Dialogue of Sciences: Natural versus Social
Abstract. This paper will attempt to explore the debate between natural sciences and social sciences, particularly highlighting the conditions upon which knowledge, data or theory can be authenticated as scientific. In fine, Karl Popper’s (1972) concept of falsifiability, Thomas Kuhn’s (1996) paradigm shift and Michel Foucault’s (1970) ‘epistemes’ will be central to the analysis of science’s modicum of achieving truth, both in its theoretical and practical realms. Some potential approach towards reconciliation to close the gap between natural and social sciences will be approximated towards the end of this paper.
Introduction: The War of Philosophies
Different sciences have long been at war with one another, especially among natural scientists and those in the humanities, arts and social studies. Anti-naturalists for instance would accuse scientists as detached from humanity’s condition and sees everything as atoms or elements of nature - devoid of any depth, meaning, and freedom. On the other hand, supporters of the natural sciences would see the other camp as lacking of any foresight, anti-intellectual, overly emotional and are limited to existential fleeting moments (Baringer, 2005, citing Snow, 1959:5-6).
On one hand, the philosophy of science embraces a world view asserting that only empirical methodologies and processes lead us to find answers to our questions, it embraces a series of investigations and discoveries employing the science of empiricism to tell us what there is (Jarvie, 2011). Particularly referring to natural science, it refers to a set of problems/questions that emerges from science which naturalists often refer to, to answer philosophic questions prior to ontological ones. It puts premium on those that can be tested, without regard as to what people believe or does not believe. As a criticism, philosophy of science argues that nothing is acceptable other than those that passed the scrutiny of scientific methodologies like experimentation and observation or in the words of Foucault (1972), “those that can be mathematicized.”
Baringer (2005, citing Shermer, 1997:18) expands “science as a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed and inferred phenomena, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation.” This implies that with scientific method, objectivity is achieved, something that is validated by experimentation or observation, as opposed to non-testable constructs which are solely based on personal views. Science is based on rationalism, relying on logic and evidence and not dogmatism, relying on authority.
On the other hand, the philosophy of the social science or what Jarvie (2011) calls as the science of social, concerns itself with the problems and answers that develop from and within the domain of society. Unlike the object of scientific inquiry in natural sciences, the philosophy of social science deals with a very expansive area of inquiry, often reconstructed to keep up with the evolving developments in human studies. As mentioned by Jarvie (2011), “from Plato to J.M. Keynes, the attempt at rational social thought was a response to social change, a response that morphs over time from speculation to empirically testable theories.” Central to its investigation are human beings and social institutions that are neither monolithic nor static.
The supporters of social sciences also see some limitations in the pursuit of knowledge through the methodological discipline of natural sciences. For instance, Baringer (2005) identifies significant obstacles to the objectivity of natural science. Scientists according to him are also influenced by preconceived notions of race and gender (citing Cudd, 2005:79-96). Additionally, science is also accused as a Western influence informed by its colonial objectives to subjugate non-western science creating some forms of resistance from oriental scholarly scientific works (citing Ziauddin, 2005:117-136). The objectivity of rational logic also hinders the full acceptance of scientific knowledge as it raises questions on the applicability of reason in discovering what is real arguing that even irrationalism has an objective reality (citing Smith 2005:149-180). Ultimately, the struggle to prove that science can be generalized is extra challenging to close the gaps between the different sciences – natural, social, and the humanities – without necessarily losing their disciplinal orientation.
While the goal of natural science is to discover knowledge with exactitude and certainty reducible to some empirical expressions, the goal of social science is to discover the rules and regulations that govern the operation of social entities (Campbell, 2018), or any collection of people who interact with one another like families, villages, religions, professional association, nations, international organizations, and communities of people.
