Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Sozialwissenschaften; Unfruchtbarkeit ihrer Methode; schwache Resultate

Kurzinhalt: The hard truth is that the results of all their labor is depressingly thin; not surprising that the social sciences provide so little useful information and prove so inept at prediction

Textausschnitt: 88b But whatever the dangers that confront the physical and life sciences, they are surely nothing compared to the disarray of the human sciences. Having begun with an outburst of grandiose expectations-very often convinced that they were on the verge of discovering the basic laws of human behavior that would allow a systematic reorientation of society toward peace and happiness-reality has repeatedly disabused their messianic self-confidence. It was no accident that the social reformers and revolutionaries of the past two hundred years have been associated with the social sciences. Whether it is Marx or Mill in economics, Dewey or Laski in political science, Freud or Skinner in psychology, or Comte or Marcuse in sociology, the emancipatory impetus remained the same. These were disciplines profoundly shaped by the assurance that the rationality of science could be applied to the resolution of the most enduring problems of man and society. Crime and misery could be eliminated; world peace could be inaugurated; and the social injustice endemic to history could finally be overcome. Nothing stood in the way except the expenditure of effort required to develop the appropriate theoretical instruments by which a new golden age could be guaranteed. The brightest minds were drawn to the task of realizing the enlightenment conviction of progress by applying the power of science to the study of man himself. What obstacle could prove resistant to the penetration of science? (Fs)

89a The short answer is human nature. A century of systematic human cruelty has definitively exploded the myth of historical progress. No one can any longer take seriously the suggestion that we are on the verge of an age of universal benevolence. In many respects, the brutality and narrowness of human self-interest seem to be more in evidence than ever. But what has shredded the human sciences has less to do with the failure of the progressivist expectations they shared with the age than with the substantive inability of their methodology to yield any meaningful knowledge about the human condition. Despite more than a century of work, little in the way of valuable insight has been generated about the central problems of social and political order. Not only have the problems proved resistant to solution, they have even proved resistant to comprehension. No one knows why crime occurs, why marriages break down, why war occurs, why economies fall into depressions, or why governments cannot eradicate corruption. The problems turn out to be far more complex and their sources more profound than we had anticipated. It is therefore not surprising that the human and social sciences present a sharp contrast to their naturalist cousins. In place of the steady accumulation of results and their coalescence into ever more coherent wholes, the social sciences exhibit increasing fragmentation of data and their dispersion into ever-narrower frames of reference. It is no wonder that there are no press reports or celebrity prizes for achievements in the social sciences. The hard truth is that the results of all their labor is depressingly thin.1 (Fs)

90a What happens to disciplines that dissipate into triviality is, of course, that they become the preserve of small minds. There are no great thinkers in the social sciences because bright people quickly recognize their futility. In place of an interest in problems-the great questions of existence and the pressing problems of society-the social sciences have narrowed their focus to those issues that can be investigated through an approximately rigorous application of the scientific method. Even if the method cannot yield fruitful results, its transformation into a fetish can still manage to sustain the appearance of rigor. In this way individuals, whose own work does not amount to anything very significant, can still comfort themselves with the assurance that they are generating useful results that might eventually be comprehended within some meaningful theory. The problem is that the promise of theoretical elaboration is never fulfilled. No one raises seriously the question of why, in principle, human and social reality might never be susceptible to such theoretical comprehension. Instead, the deepest minds depart and the lesser minds churn away on piecemeal studies that, unlike the natural sciences, are never absorbed into some larger understanding of things. One might view contemporary social science as an illustration of what happens when the experimental side of science is utterly dissociated from its theoretical collaborator. It produces a plethora of isolated, meaningless studies. This is why they are never referred to or utilized by the broader society of which they are a part. (Fs) (notabene)

91a However, the point is not to critique the social sciences. It is to understand why they are such an abysmal failure, for such consistency cannot be the fault of any personal inability. Rather, the cause lies in the nature of the project itself. Human beings are not, in their most decisive aspects, illuminated by the methodology of natural science. However elementary it may seem, there is a decisive difference in reality between a human being and a rock. Both may be intelligible, but only the human being is intelligent. That means that human behavior is to be understood primarily in terms of the reasons adduced by each of us for what we do. Intelligent self-enactment and self-disclosure, as Michael Oakeshott suggests, is not an unvarying achievement.16 Often, we fail to live up to the high calling of intelligent self-government. But, even when we fall short of the full exercise of our intelligence, it is precisely as a failure of intelligent self-reflection that our actions are to be understood. Relatively little can be gained from viewing them as a set of external phenomena unrelated to the more or less intelligent self-direction that stands behind them. Indeed, it is almost impossible even to describe human actions as phenomena except by some elementary reference to what they mean for their respective agents. Meaning remains the gaping hole at the core of the human sciences. It is still possible for some of their better practitioners to intuitively assess the meaning of the phenomena they investigate, but this is achieved despite the myopia of the methodology that virtually deprives them of the power of sight. Flying blind, it is not surprising that the social sciences provide so little useful information and prove so inept at prediction. (Fs)

