Further Problems of Positivism

The Failings of the Empiricist Model of Science

So far we have considered at length some of the difficulties involved in the empiricist view of natural scientific knowledge. Since, as we saw in Chapter 2, this is a key tenet of positivism, positivism itself falls if the empiricist view of the natural sciences cannot be supported.

However, it is still worth thinking further about other elements in the positivist approach.

The Superiority of Science

The second tenet, it may be remembered, was the notion that science is the highest, most authoritative, even the sole source of genuine knowledge. According to Comte's three-stage ‘law' of social development, theological modes of thought give way to metaphysical ones, and these, in turn, to scientific ones. There are two claims distinguishable, here. One, the claim of ‘functional equivalence', is that science, metaphysics and theology are competitors, in the sense that they are alternative modes of thought, covering the full range of purposes for which human societies require knowledge, so that it makes sense to think of each as replacing the others. The second claim is that the scientific mode of thought is superior to the others, and so represents progress in the sphere of thought to match (and, indeed, contribute to) industrial and social progress.

The first claim, of functional equivalence, is open to two sorts of objection. First, theology and metaphysics are not solely concerned with giving accounts of the nature of the world - they also attempt to derive authoritative norms for human conduct. They provide their adherents with reasons for obedience to certain rules of conduct, and for accepting some kinds of institutional arrangements rather than others. By contrast, the exclusion of values in the empiricist view of science restricts science to the narrow task of predicting what would be the consequence if such and such policy were to be implemented.

Science, on this view, cannot pronounce on the desirability or otherwise of either the policy or its predicted consequence. If this is so, then science cannot replace the functions performed by theology and metaphysics. If people are to have means of orienting themselves to the ethical dilemmas and challenges of modern life then they have need of specifically moral and political sources of guidance which science alone cannot deliver - though, of course, the sources they draw on may be other than religion or metaphysics!

However, Max Weber (Chapter 5), and some of those influenced by his ideas in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory (Chapter 7), argue that the spread of scientific modes of thought into public administration, business and everyday life does, indeed, undermine our ability to confront questions of basic value and meaning. As they see it, modern society becomes pervaded by a narrow rationality, consisting of matching the most efficient means to ‘given’ ends, which services an increasingly self-legitimating and totalitarian control over both society and nature. This bleak pessimism is the opposite side of the coin from Comte’s utopian vision of a new social order bound together by scientific and technical progress.

The second sort of objection to the claim of functional equivalence is closely connected to the first. What Comte and, arguably, empiricists more generally neglect is the extent to which social life depends on knowledge which cannot be put into the form of statements or propositions: what is sometimes called ‘know-how’, as distinct from ‘knowledge that’. In every context of social interaction we respond to cues and act according to implicit rules and shared understandings which none of us could fully articulate. Language itself is constituted by rules which are learned and deployed tacitly, without our ability or any need to render them explicit for everyday conversational purposes. Specific skills, such as those involved in cooking, sports and games, maintaining relationships, parenting and so on, are learned through practice, in which trial and error, intuition and imitation are at least as important as following explicit rules.

The role of tacit knowledge in social life is arguably both centrally important and also irreplaceable. Practical know-how may be informed by scientific insights, but never replaced by it (the literature on this is enormous, but see especially Hayek 1949; O’Neill 1998: ch. 10; Wainwright 1994).

This leads on to a consideration of the claim that science is superior to other sources of knowledge and understanding. Both the above lines of argument suggest that science is not strictly comparable with other sorts of knowledge. It makes no sense to say that science is superior to tacit knowledge, for example, since they are not alternative ways of doing the same sort of thing, or achieving the same sort of purpose. One could argue that buses are superior to cars as environmentally sustainable modes of transport, but what could be meant by saying that buses are superior to fridge-freezers?

On the other hand, it is clear that there is, at least, some overlap between theology, metaphysics, magical and witchcraft beliefs and so on, on the one hand, and science, on the other. The resistance of the church to the new mechanical science in the seventeenth century, and the opposition of theologians to Darwin and Wallace’s theory of evolution by natural selection from the 1860s onwards, was not mere coincidence. The church and the emerging scientific establishment were rival institutional locations for authorizing knowledge-claims about the nature of our world. Among other things, a struggle for cultural power was being waged. The empiricist view of science can be seen as providing clear justification for the claims of science: its objectivity is underwritten by its observational basis and its openness to empirical testing. However, if this claim about science is itself open to question, then perhaps we should give equal credence to religious, metaphysical, magical and other non-scientific ways of understanding the world? Why should science be accorded exclusive privilege? The ‘anarchist’ philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend (see Chapter 4) was one of the most forceful advocates of this view, and he has been followed in the same direction by a number of post-modernist writers (ChapterlO).

