"The Real is Relational": An Epistemological Analysis of Pierre Bourdieu's Generative Structuralism

An internal reconstruction and an immanent critique of Bourdieu's generative structuralism is presented. Rather than starting with the concept of "habitus," as is usually done, the article tries to systematically reconstruct Bourdieu's theory by an analysis of the relational logic that permeates his whole work. Tracing the debt Bourdieu's approach owes to Bachelard's rationalism and Cassirer's relationalism, the article examines Bourdieu's epistemological writings of the 1960s and 70s. It tries to make the case that Bourdieu's sociological metascience represents a rationalist version of Bhaskar's critical realism, and enjoins Bourdieu to give heed to the realist turn in the philosophy of the natural and the social sciences. The article shows how Bourdieu's epistemological assumptions are reflected in his primary theoretical constructs of "habitus" and "field." To concretize their discussion, it analyzes Bourdieu's reinterpretation of Weber in his theory of the field of religion and of the young Mannheim in his theory of the scientific field.     

Habermas,Critical Theory,and the Relativistic Predicament

Habermas' critical theory stands or falls on the unity of procedural reason. When Stephen Toulmin raised the problem of reason being differentiated by functions and purposes within each field of argumentation, whether law, medicine, science, or politics, Habermas' response was both weak and vague. This paper proposes how Habermas may concede Toulmin's point, and yet demonstrate that it does not ultimately challenge the unity of procedural reason that grounds his critical theory.     

Information Science in the Education of Social Work Students

Information science stands as a bridge between the practitioner facing clients in a day-to-day world and the mountain of relevant and not-so-relevant information that the social sciences have accumulated. This paper reports one school's attempts to encourage effective utilization of scientific knowledge through experimentation with (1) a computer-based retrieval system, (2) a specialized library of information tools that permits precise retrieval of current materials, and (3) an educational program that stresses the importance of having the best available knowledge as a guide to practice, and provides training in obtaining it.     

On morality and chemistry

Cartesian separation and enlightenment have led to a widespread conceptual separation of science and technology. Consequently a certain philosophical tradition holdspure science as a metaphysical striving for irrefutable truth that is morally neutral and only (dirty?) applications as morally accountable. An opposite extreme position holds scientists responsible for everything that is done with their discoveries. Based on an interpretation of science to be a social construct and the observation that moral criteria are the results of social processes the paper demonstrates by the example of synthetic chemistry that science is not an elite end in itself and as such is not free from obligation to moral criteria. The moral responsibility of a scientist, which arises from his professional expertise, is limited to the available knowledge of his discipline. The moral responsibility, which he carries beyond that as responsible acting human, derives from the cultural identity and the normative values under which his action is carried out. This conclusion is illustrated by the examples of DDT, Aspirin and Heroin.     

Literary perceptions of the aborigine after 1838∗

This paper traces the emergence in nineteenth‐century ethnographic thought of a three‐tiered classification of society and history following the appearance of Auguste Comte's Cours de philosophie positive (1830–1842). Adaptations of Comte's new formula to a variety of historical and social settings in fictional and other prose works paved the way for its eventual use by Achebe as the ground plan for his interpretation of the African past in Things Fall Apart. Works paving the way for this reconstruction include novels and other texts by D. H. Lawrence and various early twentieth and nineteenth century novelists as well as the ethnographic, critical and scholarly work of Matthew Arnold, Sir Edward Tylor, and Jane Harrison. Perceptions of the hunter‐gatherer phase of African social organization and the nineteenth‐century use of the term ‘aborigine’ to designate this ancient condition of society are suggested as the probable origins of a much used, versatile paradigm. Its applicability to the southern African situation in Bessie Head's Maru stems, it is suggested, from the origin of the three‐tiered system itself in early processes of communication between Europe and southern Africa.     

Durkheim,Schopenhauer and the Relationship Between Goals and Means: Reversing the Assumptions in the Parsonian Theory of Rational Action*

Scholars have approached Durkheim's thought primarily from the starting point that he was a positivist. Although Schopenhauer's philosophy is not generally invoked in Durkheim's work, it appears that Schopenhauer's philosophy supplanted Comte's positivism at the turn of the century and that Durkheim was enamored with Schopenhauer's philosophy. In this essay Schopenhauer's influence upon Durkheim is traced, and the implications of this influence are discussed in terms of their effect upon sociology. By applying this starting point to Durkheim's thought and the Parsonian-Mertonian goals-means schema, it is demonstrated that Durkheim, like Schopenhauer, assumed the opposite of the Enlightenment belief that human reason could dominate passion. Implications for interpreting Durkheim's work are also discussed.     