When studies invoke empirical evidences, the closest discipline to social science in this respect is the world of natural sciences. However, despite the reliance on evidence as basis for generalization, the two are worlds apart. Natural sciences deal with mostly inanimate objects in their study while social science deals with human beings and human institutions. The object of social science exercises free will, they make choices and imagine the future. In contrast, the objects of natural science are generally passive like rocks, soil, energy, gravity, weather, heavenly bodies or plants. They follow the same rules almost universally, unlike human beings that are affected by complicated contexts, histories, and tendencies.
Given the disparities between the two sciences, there appears to be much regard to the philosophical foundations in distinguishing the disciplinal orientation of both the natural and social sciences. If we opt to follow that philosophy is “a field of contestation,” (Jarvie, 2011) an arena where truth is sought to explain how things are, how they came about, and how they ought to be, then the hope of finding light on the debate is not lost at all. While the battlefield may be a messy arena, it does not negate the potential that harmony can emerge eventually if a “peace talk” among sciences is pursued.
If science is a philosophy loosely taken as a world view – a ‘weltanshcaüung’ as the Germans would put it, then it can allow us to look at the whole by understanding the parts, asking questions that are oftentimes ignored, seeking answers to approximate the truth in its most universal form. In short, philosophy is an attempt to integrate varying and competing claims of what is true, real and rationally acceptable resulting from Jarvie’s (2011) “field of contestation.”
As a philosophy, science can also be treated as an agent to change the world and not simply to understand the world. While there is no default orientation for change, philosophy is sometimes viewed as meaningless if the search for truth does not inure to the benefit of all persons. This elevates the role of science as a critique and counter critique to varying world views, a form of thinking that requires dialectic in respectful conversation with assertions and counter-assertions laid down – all in the hope of finding the truth. As a field of contestation, facts to become truth need to be argued with critical mindedness until conclusions are made and are accepted by the community of intellects, unless a more convincing rationalization is offered.
The current debate between natural science and the social sciences exposes the larger divide in the field of philosophical relativism, a world view suggesting that no framework can be more superior than another. The polemic began when some scholars took Robert Kuhn’s (1996) assertion that it is the sociology of interaction among scientists that led to the birth of new paradigms, readily concluding that everything science produce as in all other forms of knowledge generation, is nothing but a “social construct,” born out of the imagined consensus of a group of people. This resulted to the divide between “modernists” and the “postmodernists,” or Baringer prefers to label as “rationalists” and the “romantics,” with the former resting faith in reason, empiricism and logic, while the latter putting premium on the more personal, emotional and intuitive.
While there are many ways by which these competing philosophies are articulated, one thing remains consistent - its ultimate goal is to find truth, in theory and in practice.
The Science Criterion in the Nexus of Kuhn, Popper and Foucault
With the seeming philosophical difference of the ontology of natural and social science, it becomes more convincing to push that reconciliation is possible. This springs from the fact that positivism and constructivism, empiricism and interpretivism, rationalism and romanticism or modernism and post-modernism are all forms of ‘weltanshcaüung’ that has evolved through time. This proves that a prevailing world view can always be challenged by a newer one at any given time. This brings us to falsifiability (Popper, 1972), epistemic re-ordering (Foucault, 1970) and paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1990) as indices of what science is. The logic, though presented fashionably different by Popper, Foucault and Kuhn, seems to refer to a very important criterion of science – that of refutability.
Thomas Kuhn gave birth to the conceptual framework famously called the “paradigm shift,” referring largely to the history of normal science within a commonly accepted framework, occasionally broken by revolutions, resulting to the acceptance of a new framework, a new paradigm.
He believed that history, being the treasure trove of revolutionary changes across time is also replete with erroneous appreciation of the evolution of science. Science must be taken as an organized accumulation of “facts, theories and methods,” (Kuhn, 1990) making every scientist a contributor to the formation of a knowledge constellation called science. This aggregate of scientific knowledge is fulfilled by what Kuhn (1990) calls the concept of “development-by-accumulation.”
