Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T20:07:39.647Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social Life and Social Science: The Significance of the Naturalist/Intentionalist Dispute

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2022

Nancy C. M. Hartsock
Nancy C. M. Hartsock*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In recent years, historicist understandings of science have come to prominence in philosophy of science and philosophy of social science. These approaches have been credited with putting forward a persuasive case that social scientific theories, like societies, are themselves historical entities. (Laudan 1979, p. 43; McMullin 1979, p. 57). Historicist studies have forced a re-evaluation of a number of important issues, among them the question of how methodologies are to be evaluated, and questions about how the relation of theory to observation is to be understood. (Laudan 1979, pp. 47-48).

Despite their successes, however, historicist approaches fail in two important ways: 1) they are unable to solve the problems posed by methodological relativism, and 2) they fail to go beyond treating theories as personages to the important questions of how these theories arise from particular social structures.

Type
Part V. Social Values and Social Science
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1980 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1980 , 1980 , pp. 325 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

My discussions with Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding on these issues have been very fruitful and have improved the argument I present here.

References

Althusser, Louis. (1965). Pour Marx. Paris: Librairie Francois Maspero. (As translated as For Marx. Ben Brewster (trans.) New Yorkr Random House, 1970.)Google Scholar
Bacon, Francis. (1623). “De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum.” (As Reprinted in Spedding, James, E l l i s , Robert Leslie and Heath, Douglas Devon (eds.) Works of Francis Bacon. Vol. 4. London: Longmans Green, 1879. Page3 275-498.)Google Scholar
Braverman, Harry (1974). Labor and Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Chodorow, Nancy. (1978). The Reproduction of Mothering. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fay, B. and Moon, J.D. (1977). “What Would an Adequate Philosophy of Social Science Look Like?” Philosophy of Social Science 7: 209-227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feyerabend, P.K.- (1975). Against Method. London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jiirgen. (1979). Communication and the Evolution of Society. Thomas McCarthy (trans.) Boston: Beacon Press. (Originally published in German as collection of essays in 1976.)Google Scholar
Harding, S.G. (1981). “The Norms of Social Inquiry and Masculine Experience.” In PSA 1980. Volume 2. Edited by P.D. Asquith and R.N. Giere, East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association. Pages 305-324.Google Scholar
Harding, S.G . (forthcoming). “Experience and Knowledge: Issues and Challenges from Feminist Perspectives.” In Discovering Reality; Feminist Perspectives on Epistemologv. Metaphv3ic3f Methodology and the Philosophy of Science. Edited by Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Hartsock, Nancy CM. (forthcoming). “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism.” In Harding and Hintikka. (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Hartsock, Nancy CM (1981). Money, Sex, and Power: An Essay on Domination and Community. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Laudan, Larry. (1979). “Historical Methodologies: An Overview and Manifesto.” In Current Research in Philosophy of Science. Edited by P.D. Asquith and H.E. Kyburg. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association. Pages 40-54.Google Scholar
Lenin, V.I. (1920). Materialism i emplriokrltltlsm . Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo. (As reprinted in Fineberg, Abraham (trans.) Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. In Collected Works. Vol. 14. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972.)Google Scholar
Lukacs, Georg. (1923). Gesohichte und Klassenbewusstseln. Berlin: Der Malik-Verlag. (As translated as History and Class Consciousness. Rodney Livingstone (trans.) Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968.)Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. (1867a). Das Kapital. Hamburg: 0. Meissner. (As Reprinted in Moore, Samuel and Aveling, Edward (trans.) Capital. Vol. 1. New York: International Publishers, 1967.)Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. (1867b). Das Kapital. Reprinted in Fowkes, Ben (trans.) Capital Vol. 1. Middlesex: Penguin, 1976.)Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. (1888). “Theses on Feuerbaeh.”Published by Engels. (As Reprinted in , Arthur (ed.). (1970).)Google Scholar
Marx, Karl (1932). Gesamtausgabe. Abt.I, Bd. 3” Berlin: Marx-Engels Verlag. (As Reprinted in Struick, Dirk (ed.) Economio and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. New York: International Publishers, 1964.)Google Scholar
Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick. (1932). Die deutsohe Ideologie. Wien: Verlag fiir Literatur und Politik. (As Reprinted in Arthur, C.J. (ed.) The German Ideology. New York: International Publishers, 1970.)Google Scholar
McMullin, Ernan. (1979). “The Ambiguity of Historicism.” In Current Research in Philosophy of Science. Edited by P.D. Asquith and H.E. Kyburg. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association. Pages 55-83.Google Scholar
Merchant, Carolyn. (1980). The Death of Nature. New York: Harper and Rowe.Google Scholar
Nagel, Ernest. (1961). The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos. (1974). Les Classes Sociales dans le Capitalisme Aujourd'hui. Paris: Editions du Seuil. (As translated as Classes In Contemporary Capitalism. David Fernbach (trans.) London: New Left Books, 1975.)Google Scholar
Sailers, Don E. (1978). “Explanation and Understanding in the Social Sciences: A Critique. “ Philosophy of Social Science 8: 367-371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sohn-Rethel, Alfred. (1970). Geistlge und korperliche Arbeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (As translated as Intellectual and Manual Labor. Martin Sohn-Rethel (trans.) London: MacMillan, 1978.)Google Scholar
Stalin, J. (1938). “Historical and Dialectical Materialism.” History of the ConmVn)i9t Party of the Soviet Union (Short Course). (As Reprinted in Franklin, Bruce (ed.) The Essential Stalin. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1972. Pages 300-333.)Google Scholar
Winch, Peter. (1958). The Idea of a Social Science. New York: Humanities Press.Google Scholar