An indolence of the heart

Walter Benjamin’s understanding of allegory as developed in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, and whose genius is Dürer’s image of winged melancholy, stands in diametric opposition to the symbolic unity proposed in Michael Fried’s emblematic modernist essay “Art and Objecthood”. The complex cultural tensions and expectations defined by these texts—as well as the complementary terms symbol and allegory—can be understood as a function of the category of time, and it is this temporal problematic that this essay situates with reference to the contingent art forms of the late 1960s and early 1970s.     

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND THE NATURE OF SCIENCE

The debate about the patenting of research is perhaps the most passionate now taking place about science and scientific culture. It is widely maintained that the expansion of patenting since about 1980 betrays a scientific tradition to which norms of universalism and common ownership of knowledge were central. This paper goes back to mid-twentieth century debates about science and intellectual property (IP) to argue that many of the norms we take as so central to science were themselves first articulated to critique patenting practices. In particular, it looks at how an economist (Arnold Plant), a scientist/philosopher (Michael Polanyi), and an information theorist (Norbert Wiener) responded to such practices. It especially focuses on the role of intellectual-property concerns in the making of Polanyi's philosophy of science, which it excavates through a reading of his unpublished papers. This reveals that the modern field of ‘science studies’ is indebted for some of its key concepts to an earlier generation of patent wars – an inheritance that exemplifies some of the strange ways in which the sociopolitical meanings of ideas can change from generation to generation. The point is not that present-day critics of scientific patenting are wrong, but that the very terms of the debate are more deeply-seated in the development of scientific culture than any of us has realized.     

Disenchantment and its discontents: Weberian perspectives on science and technology*

Weber's ideas about science and technology have largely been neglected by comparison with his views of modern politics and economics. Yet his notion of disenchantment is central to his conception of modern society and to his comparative studies of the rise of Western rationalism. This importance is underlined by the use to which Weber's ideas have been put by two contemporary thinkers. Ernest Gellner extends the notion of disenchantment in his account of the cognitive style of industrial society, but argues that it does not necessarily pose the threat which Weber's cultural pessimism suggests. Randall Collins, on the other hand, develops a Weberian account of the social basis for technological change, arguing that geopolitical centres give rise to technological innovation. In view of the urgency of the question of the role of science and technology in modern society, these Weberian perspectives provide an important theoretical tool since they offer a framework in which this question can be addressed.     

穆罕默德·阿卜杜胡的宗教改革思想研究

十九世纪末,埃及著名宗教改革家穆罕默德·阿卜杜胡在他提出的宗教改良理念中将理性发挥到了极致,旨在把穆斯林的思想从传统的禁锢中解放出来。学界认为,理性源于古希腊哲学,是近代西方文明的标志之一。实际上,伊斯兰世界对理性的关注与应用并不亚于其他文明,历代学者对理性的系统研究为穆罕默德·阿卜杜胡的理性观奠定了深厚的基础。理性对当前阿拉伯民众的宗教生活与社会发展都具有十分重要的意义。     

Sciences,politics, and associative democracy: democratizing science and expertizing democracy

Relations between science and politics are under pressure because urgent problems create an increasing external demand on sciences while inside sciences the old idea that “science speaks truth to politics” is increasingly seen as unfeasible and undesirable. We are not forced to choose between such an objectivist and a skepticist model. Associative democracy provides more fruitful interactions between sciences and politics in order to “democratize science/expertise” and to “expertize democracy” compared with the outworn institutional alternative of parliamentary democracy – incapable of solving risk-decisions because of limited and misguided information, lack of qualification and practical knowledge – and neo-corporatist “shifts from government to governance” – suffering from rigidity, exclusion of legitimate stakeholders, intransparency and lack of democratic legitimacy. It introduces contest where it matters most and where it is most productive: in the framing of issues, in the deliberation/negotiation on alternatives, and in the implementation and control of the chosen problem solving strategy.     

