Search

The article traces the career of the concept scientific community through three discernible stages. The formative stages is presented by Ludwik Fleck's Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. It was learned that one of the early expositions of the theme that scientific knowledge is socially conditioned, Fleck's work revolves around the correlative concepts of thought collective and thought style. Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was discussed. Stage three in the career of the concept scientific community is marked by criticism and the development of alternative models. During the 1960s and 70s, the view prevailed among metascientists that scientific knowledge is produced by communities of specialists. In the works of leading contemporary philosophers of science, as in many historical studies, the existence of scientific communities was assumed without question or argument. Kuhn's paper represents a watershed in the histories of both the concept itself and the entire discipline of sociology of science. Social integration in science was considered a result of a consensus about strategic norms or standards. Findings on the examination of the concept scientific community through the related works of Kuhn and Fleck, the Polish scientist and scientist knowledge, was presented.

The corpus of Alfred Schutz's methodological writings is directed at creating a scientific method which does not subjugate a meaning-endowing actor to objective, impersonal causal laws. Given the nature of this task, it is surprising that the list of Schutz's published writings is so small. It consists, in fact, of only one full-length book and numerous articles which have been compiled into a three-volume anthology. This relative paucity of published writings is partly due to the extreme care and meticulousness Schutz exhibits in writing and re-writing each work, and partly the result of a Jekyll-Hyde type of life in which days are spent pursuing money and success in the business world, leaving only nights to teach and write. In this paper I shall summarily describe Schutz's efforts and see if his phenomenologically defined notion of subjectivity is reasonably incorporated into a valid scientific method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dorfman is eulogized as the creator and curator of the definitive account of Veblen's life and work. He argued that Veblen was the archetypal marginal man and that this explains his dissenting contribution. Dissemination of Dorfman's pathography of Veblen led to its hegemony - until now. Andrew Veblen was the first to challenge Dorfman's portrait of his younger brother's life in the mid 1920s. He asserted that his family were not linguistically, socially or economically deprived. However, it was not until Dorfman's private papers became publicly available in the 1990s, that his flawed view of Veblen became more widely and comprehensively contested. An alternative appreciation of Veblen is advanced with reference to his experiences in general and the works of Bellamy, Morris and Ibsen in particular. Data sources include Dorfman's original tome, Andrew Veblen's extensive correspondence with Dorfman, and Veblen's own writings. It is concluded that Veblen's radical views are entirely congruent with his life experiences during an era of capitalist transformation. The moral of this saga is that a dose of Veblenian scepticism is essential to intellectual health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to evaluate the contribution of the late Erving Goffman to the field of Sociology. In doing so I have attempted to document some of the main commentaries upon Coffman's work — especially those of A. Dawe and A.W. Gouldner — and to evaluate their validity. This paper is presented within the framework of a general overview of Goffman's work and an elaboration of some of the salient themes within it. The intention of the author is to free Goffman from some of the crude overgeneralizations that his colleagues have used in evaluating his writings. In particular, I have attempted to show, in general terms, how Goffman's work is sensitive to ‘structural’ as well as ‘situational’ concerns and also to class, hierarchy and power. It is argued that Goffman's importance has been underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upon his death in 1920, at the age of 56, sociologist Max Weber left behind a huge and untidy mass of personal papers and scholarly manuscripts, some of the latter in the process of being edited for publication by Weber himself, others intended for intensive reworking, others yet superseded drafts. The intended characteristics of the book "Max Weber Gesamtausgabe," in the first of the publications listed below: they are those of a critical-historical edition, intended not to replace the several collections of Weber's writings currently available for the use of students, but rather to serve the needs of scholars, including the editors of such future collections. The edition is to include three sections: Writings and Speeches; Manuscripts of and notes from lecture courses. In the first section, the arrangement of material will embody a compromise between chronological and thematic grouping; that is, the numbering of volumes will reflect the shifts in the prevailing concerns of Weber's scholarly and publicistic activity, but each volume may contain again, in chronological sequence writings and speeches. From a number of years in so far as they bear on its chief theme. Each volume will contain editorial material which elucidates the circumstances of each piece of writing or speech, indicates the state of the relative sources and eventual discrepancies among them, and clarifies or corrects such parts or points in the text as might baffle or mislead even a relatively informed contemporary reader.

