Social Science - Is/Ought Reprise

The development of social science (since its inception) has revealed two dominant forms – one based in the systematic understanding of society and the other based in general “social knowledge” (knowledge about society, living and operating in society, & changing society in order to better live/operate in it).

Now traditionally, this difference has always been couched in theory/praxis, “is”/”ought”, or in grounded techne/abstract generalized episteme. We have social studies and we have social science, we have social work/human services and we have the science of society. We have social issues and we have social systems.

The trouble is these distinctions end up getting crossed. The epistemological orientation of social systems is turned upside-down and we talk about “the System” or “beating the system” and so forth. Another illustration. “Organizational Behavior” is the science of how organizations behave or operate, but it is also understood as how to behave in an organization.

Clearly we have a picture being painted of social science as its own kind of science/ knowledge, a notion of social consciousness, and general social understanding (on the one hand), while (on the other hand) we have a SCIENCE whose object happens be human social phenomena (viewed in the light of it existing on the same intellectual plane alongside other natural, scientific phenomena). It’s all to easy to cough this up to ethology/etiology dichotomization, but if we look closely both forms have ethos/system, theory/praxis, techne/episteme elements to them.

Yet, we’re missing something if we give this matter completely over to Max Weber’s concept. We have all these descriptions but they do not zero-in on the fundamental problem of social science’s dual character. All they do is create a map of clustered scatter-plots around a general area of which our understanding seems rather fuzzy … It seem to me that it is time we triangulate these clusters and look at the pattern that emerges from their juxtapositions.

It’s apparent one form of social science (where the term is more openly applied) centers on general social knowledge and understanding. ‘Larry lives in the Bronx, he’s a cabby, and he pays high rent for a bad apartment.’ “Social” conceptually precedes “science” in this definition of social science. Additionally, the atmosphere of the “social” is framed in its own special grounded, pragmatic, and experientialist light of ethos, praxis, and even materialistic value. The other form of social SCIENCE sees human behavior as being in line with other processes of the natural world; they exist together on the same continuum. Methodologically and epistemologically they are all studied and considered in a scientific fashion; the human social sphere while it’s somewhat unique and separable from the rest cannot be considered as an island unto itself.

So, perhaps it would do us good to think about this other distinction instead. The one form of social science seems to center itself on the idea of social conscience and consciousness. We could call this type of social knowledge “socscience.” And, the other form of social science can be called “society-science” (as it deals with social systems, general principles interspersed with factual content about social phenomena, and the fundamental idea that these can be studied like any other natural systems, since they are ultimately operable by the same laws).

I would appreciate your further input on this topic and my ideas about it. Mostly, my question comes down to this ---> why do we have these two different social sciences in the first place? Why not just have the one as our social science? … because isn’t - when we come right down to it - the second one based in a flawed, transient paradigm of our social reality? … Isn’t the idea of “Larry the cabby from the Bronx” (with all the social imagery that arises from such) shaped more by our present (and passable)(cultural) system of meaning than anything substantial or lasting about human behavior/social phenomena (via our knowledge or science/epistemology) of it? …

That’s the problem I’ve been mulling over the last year, and for the life of me, I can’t quite figure out the import of, say, the sociology of an Andrew Greeley when we have the better social science of an Immanuel Wallerstein (in both the area of theory and praxis, generality and detail, abstraction and concreteness)? What, frankly, is the use of the first model when we have what seems to me to be a better social science of the second? I’d like to get your ideas on this question. (Luke R.)

Luke Rondinaro, Group Facilitator, The Consilience Projects