The first part of the paper presents several ideas, opinions and theories that have been forgotten in social sciences. The second is author's explanation of this phenomenon, and the presentation of the results of scientific forgetfulness. The author's conclusion is that scientific bad memory impedes the genuine development of social and behavioral sciences.
Performing the profession of scientist consists generally in creation, determination, and application of specific 'cognitive values'. It is activity of people taking part in a micro-world, in which of great importance are the rules of communicating since what is most important in science belongs to objective knowledge about the world and about research into it. Therefore, scientists' collective care about forms of their responsibility for statements promoted and accepted is of utmost importance. The culture of creation and application of scientific knowledge is a literal culture. The 'World 3' (interpreted and modified by respective invention of the 'World 2') is a treasury of knowledge objectified by its record. Therefore, the language of scientific communication and ability to decode it are of such a great importance.
Stanislaus Ossowski, a Polish philosopher and sociologist and a member of the so-called 'Lwowsko-Warszawska Szkola Filozoficzna' (The Lvov-Warsaw Philosophical School) published several papers on science, especially on social sciences. The authoress presents his analysis of the plurality of scientific views that is triggered by the multiplicity of aspects of studied phenomena and the diversity of issues that can be approached by scientists. Plurality of aspects, issues and descriptions leads - unavoidably - to multiplicity of scientific schools and to arguments among them. There are practical disputes referring to hypotheses and explanations that can be settled with the help of rational arguments and empirical data. Finally, there are fundamental divergencies, which seem insoluble because both sides absolutize their views, or indeed are insoluble when participants represent different political aspirations and programs.
The paper deals with the problem of particularity of humanities, especially of social sciences. For that reason two types of humanities (humanities sensu largo) are distinguished: humanities sensu stricto (e.g. history) and social sciences (e.g. sociology or psychology). The application of concepts and methods of natural sciences to social sciences have been acclaimed by some philosophers and methodologists. This model neglects the particularity of social sciences. The author confronts this model with two other ones: Polish sociologist Stanislaw Ossowski's and Karl Popper's model of social sciences. As a result of the analysis the conclusion is reached: contemporary social sciences are irreducible to the concepts and methods of natural sciences.
Rationality, intersubjectivity, and objectivity have been conceived as primary epistemological categories from the begining of modern epoch. They characterize knowledge or subjects of knowledge, or even their activity - cognition. Epistemocentrism - in P. Bourdieu view typical to modern thinking - and supporting it epistemological fundamentalism are nothing else but limitation of the meaning of these categories. In the bygone times, epistemocentrism was useful, but now is a simply anachronism in the face of modern roles of knowledge in societies and in the face of growing progress of social sciences. Today, science and its contribution in the social worlds are not the same as once. Therefore, the need arises for revision of epistemocentrism as well as for the fulfillment of the 'epistemological gap' which emerged from collapse of epistemological fundamentalism. I think that there is a room for the new 'philosophical partition of reality' emancipated from Cartesian despotism of ego cogito and recovering intuitional insights in the social life of the ancient thinkers as Aristotle. In the paper, I concentrate on thesis that epistemocentrism is an epistemological obstacle in the social sciences and source of their crises.
The article refers to the concept of social capital, which is in recent years very popular among researchers active in the field of social sciences. The author attempts to recapitulate the most popular definitional approaches to this concept, presenting the four most famous among them and putting them into two main groups, one of which is characterized by treating social capital as a specific category of resource owned by individuals in connection with their interactions with other people and communities. Second group of approaches recognize social capital as a kind of metaphor that allows to describe the formulation of a broader catalogue of social phenomena, located primarily in the sphere of cultural values and ethics. This approach shows at the same time a strong relationship with the way of understanding civil society arising of the tocquevillean tradition. In the last part of the paper an attempt was taken to formulate a synthetic definition of the term “social capital”, referring to previous efforts taken by international authors to formulate a compromise definition combining both of these groups of definitional approaches.
The paper deals with such professional duties of scholar: (1) Participation in dispute with respect to problem situation; (2) Expressing opinions in scholarly language; (3) Creation of theoretical knowledge; (4) Restricting itself to problems suitable for scholarly research; (5) Binding criticism with conceptualism; (6) Dealing with tradition of development and improvement of scientific myths; (7) Insight into continuity and discontinuity of problem situations.