91b Why, we are forced to ask, this dogged persistence in a direction that yields so little rationality? It is not simply the lure of scientific methodology. Positivism, like all of the great ideological illusions, is bound to exhaust its expectations over a long period of disappointment. It becomes increasingly difficult to sustain the confidence that illumination is just around the corner. No-what maintains the human sciences today, besides their achievement of institutional control, is the absence of any conceivable alternative. Any approach outside of the phenomenal would entail the assumption of a stand within the world of meaning to be investigated. It is impossible to interpret the meaning of human actions and expressions without taking a position on its meaningfulness. The submergence in the plurality of social meanings with their conflicts and convergences would embroil the scientist in the controversies of the investigated material itself. He or she could no longer preserve the distance from which objectivity and science are possible. It is the inconceivability of a science of order that renders a science of human life and society impossible. It is far better to stick with the truncated science that is at least defensible from the perspective of blind externality. (Fs)

92a The source of this attitude is the refusal to acknowledge what is inescapable in the project of a science constituted by meaning: the observer is included. Marriage, the family, sexuality, markets, religion, and government are not really phenomena. They have a phenomenal or external dimension, but their reality is inner, as the bearer of the lives of the human beings engaged in them. Scientists and scholars who study them do not suddenly acquire a wholly other mode of existence; rather, they are part of the world of social meaning that is already there and extends beyond, after their brief interlude of scientific investigation has passed. Social science is not just about society; it also occurs within a social whole that sustains and limits it. Rather than conceiving of the subject matter of the human sciences as a set of phenomena, it is preferable to regard them as lines of meaning. They constitute a field of meaning that includes the observer. What objectivity is possible depends on the scientist's capacity to identify the most objective perspective that has differentiated within the social world of which he or she is a part. It is from that vantage point alone that we can approach the truth. All other viewpoints, including the pseudo-objectivity of externality, merely subscribe to prevailing prejudices that cannot even compare to the best objectivity of the society itself.1 (Fs) (notabene)

93a The distance we are from a rational social science can be gauged from the degree to which even the efforts in such a direction are derailed by talk of "normative perspectives," "values," and "participant observation." Such terminology is intended to suggest that the evaluation of meaning can be patched on to a fundamentally unchanged externality. "Values" and "norms" are of necessity ad hoc additions because they represent merely subjective viewpoints. Nothing, it appears, can dislodge even the claims of pseudo-science because nothing else has even the vestige of objectivity about it. This is the problem of a genuinely scientific study of man, as Max Weber contemplated most profoundly. Is there any perspective that is not itself merely one of the perspectives under investigation? Can any viewpoint maintain the primacy of its claim to truth? The only one that can, as the classical philosophers discovered, is the one that is rooted in the pull toward transcendent Being. It alone can lay claim to an objectivity or truth that transcends the partiality of all merely historical perspectives. Being is the only thing that escapes the passing reality of all finite existence and thereby provides a measure by which to judge all that comes into and goes out of existence. The admission that it is a perspective beyond the human level is not relevant. If it is what constitutes wisdom, then human wisdom consists of recognizing it. We are wise only through the love of wisdom that is divine. A science of man and society is possible only when we admit with Plato that God, not man, is the measure (Protagoras). (Fs)

93b The dependence of a science of order on the revelation of transcendent Being does not solve all the problems. It renders the task of science more complicated and far less convenient, but we cannot change the situation in which we find ourselves. To the extent that the life of reason, as we have seen, is made possible through such differentiation of Being, then the elaboration of a rational perspective on humanity is correspondingly tied to such experiences. The unavailability of any perspective outside of human experience itself means that science must always take its stand on the most differentiated viewpoint that has emerged within history. That is the task of the human sciences and the reason why they remain implicitly Christian. To the extent to which the human sciences retain a rational model of human nature as the intuitive background from which to explore human life, it is imprinted with the lineaments of a Christian perspective. Addiction, for example, is viewed in wholly negative terms as a form of escape from the more rigorous demands of self-responsibility. But why should we care about the higher goals of self-realization unless there is a higher self to be realized? The problem with contemporary social science is that its own hold on rationality can scarcely maintain its superiority to that of the addict. It may indeed be more rational to escape into the temporary relief of oblivion than to struggle futilely for equally evanescent satisfactions of careers, fame, and achievements. What contemporary social science remains incapable of explicating is the root causes of addiction that lie in the unfillable transcendent longing of the human heart. In other words, the rationality of social science is hampered by its inability to follow out the full implications of its own viewpoint. Like all science, social science derives its rationality from the recognition of the order that emanates from transcendent Being. Its uniqueness is that this relationship is equally constitutive for the rational self-ordering of the object of its study. (Fs)