Daniel Little
An earlier post on scientific explanation provoked some interesting comments from readers who wanted to know why Thomas Kuhn was not mentioned. My brief answer is that Kuhn's contribution doesn't really offer a theory of scientific explanation at all, but instead an account of the cognitive and practical processes involved in formulating scientific knowledge. Here …
Continue reading "Paradigms, research communities, and the rationality of science"
The sociology of knowledge is an interesting but somewhat specialized field of research in sociology. Basically the idea is thatknowledge -- by which I mean roughly "evidence-based representations of the natural, social, and behavioral world" -- is socially conditioned, and it is feasible and important to uncover some of the major social and institutional processes …
What do we want from a scientific explanation? Is there a single answer to this question, or is the field of explanation fundamentally heterogeneous, perhaps by discipline or by research community? Do biologists explain outcomes differently from physicists or sociologists? Is a good explanation within the Anglo-American traditions of science also a good explanation in …
Continue reading "Recent thinking about scientific explanation"
photos: Niklas Luhman (top), Mario Bunge (bottom) One view that has been taken about the causal properties of social structures is that they are emergent: they are properties that appear only at a certain level of complexity, and do not pertain to the items of which the social structure is composed. This view has a …
For a billion or so of us on planet earth, we are immersed in a sea of ever-changing technology. How does technology shape us? And how do we shape technology? How do current technologies change our capacities as human beings? In what ways are we better able to fulfill our plans of life using the …
Continue reading "Information technology and new human capabilities"
The past century has witnessed an amazing amount of technology change, and the pace seems to be quickening. How does a technology develop, and how do social conditions and institutions interact with this process? These aren't new questions, of course. There is a well developed field of the history of technology, with its own research …
What is the ontological status of social entities -- kinship systems, police departments, religious movements? And what is the status of causal powers of social entities? Do we need to "reduce" social entities to the compounds of individuals who make them up? And do we need to derive the causal properties of social entities from …
Why is democracy something people should strive for? And how are we doing with ours? Consider first the fundamentals. Why is there a role for democracy in any circumstances? Fundamentally democracy is a form of group decision-making. Political institutions are needed in circumstances in which decisions must be made that affect all members of a …
Many people around the world are celebrating Christmas this morning. A central wish around this holiday is "peace and good will for all." Why is enduring peace so difficult to achieve? What are the prospects for us in the twenty-first century? Peace and conflict are related, but they aren't precise opposites. Conflict between individuals and …
A theory of action is one component of a meta-framework for sociology. It is an organized set of ideas about what individuals are doing when they engage in interactions in the world, and what we think at the highest level of generality about why they behave as they do. Individuals within social interactions constitute the …
Understanding Society 