The history of science therefore, helps us understand how this constellation incrementally came about over time, highlighting both the successes and the obstacles it hurdled to achieve a robust position in the field of knowledge generation. This presupposes two functions of the historian of sciences: 1] annotate the circumstances upon which a fact, law or theory has been discovered, and 2] illuminate on the challenges that impeded the immediate accumulation of scientific data. Considering the compounded complexities in the study of science especially when the so called myths of the past are organically mixed in the acceptable facts of today, then the historian has an obligation to embrace the latter without discounting the value of the former for providing the foundations upon which new discoveries are based. In the words of Popper (1972), this hints on the principle of refutability in science.
Establishing a solid ground for a scientific fact, law or theory, therefore necessitates the robustness of the methodological tools in order to withstand the challenges it may face from the whole scientific community. This means that the process in reaching a conclusive statement in science is as important as the conclusion itself. Research emerges as an essential element in proving or disproving what science is.
Scientific truths can only be held within a certain period of time. Anomalies may exist and normal science may be challenged, either falsified or expanded. The attitude of the scientific community must be one that can accommodate the evolving truths in science and to re-commit themselves to a whole new arrangement of fact, law or theory. In the words of Thomas Kuhn, “begin the extraordinary investigations that lead the profession at last to a new set of commitments, a new basis for the practice of science.” (1990:6) These extraordinary shifts in commitments he calls as the “scientific revolutions.” While tradition-shattering, it is true to its discipline of creating boxes, confines and bounds, once a new tradition is formed. This is now what the world knows as the “paradigm shift.”
One example of this paradigm shift in the area of political science for instance, is feminism in the 20th century as it shatters patriarchy one day at a time.
Michel Foucault. Similar to Robert Kuhn’s “paradigm shift”, Foucault (1970) discusses what he calls the epistemes, or the set of ordered ideas hiding in the unconscious that are essential in determining acceptable knowledge in specific time periods. And since this is unknown as of yet, one has to undertake a symbolical excavation to disinter the episteme of a particular period. For Foucault, there can only be one episteme for each historical period. But this can be replaced by some forms of revolution, a breakaway from the previous prevailing episteme resulting to the re-ordering of knowledge.
Foucault (1970) insinuates that historically, all forms of matters known to man are ordered according to their differences. The closest to what a perfect order is seen in mathematics and other forms of empirical sciences, and quite difficult in the field of human sciences. But in the 19th century, the epistemic sciences became disjointed. He believes that modern science is not found in a linear direction by rather in a space that is tri-dimensional. The first dimension is the deductive and linear dimension of mathematics and physical sciences. The second dimension belongs to sciences that have causal relationships involving the epistemic traditions of empirical sciences. The third dimension belongs to philosophical reflection, the plane where all dimensions meet to eventually bring forth a new common space for the formalization of thought, especially when philosophy and math meet. But in all these dimensions, human sciences appear to be absent.
This absence of human science brings forth the intrinsic difficulties in studying the discipline: 1] the very nature of human studies requires a delicate balance of its instability, 2] ambiguity as a field of knowledge, 3] reliance with other disciplines, and 4] absence of universal claims – all because the subject that is man traverses along the different dimensions within and beyond the space of knowledge production.
The positivity resulting from the tri-dimensional space of sciences presupposes that anything reducible to mathematical equation is deemed a scientific knowledge and those that cannot be reduced, has not yet attained a level of scientificity. While several fields in social sciences have borrowed the language of mathematics, like the use of probabilistic calculations in voting behavior, reducing sensations to logarithmic expressions, or measuring learnings using numeric measures, it is still dubious of human sciences can be said to have achieved the positivity of science. But with archaeological approaches, Foucault (1970) is suggesting that a new form of episteme will be born.
Karl Popper. Often referred to by Jarvie (2011), Karl Popper known to be the founding father of scientific philosophy, asserted falsifiability as the primary criterion in delineating the limits of scientific inquiry as opposed to other forms of inquiry. Any proposition or theory must be tested through the application of the principle of falsification, that is, it must be subjected to inquiry to prove if the theory is either correct or wrong. This philosophy therefore advances that any claim not falsifiable, is not scientific, hence, a fake science – no truth, no value – or what he calls the “pseudo-science” (Popper, 1972).
