THE REVIEW OF MAY BRODBECK WORK ON THE PHILSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

                                                ELUSIYAN FRANCIS TOLULOPE

INTRODUCTION

Histories were made, stories were told on how philosophy of science attends to physical sciences as well as their contributions in understanding of mechanics and theories. With reference to Galileo’s research on falling bodies as paradigm, science was said to be descriptive because it is by giving the mathematical formula that the body’s behavior is explained and not in searching out for the purpose.

The question is? What the frame work of social science is? This question have however created a  lot of dispute among philosophers, some are crave to argue for the non-independent of social science; saying rather that it is just a discipline under-psychology or the natural sciences, while other philosophers crave to reject such and argued for the distinctive features of the social sciences. The above introduction therefore is the template to the issues raised in this work we are about to review.

THE EXTRA-ORDINARY SUMMARY

May Brodbeck started by elucidating the frame work of philosophy of social science and speak of its method, analyses, theories and clarification. According to Brodbeck, science is basically descriptive discipline which relies on experimentation, observation, empirical variables. Brodbeck goes further to give an insight about the social sciences and he says that even the contemporary social scientists still argue about the frame of reference.

For Brodbeck, contemporary theory of the social sciences follows four major patterns:

1. There are the self-conscious continuers of the Galilean-Newtonian tradition who insist upon essential identity in method between the social and physical sciences. These thinkers incline to the view that social theory is, in some sense, reducible to psychology which in turn, through physiology, is reducible to physics. Armed with the laws of physics and the state of the universe at any moment, Laplace’s demon extends his purview from the physical world to the fate of all mankind. From mill to the logical positivists, these are the objectivists and reductionists.

2. That there is an existence and uniqueness of scientific character. From the early nineteenth century until our own time, the romantics insist upon the unique character of what later can be called Geisteswissenschaften, the sciences of man. Organist, holist and energentist, this school deplores the laplacean vision as radically mistaken. If not viciously demeaning to the dignity of man and his works. It counters the objectivist’s fervor for the empirical methods of science with an equally ardent belief in the superiority of verstehen. These are the two extreme views. The other two combine, in different proportions, ingredients of these extremes.

3. That the study of society can and must be objective and scientific, that the study of groups, behavior of the society can be understood using the scientific yardstick or paradigm. More profoundly, this view, represented by Marxists and pragmatists, unites or attempts to unite, the empiricist, scientific tradition with anti-analytical holism and historicism. The study of society they claim can and must be objective and scientific. But its laws are held to be unique in kind, unlike those of either psychology or physics.

4. The fourth conception of the social sciences is reductionist in one sense, anti-reductionist in another. The behavior of groups must be explained in terms of the behavior of the behavior of individuals; but the psychology of individuals cannot be reduced to anything else. Although it opposes organism, it too rejects the so- called unity of the sciences, insists like the holists on a unique and perhaps, subjective method in the social sciences.

Brodbeck proceed further by presenting Professor F.A Hayek, an economist, as one of the major proponent of this position. Brodbeck proceed further to show his contention and displeased concerning Hayek’s submission, but prior to that, we would like to present Hayek’s philosophical background for better understanding of this discourse.

Hayek’s Argument: The philosophical Background

In the counter revolution of science, Hayek is concerned to contrast the natural and social sciences, whose relation to their subject matter, he claims, is fundamentally different. In the natural sciences, advances involve recognizing that things are not what they seem. Science dissolves the immediate categories of subjective experience and replaces them with underlying, often hidden, causes. The study of society on the other hand has to take as its raw material the ideas and beliefs of people in society. The facts studied by social science.

“differ from the facts of the physical sciences in being beliefs or opinions held by particular people, beliefs which as such are our data, irrespective of whether they are true or false, and which, moreover, we cannot directly observe in the minds of people but which we can recognize from what they say or do merely because we have ourselves a mind similar to theirs”(Hayek,1955,pg.28)

He argues that there is an irreducible subjective element to the subject matter of the social sciences which was absent in the physical sciences.

“Most of the objects of social or human action are not “objective facts” in the special narrow sense in which the term is used in the sciences and contrasted to “opinions”, and they cannot at all be defined in physical terms. So far as human actions are concerned, things are what the acting people think they are. (Hayek, 1955, pg.27)

His paradigm for the social sciences is that society must be understood in terms of men’s conscious reflected actions, it being assumed that people are constantly, consciously choosing between different possible courses of action. Any collective phenomena must thus be conceived of as the unintended outcome of the decisions of individual conscious actors.

This imposes a fundamental dichotomy between the study of nature and of society, since dealing with natural phenomena it may be reasonable to suppose that the individual scientist can know all the relevant information, while in the social context this condition cannot possibly be met.

Brodbeck proceed further to show his contention and displeased concerning Hayek’s submission: Hayek opines that the social science is systematically subjective and he has three reasons for this belief.

1.      That the subject matter is human opinions and attitudes; what Hayek is saying here is that, the social sciences has to do with only the world as it appears to ,men and what men beliefs they can do in the world as they see it. So for him therefore, only the natural sciences are objective. For Professor Hayek, the objectivism of natural sciences depends on dispensability of human beliefs and attitudes which transposically make the social scientist subjective. Hayek concludes this point by adhering that the social science is rooted in psychology.