Recent discussions in the philosophy of the social sciences exhibit a remarkable agreement about what has become one of the most urgent problems for sociological methodology. The situation may be summarized thus: ethnomethodological developments in interpretative sociology have shown that there can be no firm and certain basis on which to ground truth claims for our propositions. The conclusion drawn from this is that the traditional aspirations of conventional sociology — to be objective and scientific — cannot be attained. However, the programme of work promised by those who have developed ethnomethodology as a critique of ‘conventional sociology’ itself contains certain difficulties. Thus, the problem addressed by those writing in the philosophy of social science is this: given the contradictions in sociology as traditionally practiced, and given the problems in the programme offered by those largely responsible for discrediting it, whither sociology now? The purpose of my paper is to show that the question may be unnecessary. This is not so much because interpretative sociologists are mistaken in their understanding of the conditions in which research is undertaken, but rather because the positivist epistemological assumptions taken to be necessary for an objective scientific sociology, are not required for this and indeed are erroneous. I shall argue specifically that a Popperian account of (objective) science is wholly compatible with the understanding contemporary interpretative sociologists have of the research context, and indeed that there are striking similarities between this and Popper's ideas, most especially those developed in recent years. Thus, I shall go on to suggest that, by adopting a Popperian epistemology we may thereby recognize the validity of the fundamentals of the ethnomethodological position without being forced to abandon the effort to be objective and scientific; we may also sidestep the particular dif... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper compares one aspect of Max Weber's explicit conception of ‘interpretive sociology’ with his actual practices in his substantive investigations. It shows that Weber's overt emphasis on the importance of meanings and motives in causal explanation of social action does not correspond adequately with the true mode of explanation involved in his comparative-historical studies of the world religions. Rather, the ultimate level of causal explanation in Weber's substantive writings is that of the social-structural conditions under which certain forms of meaning and motivation can achieve historical efficacy. A model is developed to represent the actual nature of ‘Weberian sociology’. It is proposed that this internal comparative analysis and interpretation can have useful implications for contemporary sociological debates and approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to understand the relationship between sociology and history by examining of material relating to the position and development of sociology in Yugoslavia with the hope the distinctive nature of the position of sociology in society will be thrown into comparative relief. It must be made clear that in discussions of the relationship between history and sociology, one is dealing with highly organized professional groups, with a high level of articulate self-awareness. These groups tend to be relatively self-sufficient intellectually, and there is little cross-recruitment between them. One makes a career, in other words, as either a historian or as a sociologist. Under these circumstances the discussion about the relationship between sociology and history reads like a kind of academic diplomacy. But, like all diplomacy, it is dependent upon a highly specific set of political circumstances. One does not negotiate treaties to cover all circumstances, but only certain foreseen circumstances. A brief consideration of the position of sociology in Yugoslavia will serve to highlight just how specific and peculiar are the circumstances which govern our current understanding of the relationship between sociology and history.

This article reflects on the social philosophy of Karl Popper. Karl Popper is a widely influential writer on the methodology of the social sciences. To many sociologists, scientific method means Popper's account of scientific method. Yet Popper does not believe that sociology should be value-free. He believes that a commitment to scientific sociology, far from clearing us from making value-judgments about utopian thought, requires us to denounce it. Thus Poppers, supports the orthodox view that utopian thought is objectionable, but it is unusual in deriving this value-judgment from his conception of scientific method. Popper developed his views on the methodology of the social sciences and his social philosophy in the course of his critique of something he calls historicism. Popper defines historicism as an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their principal aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the rhythms or the patterns, the laws or the trends that underlie the evolution of history. With characteristic vigor, Popper denounces historicism as logically defective, false, sterile and murderous. Poppers critique of historicism is linked with his analysis of utopianism. The connection is mainly made by a third villain: holism. Holism is the doctrine that events must be understood in the context of the social whole of which they form a part.