This article sums up the development of public policy as a scientific discipline and as an object of research and instruction in the Czech Republic. This is presented within a historical context (examining different stages of the development of Czech social sciences even before it was formalized, and the development of its being constituted since the early 1990s) with due regard for the broader cultural, political and institutional context of its formation and application. A characteristic is given of the main streams of research and instruction in the field (with references to key literature, its authors and context). This is followed by a reflection of results and specification of development potentials.
The methods of abstraction and idealization are commonly viewed as basic to both the natural and the social sciences. Since the 1970s, they have been also a focus of attention in the philosophy and methodology of science. However, their nature as methods, i.e., sequences of instructions, has not been adequately explicated. The paper attempts to capture the core of these methods in the sense of the simplified sequences of instructions. The proposal is illustrated in a reconstruction of the application of both methods in economics as a representative of the social sciences.
The authoress discusses various aspects of feminist impact on pedagogy. A special emphasis is put on the analysis of the hidden dimensions of the pedagogical field. The phenomena of alienation and familiarity of the female and male students within the structures of the analyzed field are grasped as the results of empirical research. In the last part of the article the question of female 'being in the world' of social science is discussed. Feminist standpoint is presented here as the analytical perspective focusing on the gendered divisions within the social positioning and activities of subjects.
The text deals with personal and professional relations between Jozef Obrebski and Stanislaw Ossowski. The author points to similarities in the methods of research which both scholars used in investigations in the field of social sciences. He shows that the two scholars focused on an interdisciplinary approach in their work. He also discuses the role of the humanities in the two scholars' work, as they aimed at providing answers to questions which are of major importance from the perspective of the social sciences.
Social and sociological orientation in the contemporary Western literary criticism is one of the most interesting but also the most fashioned trends. In his works about literature, Bourdieu represents a trial for reconciliation of structuralistic methodology and Marxist views in the social sciences and humanities becoming one of the motivational sociological and cultural issues. The article maps some of Bourdieu's opinions and shows a view of possible application of his results in the study of history of literature. Bourdieu's analysis in the French modernism from the second half of 19th century (Les regles de l'art) opens literary topics for sociological orientation of both theory and empirical research under one condition - to not apply his systematism and terminology in a mechanical way. In connection with the general tendencies to contextual study of literature seems to change the existing traditional approaches in a literary history by the contribution of the cultural representations of the time in study.
Policies on the threshold of the third Millennium still seem to be reluctant to decide between economic growth and social distribution. In our context a search for proportionating of the micro- and macro- worlds of politics cannot leave out such terms as for example a progress. It is not simple to prove whether objective progress does or does not exist. Even in early times of modernity philosophers knew well that a rational argument cannot be applied because scientific progress reasoning as a rational argument is part of science method. Social sciences deem it fruitful to search for fundamental contradictions when analysing social reality. When studying capitalism we must consider its raison d´être, the never ending capital accumulation. It is not simple to answer to the question why the modernity ideologists were promising what could not be fulfilled, why people believed their promises and why they do not believe them today. Thus the problem of rationality today is influenced by this situation.
In recent scientific and philosophical discussions the concept of Enlightenment has often been reconsidered. This reconsideration takes place in an era of a 'universal apologizing' of all to everybody and for everything. In this atmosphere the meaning of the historical eras, such as Renaissance or Humanism is often forgotten. However, a rational reconstruction of these events is important in order to understand the present era. The original Enlightenment idea of progress dismissed the old orders for their disability to keep pace with knowing. Not even today the scepticism against rationality can be the solution. Seen from this point of view the situation is different today. The paper tries to show its specific character.