2.      Hayek also belief that this subject matter can be adequately known only by a subjective method, namely, introspection. Hayek feels that there is an unbridgeable gap between the natural sciences and social sciences. Hayek argued further for the subjectivism of social sciences by saying that the observance knowledge is private as it is based on the examination of its own mind.

Brodbeck however, is not in support with Hayek’s thought. For Brodbeck, Hayek opines such because he has succumbed to the temptation to make a metaphysical position out of some unexamined common places.

3.      The third reason why Hayek beliefs that the social sciences are irredeemably subjective is that mental categories are indispensable for explanation of social phenomena and this, allegedly implies subjectivism. In other words, this means that the subjectivity of social science is inevitable but Brodbeck raised further issues to the third assumption of Professor Hayek and the issues include/: if it is so that the indispensability of mental category make the social sciences subjective then:

a.       Is a physical explanation of mental processes possible?

b.      If it were possible would we still need mental concepts for an adequate description of social facts?

c.       If we still needed them, with or without physical explanation, does this imply subjectivism?

Professor Hayek denies that a physical explanation is possible, asserts that even if it were we would still need mental categories and therefore, we would still have to appeal to introspection. Professor Hayek’s intricate defense of these views make some valid and important points says Brodbeck, but nevertheless, according to Brodbeck, I do not belief that they imply what he thinks they imply. For Brodbeck, he feels Professor Hayek had contradicted himself with this third point. It is important to note at this point that Brodbeck disagreed with Hayek on his assumptions. We can infer that Brodbeck will agree on the contrary. In fact, it gives us a clue, he says, there is no difference essentially between the social scientist and the physicist. We can further infer that what Brodbeck is saying here is that if the natural science is objectivistic in its own right. Contrary to Hayek that both the social science and natural science has something in common.

May Brodbeck proceed forward to show the implication of Hayek’s assumption. May Brodbeck feels that Hayek has committed the fallacy of reductionism and for Brodbeck the implications are numerous. For Brodbeck the implications is that the social sciences should be nothing more than a science of psychology which make the social science knows it own essence and independent. Brodbeck also feels there is an incomplete definition to the original understanding of subjectivity, which presupposes the fact that, for Brodbeck, professor Hayek was not totally right when he made a social science mutually an exclusive subjective discipline; Brodbeck also feels that the subjectivism of social sciences that Hayek opines, it lead to a form of methodological individualism such that the behavior of groups can be explained in the behavior of individual. For Hayek this, form of methodological individualism or systematic subjectivism is what defines the character or the essence of the social sciences. Brodbeck certainly advocate for the methodological liberty of the social scientist. Of course this is influenced by the jaundice sentiment shield by scholars who feels that only natural science is the paradigm.

EVALUATION

In favour of the autonomy of the social sciences, from the above discourse thus far, we discovered at this very point to argue for the autonomy of the objectivism of the social sciences contrast to what Hayek opines. In other words, we are agreeing with Brodbeck issues against Hayek. The social sciences are a distinctive discipline of its own with its own methodology. It is mistaken to think like Hayek that only the natural sciences are objective. We can then ask, what does objectivity means in this sense? When we have noticed para-digmaticship even in scientific findings and discoveries just like Brodbeck is either we come to agree too that natural sciences are also subjective or that the social sciences are objective.

Hayek therefore is not totally correct on this point. Secondly, if the social sciences are systematically subjective as claimed by Hayek, then it loses the essence of its real flavor. We have come to realize that this is not true. Peter winch( In his work: “the idea of social science and it relation to philosophy” oxford publication,London,1958,pg.327) opines that social science is a science on its own, which means the social sciences cannot be denied of its character and uniqueness. If Professor Hayek thought is logically followed, then it falls to the problem of reductionism as Brodbeck noted, and this will create further problems and issues, even for sciences itself.

Also, we must disintegrate the mind from thinking that whatever is subjective is equally scientific and this might not necessarily be the case and this is where we can even say Brodbeck committed a mistake. In equivocal that is called subjectivism scientism, and this can be called indirect reductionism almost the same mistake of Hayek. Any discipline can be objective in its own way without logically following the modules operandi of the natural sciences.

CONCLUSION

By way of conclusion on the account of this paper, it is crystal clear from our discussion thus far that the issues raised are regarding the nature and object of the social sciences, of course we have seen in the paper reviewed that Hayek argued for the subjectivism of the social sciences which we are very displeased with and we have also come to realize that even Brodbeck committed a mistake and we have also argued for the autonomy of the social science as a discipline on its own. It is apposite to conclude on this note therefore that science is just a paradigm and not the paradigm and so social science is a discipline on its own with its own character, uniqueness, objectivity, therefore the social science can in a way be regarded as an objective discipline without following the modalities of the natural sciences. 

NB: The paper reviewed “The Philosophy of Social Science by May Brodbeck” vol.21, no.2 (apr, 1954), pg.140-156 and it was published by the university of Chicago press on behalf of the philosophy of science association.