Social Sciences and Social Scientists: Their Role in Shaping Society

Human & Social Studies. Research and Practice

Nowadays, it seems that all disciplines have to pretend being "scientific" in order to ensure their credibility. But the "social sciences", which aim at a better knowledge of the Human regarding what makes him its own kind, are they really sciences? Pretending to be so, do they not expose themselves to be qualified as "non-scientific" by the most critical minds in their time, just as did Karl Popper about psychoanalyses and theses on the psychological selfishness 1 ? In turn, is it possible to pretend that the "social sciences" are not sciences while stating that their dignity requires them to ask for another paradigm, a much more subtle one? The present contribution will try to answer to these questions. It will start with the proposal to replace the inappropriate name of "social sciences" by another one, much more respectful of the methods which should be theirs, which would be "disciplines of the subject".

Economic and political weekly, 2006

2012

Social Sciences and Cultural Studies-Issues of Language, Public Opinion, Education and Welfare 4 how it's interpreted, and there are always infinitely many possible interpretations. So, because we are informavores, physical science cannot understand us, for meaning and interpretation are not within its scope, but lie within the domain of human interests and feelings-the domain, traditionally, of the humanities (literature, history, philosophy, languages, drama, art, etc.). Because Homo sapiens employs meaning in most aspects of its behavior, the social sciences lie athwart the boundary between the humanities and the physical sciences. (Foss 2007, 2011). 2. The myth of Smith To explain, please let me, a humanist, employ a myth, in the same spirit as my intellectual forefather, Plato, employed myths: to glimpse wisdom. Picture a group of soldiers marshaled on a ship deck in the cold grey dawn of a day in November, 1940. They struggle to keep their balance as the officer on the bridge warns them that in two minutes they will hear the siren calling them to their battle stations. They are soldiers, therefore cargo, so their battle station was below decks. The siren blares, startling one soldier, who jerks to attention. His petty officer taps him on the soldier and says, "Private Smith, uh, I regret to inform you, uh, private, that wireless has just informed us that, uh…, well, your mother has died." Consider now two possible outcomes: in outcome 1 , our system, Private John Smith, an airframe mechanic, follows a course of events that results in his becoming, by May of 1944, a Nazi spy-whereas in outcome 2 , Smith becomes a British spy.

Nómadas. Revista Crítica de Ciencias Sociales y Jurídicas, 2018

Science as an object of sociological study” presents a theoretical reflection about the attributes of science that makes it a sociological matter of interest. Since science operates in a world composed of strong territorial, linguistic, cultural and political / ideological differences, it has been in the midst of a controversy between those who maintain that it is determined by social factors and those who conceive it as an entity that develops with a relative autonomy of them. The article argues that the tension between one conception and another diminishes when conceiving the rigorousness that distinguishes scientific methodology, not only as cognitive rules but also as symbolic ways which have been created and shared socially to materialize the consubstantial ethical principles of scientific rationality.

Burdwan Journal of Sociology, 2020

The paper seeks to understand the nomenclature 'social sciences' as is commonly available to scholars and students of subjects like Sociology, Political Science, Social Anthropology and other sister disciplines including Economics. It begins by drawing upon the history of the development of the study of the social that is 'scientific' and therefore 'value neutral'. This is of course not entirely the case as is well established now in the modern social sciences. The very act of sifting evidence by canons set in the natural sciences has not only been critiqued but natural sciences themselves are critical about such claims. This paper draws attention to the controversies that surround our popular usage of the word 'science' and also seeks to understand the role of ideology in the art and craft of the social sciences. This paper argues that the exercise of weeding out ideology is by itself an ideological task and that matters are not as simple as such an argument makes it out to be. The paper draws heavily on the disciplines of Sociology and Social Anthropology and makes a case for inter-disciplinary approaches as well as the need to pay heed to 'lay' concerns.

Upshot: Second-order science primarily focuses on perception and cognition. However, social contexts, including political interpretations of science, are also included because they are part of the interpretations of the observer. To understand a scientific theory, it is helpful to understand neurophysiology, the history of the individual and the social and political context in which the scientist was operating.

Sociologica, 2008

Ente di afferenza: () Copyright c by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Per altre informazioni si veda https://www.rivisteweb.it Licenza d'uso L'articoloè messo a disposizione dell'utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d'uso Rivisteweb,è fatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l'articolo, per qualsiasi scopo o fine. Tutti i diritti sono riservati.