Charles Tilly Interview: social science "paradigm"
Summary
TLDRThe transcript discusses the distinction between paradigms in natural sciences and social sciences, highlighting the lack of a unified body of knowledge in the latter. It delves into the impact of consciousness in social sciences, the contested nature of these fields, and the challenges of formulating laws for large-scale social processes like war and revolution. The speaker advocates for methodological localism, emphasizing the importance of understanding individual interactions within institutions to build a coherent picture of social structures and processes.
Takeaways
- 🔬 Paradigms in natural sciences are more structured with established research methods and theories compared to social sciences which remain a contested terrain.
- 🌐 The social sciences lack a unified body of knowledge and procedures for verifying knowledge, leading to a more fluid and open field of study.
- 💡 The difference between social and natural sciences is often attributed to the consciousness of the social scientists, but this view is not universally accepted as creating a fundamental difference.
- 🌿 There's an argument that the social world is 'artificial' in the sense that its structures are created through human actions and interactions, unlike the natural world's given architecture.
- 🤔 The speaker suggests that the search for overarching laws in large social processes and structures has largely been unsuccessful.
- 🔍 A more fruitful approach might be to focus on understanding the mechanisms of interpersonal processes, which can then be compounded to understand larger social phenomena.
- 🌱 Drawing an analogy to evolutionary biology, the speaker implies that understanding small-scale interactions can lead to insights about larger patterns and processes.
- 🏛 The architecture of social institutions is not fixed by necessity but arises from historical events and interactions leading to specific configurations.
- 🛑 The speaker is skeptical about the existence of laws governing complex social phenomena like war or revolution, due to their contingent nature.
- 🔄 Methodological localism is proposed as a way to understand social structures and processes by starting from the individual level and building up.
- 🌟 Creativity and the ability to create complex arrangements are highlighted as distinctive human traits, setting us apart in the natural world.
Q & A
What is a paradigm in the context of natural science?
-A paradigm in natural science refers to a framework containing a set of practices that includes specific research methods, theoretical concepts, and experimental procedures that the scientific community generally agrees upon and uses to guide inquiry.
Why is the social sciences' body of knowledge considered less connected than that of natural sciences?
-The social sciences lack a unified and integrated body of knowledge with a set of procedures for verifying that knowledge, making it a more contested terrain with less consensus on methods and theories compared to natural sciences.
What is the common misconception about the difference between social sciences and natural sciences?
-A common misconception is that the difference lies in consciousness, with social scientists being part of the processes they study. However, the speaker argues that this does not create a fundamental difference in the situation of knowledge.
How does the speaker view the role of consciousness in social sciences?
-The speaker acknowledges that social scientists share consciousness with the processes they study, but they do not believe this produces a fundamental difference in knowledge, though it does allow moral and political concerns to influence the field.
What is the 'science of the artificial' as mentioned by Herbert Simon?
-The 'science of the artificial' refers to the study of constructs and environments created by humans, distinguishing it from the natural sciences which study the naturally occurring world. It suggests that social sciences deal with man-made structures and systems.
What does the speaker suggest as a distinguishing factor between social and natural sciences?
-The speaker suggests that the architecture of the social world is created by humans through actions and interactions, unlike the natural world's architecture, which is given, making the social sciences more about the 'artificial' rather than the 'natural'.
Why does the speaker believe that looking for laws of large social processes and structures has been largely unsuccessful?
-The speaker believes that the complexity and contingency of social processes make it difficult to formulate universal laws. The social sciences deal with human interactions that are highly variable and less predictable than natural phenomena.
What is the concept of 'methodological localism' mentioned by the speaker?
-Methodological localism is the idea of starting with the understanding of interpersonal processes and then building up to a larger understanding of social structures and processes, as opposed to trying to find overarching laws.
How does the analogy of evolutionary change in the natural world relate to social processes?
-The analogy suggests that by focusing on the mechanisms of how individuals or smaller units respond to their environment, we can better understand and compound these observations into a more coherent picture of larger social processes and structures.
What does the speaker imply about the potential for understanding social processes through the study of interpersonal interactions?
-The speaker implies that by studying interpersonal interactions, we may be able to build a more complex and accurate understanding of social processes, similar to how molecular biologists have developed a detailed understanding of biological processes.
