concepts – Page 3 – Understanding Society

November 25, 2007April 28, 2023

How not to create a classification system

Does social science require systems of classification? From Jorge Luis Borges' description of a fictional Chinese classification of animals: “These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia entitled 'Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge'. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are …

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November 10, 2007April 28, 2023

Generalizations about cluster items

What is the basis of classification of items into groups? And how do classifications fit into scientific inquiry and theory? First, what different types of classification are there? Essential: The items may share a common defining characteristic (e.g. "liquid", "metal")-- Etiological: The items may share a common cause (e.g. "viral illness")-- Structural: The items may …

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Understanding Society is an academic blog by Daniel Little that explores a series of topics in the philosophy of social science and the workings of the social world. Published continuously since 2007, the blog has treated a wide range of topics, from the nature of causal mechanisms to the idea of emergence to the political dynamics of right-wing extremism to the causes of large-scale technological disaster. Readers should consider the blog an example of “open-source philosophy”. It is an experiment in thinking, one idea at a time.

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April 7, 2024
Popper and Parfit: the minds of philosophersThe recent biography of Derek Parfit by David Edmonds can usefully be read in conjunction with Karl Popper's autobiography. An impression offered here -- it seems as though Popper is the deeper philosopher, and that Parfit was a person obsessed with puzzles and problems that were technically complicated but had little real impact on issues that matter. #philosophy https://undsoc.org/2024/04/06/popper-and-parfit-the-minds-of-philosophers/
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March 24, 2024
Hobsbawm’s limitationsWe need both more and less from a historian than what Hobsbawm offers. Hobsbawm’s corpus is fundamentally an extensive interpretation based on a reading of secondary sources, in order to make a coherent Marxist story. But we don’t want our knowledge of history to be “pre-digested”; we want an evidence-based account open to contingency and details that do not fit the model.#historyhttps://undsoc.org/2024/03/22/limitations-of-hobsbawms-historical-writing/
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February 29, 2024
E.P. Thompson's break with StalinismE. P. Thompson was one of the great social historians of the 20th century and a committed socialist throughout. Thompson was a member of the British CP until 1956. He remained a staunch advocate of English socialism throughout his life. But as a Communist, he showed an unwelcome degree of intellectual and political independence. He broke with the CPGB in 1956. But did he adequately confront the crimes of Stalinism?#history https://undsoc.org/2024/02/28/e-p-thompsons-break-with-stalinism/
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February 1, 2024
Defining disciplinary research in the social sciencesDoes the framework of "disciplinary matrix" work well in studying different research communities in the social sciences? Does sociology consist of distinct "paradigm-driven" sub-disciplines? Kuhn's theory of paradigms doesn't work very well in the social sciences, which requires instead eclectic theories, piecemeal explanations, and a patchwork of inquiries at a range of levels of description. #sociology https://undsoc.org/2024/01/31/defining-disciplinary-research-in-the-social-sciences/
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December 18, 2023
Mistakes by organizationsEveryone makes mistakes ... but do organizations make mistakes in the same way that individuals do? No -- organizational mistakes are most often the result of dysfunctions such as principal-agent problems, conflicting cognitive frameworks, conflicting local priorities, external pressures on decision makers, poor communication and information-sharing. Orgs are not unified intentional actors ... #sociology https://undsoc.org/2023/12/18/mistakes-by-organizations/

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