SUBJECT AND SUBSTRATUM : ON JAPANESE IMPERIAL NATIONALISM

This paper addresses the theoretical and philosophical questions concerning how an individual identified him/herself as a member of an ethnic, racial, or national community in the context of Japanese Imperialist discourse during the 1930's. The central focus is Tanabe Hajime. Together with his mentor Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe established the so-called Kyoto School of Philosophy in the 1920's. With his background in the philosophy of sciences and mathematics, and modern European metaphysics, Tanabe created a philosophical argument for the multi-ethnic nation-state, and proposed the universalistic concept of Japanese national identity which positively evaluates and integrates individuals of different ethnic backgrounds into one. He constructed the Logic of Species (Shu no Ronri) according to which a member of the Japanese Empire could identify with Japan precisely because she or he can participate in the Japanese State which represents the whole, inclusive of all the ethnic groups. Relying upon the Hegelian concept of negativity, he explained the two different levels of belonging: particularistic belonging to the specific identity (shu) such as ethnicity, and universalistic belonging to the generic identity (rui). And he further demonstrated that ethnic identity is far from fixed, and is brought into the subject's self-awareness only insofar as the subject negates it and is free from it. In other words, the subject becomes aware of her/his ethnic origin only when s/he negates it thereby participating in a higher order of social formation, the State, under which ethnic multiplicity is subsumed. Thus the species of ethnicity is constituted only insofar as it is negatively mediated by the genus, that is, the State. Tanabe saw the essential form of human freedom in this negative relation of the subject to his ethnicity, and understood a subject's belonging to a nation as a dialectic and negative process of mediation between the species and the genus. While postwar Japan was built upon the premises of ethnic nationalism, Japanese imperial nationalism of the pre-war period was afraid of ethnic nationalisms which could challenge the Empire's rhetoric of multiethnicity and pluralism. Tanabe's Logic of Species was a response to such needs of Japanese Imperialism and it represented a philosophical attempt to undermine ethnic nationalism. Not surprisingly, it served as a metaphysical foundation for the idea of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.     

Extension of Sartre's Philosophy for Today's World Situation

Sartre's philosophy was futurogenic. He was also a political activist. This article discusses how his philosophy applies to today's and tomorrow's political situations in the world. This article also extends his theory in the light of recent findings in social sciences and neuroscience. lf he were living today: (1) he would condemn collectivistic theories such as symbolic interactionism in sociology, and constructionism in psychology, which foster ingroup homogenization and self-stereotyping, and rationalize group-against-group hostility, violence and terrorism; (2) he would promote the understanding of HTICT (heterogeneity and trans-groupness of individual cognitive/cogitative/action types); and (3) he would reform inbreeding in organizational practice and replace it with outbreeding and polyocular vision.     

The integral paradigm: The truth of faith and the social sciences

This article proposes a paradigm for the social sciences derived from Pitirim A. Sorokin’s writings about Integralism. His conception of a three-component system of truth and knowledge which includes the senses, reason, and faith is the foundation of this integral perspective. The paradigm entails the incorporation of religious-ethical ideas within the established frame of reference of the social sciences. The consensus among several world religions that some version of the Golden Rule is the most fundamental ethical principle, and the idea of individual transformation involving the realization of this principle, are advanced as the foundation for integral social science. The virtues, the vices and the Ten Commandments are presented as more specific schemes which articulate the positive and negative precepts associated with the Golden Rule. The incorporation of these religious-ethical ideas in value premises, existing paradigms and theories, special fields, and empirical research is considered. Integralism is proposed as a solution to the current crisis of fragmentation and anomie in the social sciences.     

A CRITIQUE OF METHODOLOGICAL REASON

In this essay, we argue that, following their perception of practices in the natural sciences the social sciences have reified methodology, making it the chief imperative of social investigation and using it to ground their knowledge claims. We find this to be the case even in the work of social scientists who try to overcome or reject the dominant positivist paradigm. We argue that this obsession with method has led the social sciences to abandon thinking-beyond-the-given in favor of small, specialized studies whose justification is no longer substantive but methodology driven. After a review of the history of the role of method in traditional philosophies of science, the essay turns to the work of recent critics of social science who have become increasingly dissatisfied with modeling the social sciences after the natural ones. We distinguish between a hermeneutic and phenomenological critique of positivism, both of which, we argue, end up reproducing the scientism they reject. We identify this problem in our careful readings of some of the most influential critics of Popperian scientific philosophy. In the final section, we distinguish between contemporary social science, situated in what we term the epistemological paradigm, and our own critical science, stemming from an alternate, ontohistorical tradition in the history of ideas. Here, we begin to lay out what a critical, nonmethodology-driven, reflective and historical science might look like.     

Reading Nature: Emerson,Cuvier, Lyell,Goethe and the Intricacies of a Much-Quoted Trope

Abstract

Whilst Emerson's visit to the Paris Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in 1833 apparently ignited within him a serious and long-term interest in natural science, his relationship to the work of naturalists Georges Cuvier, Etienne Geoffroy, George Lyell, and Charles Darwin remained superficial. The analysis of a trope Emerson shares with nineteenth-century discourse on nature and the natural sciences reveals the rifts between Emerson's hermeneutical assumptions and the position of the leading naturalists of his time. If, for Emerson, the eclectic hunter of ideas, the natural sciences were of significant influence, it was an influence rooted in misreading.