How does the speaker view the role of political contestation in the social sciences?
-The speaker views political contestation as an inherent part of the social sciences, as these fields often deal with issues that are open to political and moral debate, making them a contested terrain where new questions and perspectives continually emerge.
Outlines
🔬 Paradigms in Natural and Social Sciences
The speaker discusses the concept of paradigms, particularly in the context of natural sciences versus social sciences. They highlight the structured and interconnected nature of knowledge in astronomy, where a new paradigm can be established with a defined set of research methods and theoretical concepts. In contrast, social sciences lack this cohesion and remain a contested field, often influenced by moral and political concerns. The speaker also touches on the idea that social sciences deal with human consciousness and intervention, which is distinct from the natural sciences but does not create a fundamental difference in knowledge acquisition. They suggest that the artificial versus natural dichotomy might better distinguish social from natural sciences, as social structures are created through human actions and interactions.
🤔 The Complexity of Social Processes and Analogies to Evolution
This paragraph delves into the complexity of social processes and the difficulty of establishing universal laws for large-scale social phenomena like war or revolution. The speaker expresses skepticism about the existence of such laws, citing the historical failures of such attempts. They advocate for a 'methodological localism' approach, which involves understanding social processes by examining interpersonal interactions and then building up to larger structures and processes. Drawing an analogy to evolutionary biology, the speaker suggests that by focusing on individual organisms or genes and their responses to the environment, a more coherent and complex understanding of social evolution can be developed. The emphasis is on the importance of specifying mechanisms at the individual level to gain insight into broader social dynamics.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Paradigm
💡Social Sciences
💡Natural Sciences
💡Consciousness
💡Intervention
💡Moral and Political Concerns
💡Artificial
💡Contingency
💡Evolution
💡Methodological Localism
💡Laws of Large Processes
Highlights
The concept of paradigms in natural sciences versus social sciences and the challenges in articulating a paradigm in the latter.
The idea that social sciences have not developed a connected body of knowledge like natural sciences.
The social sciences as a contested terrain due to the intervention of consciousness in the processes being studied.
The argument that the difference between social and natural sciences is not fundamentally about consciousness.
The social sciences' engagement in intervention through research and speech, influencing the field's contested nature.
The concept of 'the artificial' in social sciences, contrasting with the 'natural' in natural sciences.
The social world's architecture as created by human actions and interactions, unlike the natural world's given architecture.
The comparison between the creativity in natural and social sciences, with a focus on human ingenuity.
The discussion on the contingency in evolution and its relation to social processes.
The skepticism towards discovering laws of large social structures or processes, citing a history of failure.
The positive case for understanding social processes by focusing on interpersonal mechanisms.
The analogy between evolutionary change in natural sciences and understanding social processes.
The importance of methodological localism in building a coherent picture of social structures and processes.
The critique of rational choice theory and the call for empirical validation of its claims.
The potential for social sciences to develop a more nuanced understanding through focusing on individual interactions within institutions.
The notion that social sciences are open to new questions and political contestation, unlike the more bounded natural sciences.