This reinforces Francis Bacon’s (cited by Ash, 2018) method of science which talks of three main steps to establish the acceptability of a particular claim: 1] description of facts, 2] classification of facts, and 3] rejection of what appears to have no connection with the subject under investigation. What demarcates science from other inquiries is the element of refutability. This resonates as well with logical positivists’ position that the ultimate criterion in verifying what knowledge is can be through experiments rather than based on personal experiences.
The rise of this ontological and methodological measures of science, disciplines outside of the natural realm suffered quite heavily for having been marginalized. For example, Kasza (2010) argued that Political Philosophy as a sub-field in political science has been marginalized and in fact rendered invisible in some academia. This is alarming since the quest to answer the big questions of ontology, epistemology and methodology is also missing, knowing its value in the whole political science discipline. It must be noted that every political scholar must begin with political philosophy.
One reason why political philosophy is starting to disappear its attempt to emulate the natural sciences. It is losing its distinctive edge. The objects of study in the natural sciences are largely distinct from one another whereas, in the social sciences and humanities, the object of study is one and the same human being. A person’s identity markers are not disrobed whenever a person acts in different situations (voting, school, family, war, etc). The boundaries among the subfields in social sciences are only artificial, much more among the sub disciplines in political science. Arguably, the dominance of what Kuhn called the “normal science” in the 70s resulted to the marginalization of political philosophy in particular and the social sciences in general. On a similar note, the rise of positivism in political science also contributed to the marginalization of political philosophy.
Predictability as a Differentiating Criterion
Predictability appears to be the area where the legitimate divide between social sciences and natural sciences is coming from. Physical science has the ability to predict outcomes with great precision when testing certain conditions while social science still struggles with it. There are multiple reasons for this difficulty. Some contend that social sciences have not yet reached a certain maturity as a discipline (Frazer, 1995, citing Mill, 1987). Others argue that it is simply because the social reality is so fluid and therefore more intricate compared to the physical reality. Water behaves similarly anywhere on earth unlike man, whose thinking, actions and behavior vary from culture to culture, from context to context. This makes the two sciences ontologically different as well making the concept of science a divisive polemic.
To Baringer (2005), predictability is one domain that science has which other forms of knowledge do not have. The ability to predict potential outcomes is a characteristic possessed by natural science because its objects of investigation are fixed and determinate unlike in social sciences where the objects are generally unpredictable for being endowed with free will. Predictability is argued as the only characteristic that draws the line between positivism and constructivism. Therefore, the other element of falsifiability, or the ability of a scientific data to be rejected, challenged and replaced by a more convincing evidence, can be rightfully claimed by social sciences as true to its epistemology and methodology.
Applying Refutability in the Science of Social
Today, social science largely relies on empirical evidences to prove or disprove a claim. Unlike the early political philosophers who employed morals, norms and ethics in their assertions, social scientists today optimize evidence to describe social phenomena and illustrate theoretical exhortations about people and society.
Social science originated in the enlightenment period in the 17th and 18th century (Campbell, 2018) when the world started putting premium on methods and systems in the process of developing an understanding of the world around us. A scientific process became the solid foundation in asserting certain sets of assumptions and in forming a theory to explain the natural world. Social sciences took off from this novel approach. The early social scientists were interested in explaining politics, society and the economy. They embarked on a data collection mission to test their theories although using observation rather than experimentation. Among the notable pioneers of social science are Montesquieu, Thomas Robert Malthus, De Tocqueville and Marx (Campbell, 2018).
Similar to natural science, social science discovers generalizable knowledge from specific contexts – generally using the inductive method as opposed to the generally deductive methodology of philosophy. Philosophy concerns itself on the what should be (normative) while social science looks at the what is (descriptive), primarily because the former argues from first principles while the latter emphasizes the empirical soundness of an argument. Unlike humanities too which seeks to understand the specifics of a phenomenon, social science is interested in engendering generalizations.
