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On Some Autonomy Arguments in Social Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Thomas Nickles
Thomas Nickles*
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
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Extract

My aim in this necessarily compact paper is to sketch a philosophical defense of the kind of position assumed by the later Kroeber, when he wrote:

… That which is specifically characteristic and distinctively significant of phenomena of a level [of organization] is intelligible only in terms of the other phenomena, qualities, or regularities of that same level. The most characteristic qualities or phenomena are never explained by what we know of another level….

This does not mean that a new entity is hypostasized [sic] as the unique, substance of each level. Life, mind, society, and culture are not outside matter and energy, not outside space and time…. They are different organizations of matter and energy, if one will, which physicists and chemists cannot, in virtue of their physical and chemical methods, deal with fruitfully….

Type
Part I. Philosophy of Social Science
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1976 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1976 , 1976 , pp. 12 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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