- In 1993 University of Buffalo sociology professor Mark Gottdiener criticized sociological theory in his paper “Ideology, Foundationalism and Sociological Theory” in Sociological Quarterly. He reported that academic sociology is merely about power games among theorists seeking to construct “grandiose narratives” to sustain their status in an intellectual community.
- In 1998 University of Virginia sociologist Donald Black addressed the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting. In his address, later published in Contemporary Sociology as “The Purification of Sociology”, Black called for a Kuhnian-like scientific revolution against classical sociology with its social-psychological ideology.
- In 2012 in “Education for Unemployment” Margaret Wente reported in the Globe and Mail that there are currently three sociology applicants for every sociology job opening, and concluded that sociology students have been “sold a bill of goods”. And one might add especially graduates with large student debts. She also lamented the fate of sociology professors who are fooled into believing that they have a shot at the ever-shrinking tenure track, and who even if successful will merely be “masters of pulp fiction”.
- In 2013 Yale University sociologist and cognitive scientist Nicholas Christakis wrote a New York Times OP-ED article titled “Let’s Shake Up the Social Sciences”. Therein he maintained that while the natural sciences are evolving, the social sciences have stagnated thereby stifling creation of new knowledge, and that such inertia reflects insecurity and conservatism.
Twentieth-century fin-de-siècle sociology has sunk into moribund stasis due to its anachronistic philosophies of science including particularly its dogmatic social-psychological reductionism. To date twenty-first century sociology offers no better prospects. Sociological “theory” is a charade – a caricature of basic research in successful empirical science. Instead of “purification” Black should have said “purgation”. Likewise instead of “shake up” Christakis should have said, “shake out”. Academic sociology needs a modernizing revolution that is much more fundamental than Black’s proposed “purification” of sociological theory. More specifically it needs a pragmatist institutional revolution, which will purge sociology of the intolerant obstructionist enforcers of its social-psychological-reductionist classicism based on prepragmatist semantic concepts of “theory”, “law” and “explanation” rooted in nineteenth-century German romanticism.
However the realpolitik is that there is little likelihood of any such revolution purging sociology’s complacently ensconced untouchables in their academic establishment. These often tenured incumbents are the rearguard who know that such an institutional revolution would marginalize them in sociology and make them the big losers in academia, victims of the Schumpeterian “creative destruction” wrought by modernizing innovation. Consequently it remains for the Grim Reaper to clear the field of sociology of these coercively obstructionist reactionaries. As Nobel-laureate physicist Max Planck grimly wrote in his Scientific Autobiography, a new truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents, but rather succeeds because its opponents have died off; science progresses “funeral by funeral”.
In the meanwhile sociology stagnates. But eventually some young opportunistic sociologists, who are willing and able to envision a better future both for themselves and for academic sociology, will adopt the principles of the contemporary pragmatist philosophy of science as set forth in BOOK I in this e-book. They will be an intellectual vanguard that will transform sociology into a well functioning, productive and reputable twenty-first century empirical science.
Thomas J. Hickey, Econometrician
Chicago, IL, USA
1 November 2016
BOOK I – Introduction
This book is an introduction to contemporary pragmatist philosophy of science. The first chapter is an overview of the subject. The second chapter sets forth three generic descriptions of three types of twentieth-century philosophy of science. The third chapter sets forth the elements of the contemporary pragmatist philosophy of language. The fourth and final chapter describes the four basic functions in basic research with a view to the three philosophy types and the elements of philosophy of language.
Chapter 1. Overview
Both successful science and contemporary philosophy of science are pragmatic. In science, as in life, realistic pragmatism is what works successfully. This BOOK I is a concise summary of the elementary principles of the contemporary pragmatist philosophy of science, the philosophy that the twentieth century has bequeathed to the twenty-first century.
1.01 Aim of Philosophy of Science
The aim of contemporary pragmatist philosophy of science is to discover principles that explain successful practices of basic-science research, in order to advance contemporary science by application of the principles.
Basic science creates new language: new theories, new laws and new explanations. Applied science uses scientific explanations to change the real world, e.g., new technologies, new social policies and new therapies. Philosophy of science pertains to basic-science practices and language.
1.02 Computational Philosophy of Science
Computational philosophy of science is the design, development and application of computer systems that proceduralize and mechanize productive basic-research practices in science.
Philosophy of science has changed. Mechanized information processing has permeated almost every science, and is now belatedly intruding into philosophy of science. Today computerized discovery systems facilitate investigations in philosophy of science in a new specialty called “computational philosophy of science”.
The pragmatist philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce and Norwood Russell Hanson had described a nonprocedural analysis for developing theories. Some called this nonprocedural practice “abduction”, others “retroduction”. Today in computational philosophy of science procedural strategies for developing new theories are coded into computer systems.
1978 Nobel-laureate economist Herbert Alexander Simon, a founder of artificial intelligence, called such systems “discovery systems”. In the 1970’s Hickey called the mechanized approach “metascience”. In the 1980’s philosopher of science, Paul Thagard, called it “computational philosophy of science”, a phrase that is more descriptive and therefore will probably prevail.
Philosophers of science can no longer be content with more rehearsing of the Popper-Kuhn debates of half a century ago, much less more debating ancient futile issues such as realism vs idealism.
Mechanized simulation of successful episodes in the history of science is often used to test the plausibility of the discovery-system designs. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Application of computer systems at the frontier of a science to propose new empirically superior theories further tests the systems, where prediction is also production. Now philosophers of science must practice what they preach by participating in basic-science research and producing results. Application of discovery systems gives the philosopher of science a practical and consequential rôle in basic-science research.
1.03 Two Perspectives on Language
Philosophy of language supplies a coherent analytical framework that integrates contemporary philosophy of science. Philosophers have long distinguished two perspectives in philosophy of language called “object language” and “metalanguage”.
Object language includes most of everyday discourse together with the language of the empirical sciences, and is about the nonlinguistic domains of reality including domains that the particular sciences investigate.
Metalanguage is language about language, either