Therefore, the society can be studied scientifically. Society and the explanations about how society exists, behaves, and is perceived to be are subjected to the rigors of methodical confirmation and rejection. Theories are tested either to validate the assumptions or to nullify them following basic steps in search of generalizable knowledge about people and the space and time within which they are found (Campbell,2018). Social science is also interested in developing and testing theories through observations or experiments of social units in the hope of understanding more deeply the laws governing their interactions, albeit, in a very challenging fashion considering the intricacies of human nature. Just like in natural sciences, the social sciences also experience some forms of revolutions, a paradigm shift, an epistemic re-ordering or grand refutations producing new dominant discourses.
For instance, the “theory of proximity” explaining that all other things being equal, a voter will most likely choose the candidate who is closest to him/her, geographically or politically, had been proven to work in different conditions using voting pattern analysis, qualitative and quantitative at that. Naming a given problem, hypothesizing on why it exists, outlining methodologies to answer some questions, carrying out an investigation and making conclusions and inferences are all part of the science of studying society. What makes it even more scientific is the iterative process that governs social science studies. By repeating social science experiments given the same variables and methodologies but applied in varying contexts or conditions, will more or less bring the same result. The theory of proximity for example had been tested in a neighborhood, in a network, in national elections and yet, the same generalizable knowledge explains that the closer the people are, the more they develop a sense of relationship and liking to each other. This iteration helps us understand people and society in a more scientific way. Replicability and falsifiability, therefore some of the elements that make social science a science.
The scientific study of the social today has become an interdisciplinary field (Jarvie, 2011). It now requires appreciation of other allied disciplines such as philosophy and the natural sciences. Links with other fields of studies provide social science a wider lens in understanding the different social phenomena the continue to shape and reshape the society.
However, the challenges to social scientists are presented in a transcendental trilemma (Jarvie, 2011): 1] that social science is a misnomer, 2] that social science claims to be a science in the attempt to control and change society, and 3] that all sciences are one and the same. It is alleged that social science is incapable of generating generalizable knowledge since its object of inquiry – the people – think, behave and act distinctly and separate of each other. It is often accused as the wrong form of science since it is mostly based on conjectures and not on experiments. Also, social scientists are accused of treating society and its institutions as malleable entities subject to manipulation. This makes social science as not wertfrei (value-free), that it is impelled by its agenda to dominate society. Ultimately, there is no point according to Jarvie (2011) of advancing social science over natural science since all sciences interpenetrate one another and therefore cannot be organized hierarchically.
However, if logical positivists use empirical verifiability and Popper (cited by Jarvie, 2011) asserts falsifiability and refutability while Kuhn (cited by Jarvie, 2011) advances the ability of a discipline to adopt a unifying paradigm, as criteria for establishing that a study is scientific, then, social science is. As Jarvie (2011) puts it:
“Historians used documentary evidence to refute, economists used statistics to refute, sociologists and psychologists used their observations to refute. To argue that there can be no sciences of the social amounts to a social philosophy of sorts, namely unreflective endorsement of the status quo. So the counter to the view that there is and can be no ‘science’ of the social is that there is and has to be if we are to take command of social change rather than simply be its creatures.”
Forging a Dialogue of Sciences
Much efforts are now being undertaken to exact a “dialogue of sciences,” or a “science peace talks,” in the hope of generating a “unified science,” universally acceptable by both the naturalists and the so called “other sciences.” A possible compromise can be explored on the truth claims of various disciplines, given a workable model of communication across different sciences.