A Natural Science of Society?

The third tenet of positivism is its advocacy of extending the methods of the natural sciences (as represented in the empiricist view of knowledge) to the study of human social life.

In Chapters 5, 6 and 7 we will be considering the arguments of those, such as Max Weber, Peter Winch and Jurgen Habermas, who have offered strong arguments against this. The view that there is, or could be, such a thing as a scientific study of society, in the same sense (but not necessarily using the same methods) as natural processes can be studied scientifically is often termed ‘naturalism’ Weber, Winch and Habermas are, in this sense, anti-naturalists, and positivists such as Comte are naturalists. However, the criticisms of the empiricist view of science, and the fact that we now have quite well-worked-out alternatives to empiricism open up the possibility of forms of naturalism which are not positivist. It may be that there cannot be an empiricist science of social life, but the social sciences might count as scientific from the point of view of alternative, non-empiricist models of science. Chapter 4 provides a review of at least some of the main alternative views of science which have been developed so far. The question, ‘What might a social science modelled on natural science be like?’ could be asked on the basis of any of these alternatives. The answers would not be positivist in our strict sense of the term, and would no doubt raise interesting philosophical issues. We do not have the space to explore all of these possibilities, but we do give more detailed consideration to the implications of two non-empiricist understandings of science for the practice of social science. These are feminist approaches (Chapter 9) and critical realism (Chapter 8). The issue of epistemological relativism, a feature of several non-empiricist approaches, also has its counterpart in the philosophy of social science, and we will return to it, in particular in Chapters 6 and lO.

Social Science and Social Engineering

The fourth tenet of positivism is its view of social scientific knowledge as useful knowledge, in the sense that it can be fed into the process of social policy-making in the form of projects of social engineering.

Despite his differences with positivism in other respects, Popper endorsed this view of the role of social scientific knowledge, so long as it was confined to small-scale reforms (‘piece-meal’ social engineering) rather than revolutionary attempts at wholescale social transformation, what he called ‘utopian’ social engineering (see his Poverty of Historicism, 1957). However, it is not clear that, in the absence of the symmetry of explanation and prediction which (on the empiricist view) characterizes natural scientific knowledge, the social sciences can provide the right sort of knowledge for this reformist project of social engineering. Any particular policy intervention is likely to be modified in its effects by complex interactions between social processes, and unless there is some means of taking these into account, reform strategies are liable to generate unintended and possibly unwanted consequences.

A more practical problem has to do with the institutional power required to implement reforms. The underlying assumption of most social policy is that government, acting through state institutions, will be the agent of change. But it is at least arguable that there are economic and socio-cultural sources of social power which are able to resist or modify reform strategies, or obstruct their implementation. The institutions of the state, itself, are also heterogeneous, and can by no means be assumed to offer a smooth transmission belt for the application of social science in social policy. Having noted all of this, however, it would be hard to deny the considerable achievements of the link between social science and policy in the formation of the post-war welfare state, in expanding opportunities for women in social and economic life, and in providing socialized health care in response to need rather than ability to pay. Though achievements such as these remain fragile and open to reversal, and in many countries are heavily compromised, they are a significant testimony to the strengths of policy-oriented research generated on broadly positivist assumptions.

But the issue of power in relation to social engineering also raises ethical questions. The post-structuralist writer Michel Foucault, for example (Chapter 10), has argued that forms of knowledge in the human sciences are indissolubly linked to strategies of power, whereby human subjects (such as the mad, the sexually deviant or the criminal) are classified and subjected to regimes of surveillance and regulation in institutions such as the asylum, clinic and prison. This reveals a much more sinister dimension of social engineering than would be accepted by its positivist advocates. At least part of the reason why social engineering seems so sinister to Foucault is his view of human agency and subjectivity as constituted and manipulated by relations of power. So there is little space in his account for agents to acquire and exercise autonomous agency. By contrast, the critical theorist Habermas (Chapter 7) would share Foucault’s opposition to manipulation and incarceration, while arguing for an enlarged and democratic public sphere, in which emancipatory forms of understanding could be effective.

So far, then, we have considered some of the possible lines of criticism of the positivist tradition, focusing especially on the problems of the empiricist account of science upon which it relies. In the next chapter we will take a necessarily rather selective look at some of the alternative views of science, most of them closely related to the sociological or historical study of science in action, but in each case posing important philosophical issues.

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Source: Benton T.. Philosophy of Social Science: The Philosophical Foundations of Social Thought.Bloomsbury Academic,2023. — 329 p.. 2023

Further Problems of Positivism

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