Daniel Little
Though I've posed this posting around the question of "race and asthma," the question here isn't really about public health. It is rather concerned with the general question, how can a group characteristic be a causal factor in enhancing some other group characteristic? Suppose the facts are these: that African-Americans have a higher probability of …
Continue reading "How can race be a cause of something like asthma?"
Would we say that discerning and aggregating social trends is an important kind of social knowledge? What about explaining social trends? What is a social trend, anyway? Suppose people notice that crimes are getting less frequent but more violent; or that Thai restaurants are replacing Chinese restaurants at the bottom end in Chicago; or that …
Let's suppose that this statement about urban-rural differences in educational levels summarizes census data by calculating the average number of years of formal schooling for people in cities and people in rural areas. Is this brute fact about two large populations a valid description of the two populations? Is it an important or illuminating sociological …
When we gain knowledge about silver, DNA, or cholera, we can study virtually any samples of the item and arrive at a description of its properties and causal powers, and this description will correspond accurately to other instances as well. We learn about the type by learning about the individuals, and we don't have to …
Continue reading "Social knowledge: measurement of properties in diverse groups"
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 …
Understanding Society 