Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 09:09:54 -0800 (PST)
From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org>
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: BHA: realdef in the social sciences


 
 
In a previous post I said that one could read through Chapter 3 of
RTS on the Logic of Scientific Discovery and apply it pretty
readily to the social sciences.  In one important respect this is
not true.  On p. 144 of RTS RB says that "we produce conjunctions
in order to discover connections and apply connections in a world
of non-conjunctions."  In social sciences we work mostly without
the ability to produce conjunctions to discover connections.  This
is the significance of Marx's emphasis on abstraction as the
chemical reagent of the social sciences.  In social science we
produce abstractions in order to discover connections in a world of
non-conjunctions.  It is important to appreciate critical realism's
distinctive contribution to this reading of Marx.  Like natural
science, social science is "a process in motion," but in the social
sciences this is grasped by producing abstractions.  Producing
abstractions means moving from one strata or level to another. 
Compare the discussion attached to the schema at RTS 169.  Marx
starts with the surface events of economic life in a market society
and produces the abstraction of value.  This is a generative
mechanism that then functions to produce events and we can
empirically test its existence and operation.  But it is an
economic abstraction, not an event.  Thus it is inherently
incapable of being captured by a law formulation of the positivist
type, "if x, then y."  It is capable of being formulated in the
fashion proposed in RTS 3: "x tends to do phi in virtue of its
nature N."  On the other hand, x never appears in the world except
enmeshed in a multitude of other forces and mechanisms such that y
tends to do alpha (and to influence phi) in virtue of its nature Ny
and w tends to do beta (and to influence phi) in virtue of its
nature Nw and z tends to do gamma (and to influence phi) in virtue
of its nature Nz, etc.  So identifying what the nature of x is and
how it tends to behave in the social sciences always involves the
methodology of abstraction and only rarely and imperfectly, if
ever, producing conjunctions.  
 
Howard
 
 
Howard Engelskirchen
 
"What is there just now you lack"  Hakuin


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