Frazer (1995) for instance, interrogates the new terrains being taken by social sciences and it appears that there is a growing acceptance on the value of indeterminacy in the discipline, although by no means undermining empiricism. She argued that:
“On the whole, this literature on the philosophy and methodology of social science emphasizes, on the one hand, empiricism or positivism - the view that data are recordings of objective facts, and that science sets out to explore the correlative and causal relationships between facts, and perhaps the law-like generalizations that govern and explain those facts - and, on the other, the interpretative or phenomenological challenge - which emphasizes the constructed or interpretive nature of 'facts', the constructed, interpretive or interactional nature of social reality, and is therefore skeptical about the objectivity of scientific data, takes it that social reality is not law governed, and emphasizes understanding rather than causal explanation.” (1995:270)
For positivists, objectivity and the cold neutrality of facts are primordial characteristics to establish a reliable scientific knowledge. These facts are proposed in theoretical frames to be tested which according to the empirical epistemology must be corroborated or falsified, otherwise, acceptance of a theory becomes a logical consequence if no countervailing theory is produced. This brings up Karl Popper’s (1972) concept of falsifiability or refutability which Frazer (1995) challenges for failing to consider that some hypotheses which come in aggregates are resistant to refutation.
There are compelling issues on the philosophy of social science that need to be uncovered if we are to forge a critical dialogue of sciences (Frazer, 1995:270-274). One, theorizing is the core of knowledge generation. Positivists generally begin with a theory based on observable generalizations to be tested. Yet, social sciences in many occasions discover knowledge from an inductivist approach, where without pre-determined hypotheses are able to generate categories, concepts and generalizable knowledge. This has found resonance in the emerging approach of a grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin, 1990), albeit, critically challenged by the empiricists.
Another issue covers the abhorrence of positivism to the reliance on unobservable forces. To natural sciences, if a phenomenon is devoid of anything short of observable characteristic, then, it does not belong to science. This may mean to include myths, brain works, faith, etc. However, history would tell that major scientific breakthroughs emanated from the unobservable, yet are considered to be real entities.
Also, empiricist methodology gives premium to the idea that the observable world is a law governed (1995:272), making science as a search for a robust and unchanging law. This highlights another characteristic of science which is universality. A real law is true to all forms of space and time, which is shady in the case of social sciences considering that scholars have different social ontologies as seen in the critics and counter critics between phenomenologists and hermeneuticists on one end and the empiricists and positivists on the other end.
Lasltly, one perennial issue in the philosophy of social science is on explanation. Positivist argue that explanation must simply be establishing the logical relation between hypotheses and the data generated. However, social scientists contend that more than presenting data as a matter of truth and logical validity, it must help in understanding the answers to the question that impelled the scientific undertaking. This has serious implications on philosophical methodology, whether the best approach is simple logic, or metaphysics or epistemology. Frazer (1995:274) however made an observation that most studies now employ methodological eclecticism, or a principle that puts various methodological orientation together to optimize the benefits of both the empiricist and constructivist approaches. She warned though how knowledge can be engendered with this mix and match method, if they indeed can fit together.
Frazer (1995:278) concluded that one persuasive element of the science in social studies is indeterminacy, which simply means that the chances of theories not meeting the evidence head on is high because of the pervasiveness of random events and occurrences which produce errors into measurements that can eventually affect data and outcomes. This is shared by both natural and social sciences. Quoting Bohman (1991), she forwarded three main sources of indeterminacy: meaning and interpretation, rational action and rule-following. Meanings are ever-changing and often disputed, therefore the interpretations made on external knowable data and phenomenon are definitely indeterminate. The same can be said with models or theories. Once subjected to rationalization, they may produce varied outcomes because rationality has its own order of reason and reflexivity. Finally, there are different ways to follow a rule, thereby making it non-determinate.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we can now see that there are two constitutive descriptions of science: it is a certain outcome and it is a certain array of practices. If we see science in it predictive precision capability, then social science falls short of its being a science. But if we see science as a discipline that requires the rigors of observation, experiments, hypothesis testing, measurements and data recording, then social studies can be argued, quite strongly, as a science.
While the possibility of reconciling the different articulations of sciences is not remote in the current polemic, the war of sciences remains a polarizing engagement among their respective supporters, especially in the realm of ontology more than methodology. The tensions and torsions surrounding the sciences will eventually find rest in the continuing dialogue among sciences if scholars set their target on the unifying goal of all sciences – to know the truth. So we must let the science peace talks continue.
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