ALAIN TESTART AND THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL THOUGHT

• Authors: Gallay Alain

Title variants

FR

Alain Testart et la réflexion épistémologique

PL

Alain Testart a refleksja epistemologiczna

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article presents fourteen propositions summarising the hypotheses advanced in Alain Testart’s book Pour les sciences sociales: essai d’épistémologie. This text crucially challenges the bases of social sciences in general. It mainly analyses, from a unified perspective, the position of the observer, by highlighting that a poor understanding of this issue has contributed to social sciences’ struggle to acquire a scientific status. In this article these positions will be compared to those developed by Jean-Claude Passeron in his book Le raisonnement sociologique: l’espace non poppérien du raisonnement naturel, which at first glance are irreducible. Nonetheless these two approaches seem to be complementary. Passeron focuses his proposal on historicity but he is forced to treat secondarily the nomological aspect. His proposal sets out the non-Popperian character of historical approach. Testart centres his proposal on the nomological aspect but he is forced to consider secondarily the aspect of historicity. This opposition can be incorporated into our epistemological approach inspired by natural sciences.

Keywords

EN

Testart; Passeron; epistemology; nomological aspect; constructivism; physics

• Publisher: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Archeologia Polski
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 63
• Pages: 7-28

Contributors

author

Gallay Alain