29 CHARLES W. LIDZ / "Objectivity" and Rapport 43 DA VID SIL VERMAN / Telling Convincing Stories: A Plea for Cautious Positivism in Case-Studies 57 DA VID J. SYL VA N / The Qualitative-Quantitative Distinction in Political Science 79 STJEPAN G.MESTROVIC/ Schopenhauer's Will and Idea in Durkheim 's Methodology 99 ROBERT FELEPP A / Cultural Kinds: Imposition and Discovery in Anthropology 119 JOSEPH MARGOLIS / Monistic and Dualistic Canons for the Natural and Human Sciences 155 PETER T. MANICAS / Explanation and Quantification 179 LIST OF WORKS CITED 207 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 225 INDEX OF NAMES 227 vii BARRY GLASSNER AND JONATHAN D. MORENO INTRODUCfION: QUANTIFICATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT 1. QUANTIFICATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE Contemporary students of the social sciences are well-acquainted with two claims about the role of quantitative techniques in those fields. One is that quantification is essential for an objective and rigorous investigation of the social no less than the 'natural' domain; another is that no description of a social world or an aspect of one can be complete without some qualitative appreciation of relevant properties of the territory . Our pmpose here is not to rehearse the several arguments and accounts that co'dd be given in support of or in opposition to one or the other of these not incompatible claims, but rather to show how their familiarity tends to conceal a vast array of presup positions that can be felicitously displayed through an historical and philosophical analysis of their content One observation about the above propositions that immediately presents itself concems a feature they have in common. Each suggests a somewhat detached relation to any social situation that is its object That this has not always been the case is easily recalled: eighteenth-century social scientists (the expression is used in full awareness of its anachronistic tendency), virtually identified their progress with that of society, arguing an interactive influence of social and social scientific improvement. Further, the measure of this progress was the increased domination of quantification in the practice of social science, such that the values of social change were determinably numerical and greater facility with quantitative technique augured social improvement. In a word, quantification, once an augury of change, became in the Enlightenment a creator of change. In one sense, then, the history of the social sciences has not always associated quantification with 'value freedom,' though in another sense of the term, Enlightenment social scientists were even more convinced of the value freedom of their numerical results than the modems. That is, Enlightenment social science was not value free in the sense that it disassociated itself from prescriptions about progressive social policies; quite the contrary. However, the certainty these thinkers had as to 1 Barry G/assner anti Jonathan D. Moreno (eds.), The Qualitative-Quantitative Distinction in the Socia/ Sciences. 1-12. © 1989 by K/uwer Academic Publishers. 2 BARRY GLASSNER AND JONATHAN D. MORENO the power of their results with respect to making social progress feasible relied on a classical ancient notion of the objective merit of quantification, another sense of value freedom. In our own time we have come somewhat indistinct1y to wonder about the objectivity of quantification, not to mention the meaning and value of objectivity itself. The eighteenth century will turn out to be a pivot upon which the rest of the story of quantification in social science can be said to turn. It will be important to see what the much-vaunted objectivity of quantification has meant over the years, how its underlying rationale has remained remarkably stable while its implications shifted, and how this rationale has helped to foster the confusion from which we still suffer concerning the relationship between qualitative and quantitative methods in social science. The point is not an indictment of any particular social science methodology, but rather a critical examination of certain conceptions of the significance of any methodology as they appear in these developments. 2. QUANTIFICATION AND OBJECTIVITY Plato articulated a powerful intuition we seem to have about the preeminence of measurement. At one point in the Republic Socrates considers the conditions that can provoke reflection, as 'when perception yields a contradic tory impression, presenting two opposite qualities with equal clearness ... ' Sight cannot satisfactorily distinguish between the sizes of one finger and another, for example, for 'sight perceives both big and little; only not as separate, but in a eonfused impression.' In response, intelligenee invokes 'the help of reason with its power of ealeulation ... ' Socrates goes on to note that 'number is the subjeet of the whole art of ealeulation and of the scienee of number' and that 'the properties of number appear to have the power of leading us towards reality' preeisely because they are more reliable than the properties of mere perception (Plato, 239-241). Plato's familiar ruminations on this matter follow his adumbration in the eave allegory of the lesson of the analogy of the line. Aceess to mathematical forms is intelleetual, superior to pereeptual aetivity, and a necessary prepara tion for knowledge of the forms of things themselves. Henee mathematieal ealeulation helps us eome closer to awareness of the objects of intellect, the only true objeets there are. The overall impression is t11at, short of insight to the forms themselves, mathematical knowledge is the closest we can eome to knowing the true nature of things, while 'knowledge' of qualities is superfi eial and finally vain. INTRODUCTION 3 Without of course adopting a Platonic metaphysics, the eighteenth-century philosophes were Grecophiles who regarded the Athenian philosophers as their intellectual forbearers and mentors. So powerful was their identification with c1assification that ancient ideas were taken as keys to the design of the modem world, but usually the ideas were taken separately and as divided from their systematic context. The power of number was an idea the En lightenment thinkers deployed with their legendary passion and vigor, particularly as an instrument for social reconstruction. It is no exaggemtion to say that the role of quantities in contemporary social scientific theorizing cannot be understood with any depth absent a recollection of the philosophes' axial development of the notion of quantification. It is a commonplace that for the philosophes progress required releasing human abilities to have power over nature. Aprerequisite for this power was knowledge of the underlying causes of natural events, knowledge that required quantitative precision. Enlightenment thinkers were sufficiently aware of themselves as products of their time to appreciate the importance of a liberal social environment to the knowledge enterprise; the supposition that the reverse is also the case, that enhanced knowledge could advance social conditions, came easily. The same conviction justifies the conduct of social science in our own day, with the critical difference that we no longer believe that our theoretical breakthroughs will eventuate in exact1y those social innovations that would carry us in the direction which we have determined in advance to be the good society. The philosophes, on the other hand, thought they knew more or less what the contours of the good society were, and were certain that mathematically expressed knowledge was at least a necessary condition of its becoming a reality. Helvetius' view that the study of virtue in general requires the demonstra tive character of geometric calculation was typical. But the philosophers of the eighteenth century were by no means united on the primacy of quantifica tion for all fields of study. In chemistry, for example, there was the famous controversy about material change. On one side were those who preferred an atomic/vacuum theory of the movements of particles as alterations in the time-space coordinates of hard atoms, a notion susceptible to quantification. On the other were those who argued that some basic set of qualitative elements, like Aristotle' shot, moist, cold, and humid, were influenced by a kind of life force or ether, conditions of irregular change which would make mathematization difficult at best. Voltaire regarded the Newtonian mathemati cal synthesis in physics and chemistry as a victory for Platonists and looked forward to similar events in chemistry, while Diderot's Encyclopedie
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