The study explores the question whether and under what conditions the fundamental concepts of Max Weber's interpretive sociology - in particular "meaning" (Sinn) and "understanding" (Verstehen) - can be applied to animal behaviour, and whether and under what conditions Weber's concepts can be used to study the relationship of humans to animals as a relationship of social actors to other social actors. With regard to the possibility of building an interpretive sociology of animals in Max Weber’s spirit, his shift in the analytical concept of "meaning" is very important, namely the shift from the meaning which is fully conscious to the half-consciousness or unconsciousness of the meaning which is felt by the actor. Since the understanding of the animal and the human action is achieved in principle by the same means – through qualitative evidence and its verification by the rate of practical success - the rejection of the meaningfulness of animal action could also be applied to human actors. Apparently, denying the human actors an understanding explanation of their actions through the interpretation of subjective meaning would not only "destroy" the legitimacy of the interpretive sociology, but it would also "rule out" the possibility of understanding human communicative acts as such. Therefore, it is reasonably of greater benefit to include animals among (potential) social actors and rather focus on their sociologically relevant differences from other - primarily human - social actors.
When Tooby and Cosmides published their famous article 'Psychological foundation of culture', most readers could read it as just another paper addressing evolutionary psychology. Its aspirations were, however, much far-reaching. Tooby and Cosmides attacked the so-called constructivists. In this way, the paper ushered in another turn in the controversy over the method of social sciences. In his paper the author claims that Tooby and Cosmides are right when they criticize constructivists and relativists. On the other hand, he claims that they do not live up to their aspirations, i.e. they do not provide for a rapprochement of the standards of social sciences and those of natural sciences.
The study deals with parallels and differences between interpretivism as a method of social science on one hand and literary interpretation on the other. Firstly, the author briefly outlines the essentials of interpretivism in social knowledge and shows some specific items of literary interpretation. The next parts of the study pay attention to two contemporary methodological approaches in literary science: Siegfried J. Schmidt’s empirical approach to literature and Franco Moretti’s abstract models of literary history. Both approaches instead of habitual considering a text to be the central object of interest enrich research areas of literary science with new sectors and get closer to the objects of interpretivism in social sciences.
Due to recent researches in modern genetics and their practical applications, we are witnesses to the change of contemporary society as well as its social and political mechanisms. The article focuses on Rabinow’s concept of bio-sociality as a new form of communality and creating identity. Nowadays neither ethical patterns nor social mechanisms are as well-grounded as they used to be. This new bio-sociality is intended to oppose the familiar socio-biology. First, the potential analytical power of the concept of bio-sociality is under discussion followed by the determination of the aspects not taken into account by Rabinow. Second, the paper tries to answer a wider question of whether the linkage between some contemporary political power practices and the eugenic strategies of the past does not contradict the very new vision of bio-sociality proposed by Rabinow.
Every empire is certainly erected in basis with a sentiment of superiority over the rest of world. This sentiment is based upon what scholars denominate ethnocentrism. To a greater or lesser degree, all civilizations are more and less ethnocentric at time valorises certain values in detriment of others. Nowadays, the Anglo-Empire (primarily conformed by US and UK) puts emphasis on the terrorism as one of main threats West should face in next years. The World Trade Centre´s episode marked the end and beginning of a new era wherein the ontological and perceived security played an important role in the international agenda. Countries that prioritized their security as a primary strategy highlighted the needs of a preventive war against terrorist cells in Middle East. Under such a context, the present paper theoretically examines to what an extent the Anglo-centrism not only is still present in social sciences but also it determines a discourse wherein the democracy and civilization are valorised over the other aspects. To fulfil this goal, we substantially reviewed two important works authored by the political scientist Samuel-Phillip Huntington. They are: The Third Wave. Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century and The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order. It is important to mention even though there are ethnocentric elements in these early mentioned works, this does not entail Huntington has wittingly elaborated his argument to legitimate the Bush's war-on-terror. Otherwise, we convincingly argue Huntington's thesis has been manipulated by politicians and some scholars to vindicate the 'American Way'.
This article constitutes a critical review of the knowledge and theories regarding ritual and ceremony which have emerged in the social sciences. The impetus for this undertaking is the conviction that the issue of ritual has been paid insufficient attention – particularly in sociology. The text opens with deliberation on the subject of defining ritual and ceremony. Subsequently, the theories of ritual which explain existing ceremonies by looking at the conditions under which these observances arose are examined. This article comprises also ponderings on the place of ritual in sociological theory.
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