Transcripts
now let me ask you this people often
talk about paradigms and a paradigm you
know in the kind of standard Natural
Science version is a fairly specific
thing with some research methods some
theoretical Concepts experimental
procedures the kind of Workshop that
you're describing um I'm I guess I'm
kind of wondering would you uh would you
be willing to describe it as kind of
articulating a paradigm or is it more
Loosely interconnected no well I mean I
think you've actually forecast the
answer to the question
because you can in astronomy you can
build a new
Paradise there's
already a sufficiently connected body of
knowledge and procedures that you can
say all right we're going to break with
this view of how black holes operate and
we're going to substitute a new
view for reasons that we could talk
about for days
the social sciences have never developed
as connected a scent of body of
knowledge integrated with a set of
procedures for verifying that knowledge
and the social sciences has have
remained a contested terrain and
that's something that people often try
to articulate incorrectly from my point
of
view uh we may disagree about this but
anyway a common view is that the
difference between the social sciences
and the Natural
Sciences is consciousness that is to say
that the social scientists are
intervening in processes with which they
share
Consciousness well I'm not so
sympathetic to that point of view I mean
it's true uh but I don't think that that
produces a fundamental
difference in the situation of knowledge
nevertheless it does provide an opening
for the moral and political
concerns of the rest of the world to
enter that the relative bounding of much
of physical
science Natural Science makes more
difficult it does make it impossible OB
viously uh environmental warming is a
case where there's uh the boundaries are
poorest and there are a series of other
issues uh biodiversity there are a whole
series of biological issues that are
open to political contestation in some
of the same ways
nonetheless the social sciences by and
large all
have one portion of their personnel it's
primarily engaged in intervention and
they're engaged in intervention in at
least two ways one by doing research
research on inequality in Dearborn or
Detroit or something of that sort
intervention by speech and so on and so
the social sciences remain a contested
terrain precisely open to new questions
about the tyranny of the current
Administration the possibility of
entering War the promotion of democracy
and so on you can't enter these issues
without touching on contested political
and moral positions I wonder if you've
um ever been struck by the title that
Herbert Simon used for one of his books
uh the science of the artificial M my
thought is a way of distinguishing the
social sciences from the Natural
Sciences is that the architecture of the
natural world is given but the
architecture of the social world is
essentially created we create States we
create institutions not necessarily by
deliberate design but by the actions and
interactions and there's you know
nothing that says the feudal state must
have this structure it's rather it has
this structure because of a series of
events that preceded which led to a
particular configuration of Institutions
so the the IDE idea of the artificial
versus the natural seems to me maybe a
better way of of distinguishing the
social from the natural well I think
there I think there's a lot to that
although you uh you're attributing less
contingency to what Steph J Gould for
example talked about as the process of
evolution then I would I mean in a gan
spirit I would
say there is a way in which organisms
are creating unexpected patterns through
their interaction so let's not let's not
exaggerate this nevertheless it's true
that humans are so far the most
ingenious organisms we have in this
regard and human brains are instruments
of enormous
plasticity in the relations and
Arrangements that people create so in
that sense there's a that at there's a
degree of difference even though some
forms of very interesting creativity go
on in the Natural Science sciences and
the the more you move away from physics
into the life sciences the clearer that
becomes you made a point to me a little
earlier about war that um you don't
think or possibly it was Revolution you
don't expect you don't look for you
don't um think it reasonable to imagine
that there would be laws of war or laws
of Revolution um which does have to do
with contingency it certainly does I
wonder if you could amplify on that a
little bit well there's a negative
version of it in a positive version the
negative version runs there are a lot of
people who have thought they have
discovered the law of fill in the blank
and the blank is either a large
structure or a large
process and we now have a pretty long
experience of failure of that particular
construction so in that
sense I'm in sympathy with the sorts of
people who look at rational choice and
they say well wa a minute it's a very
interesting program but let's look at
the results let's see actually what the
empirical accomplishments are and the
empirical accomplishments of looking for
laws of large processes and structures
to my view are close to nil right okay
so that's the negative the negative case
the positive case
is that it's imp
plausible that the regularities operate
at that level uh that here here I think
you can cautiously draw on analogies
with evolutionary uh with evolutionary
change in the in the natural world and
say
look there there are few things we can
say about diversity or about the
complexity of environments and so forth
but the truth is that if we want to
understand evolutionary processes what
we do is close in on how an organism or
even a
gene responds to its
environment then we
compound from that
observation into how a species evolves
and so forth and there are lots of
analogies in medical analysis which are
quite similar to this where you know if
you try to work on theories of the
humors or something of this kind as the
Ancients and not so ancients frequently
did where you have a a law of the
organism or something of the sort you
don't get very far but when you can
specify the mechanisms by which a
disease
moves from one organism to another or
from one part of the body to another you
actually begin to be able to build up a
more coherent and complex picture of
what that process is and I have a
similar hope for social processes not
that I imagine that we have the kind of
knowledge that the molecular biologists
have at this point but that the analogy
will hold to to the extent that if we
can get interpersonal processes right we
can compound them into something like
the pictures of structures and processes
that people were trying to formulate
laws for and this is the concept that I
was explaining to you earlier about
methodological localism compounding up
from the socially situated individual
within a set of institutions
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