The Search for Sociological TruthEver since the so-called father of sociology, Auguste Comte, coined the term sociology in 1824 (Horkheimer & Adorno 1973:12), the field has been biased

Sociologisk Arbejdspapir

Nr. 1, 1999

Michael Hviid Jacobsen

The Search for Sociological Truth

- A History of the Rise and Fall of the Reign

of Positivism in the Social Sciences

Aalborg Universitet Kroghstræde 5, 9220 Aalborg Ø

Tlf. 96 35 81 50, fax 98 11 50 56, e-mail: [email protected]

L aboratoriumSociologisk

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The Search for Sociological Truth - A History of the Rise and Fall of the Reign of Positivism in the Social Sciences

Copyright © 1999 Forfatteren og Sociologisk Laboratorium. ISSN: 1399-4514 ISBN: 87-90867-00-9 Sociologiske Arbejdspapirer udgives af Sociologisk Laboratorium, som betegner det faglige milj omkring sociologiuddannelsen p AAU. Her udgives mindre arbejder fx seminaroplg, konferencebidrag, udkast til artikler eller kapitler - af medlemmer af miljet eller af inviterede bidragydere udefra, mhp. formidling og videre befordring af den lbende fagligt-sociologiske aktivitet. Redaktrer af serien er professor Jens Tonboe (ansv.) og Ph.D- stipendiat Michael Hviid Jacobsen. Eksemplarer kan bestilles hos Aalborg Centerboghandel, Fibigerstrde 15,

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9220 Aalborg st, tlf. 96358071, fax 98152862, e-mail: [email protected].

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- A History of the Rise and Fall of the Reign

of Positivism in the Social Sciences

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List of content: 1. A short introduction to the reign of Positivism in the history of sociology ..................... 5 2. Positivism as a sociological school of thought, a discourse, an SRP or a paradigm ........ 8 3. Positivism and its doctrines ............................................................................................ 15 4. Ritualistic truths in sociology derived from the reign of Positivism .............................. 24 5. The search for a scientific sociological truth .................................................................. 26 6. Peter McHugh’s antagonism towards Positivism ........................................................... 38 7. Percy S. Cohen’s defense of Positivism: Bringing Positivism back to life .................... 41 8. Jonathan H. Turner and the revival of a Comtean Positivism ........................................ 43 9. Christopher G. A. Bryant and a reconsideration of Positivism ...................................... 46 10. Excursion: The death of Positivism or Positivism hiberanting? .................................... 47 11. A proposed middleground: Kantian philosophy and Weberian sociology ..................... 49 12. Conclusions: Sociological truth revisited ....................................................................... 55

“A truth that reigns without checks and balances is a tyrant who must be overthrown and any falsehood that

can aid us in the overthrow of this tyrant is to be welcomed”. - Paul K. Feuerabend

“Science...is the domination through truth”. - Stefan Nowak

“We are living in a time when the simplest truths have no course but to come

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back to us naked and wearing a mask of old wisdom”.

- Jean Paulhan

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The Search for Sociological Truth†0 - A History of the Rise and Fall of the Reign of Positivism in the Social Sciences 1. A short introduction to the reign of Positivism in the history of sociology: “In the Beginning was Nothingness...” is the biblical account of the pre-Genesis and the creation of the universe. In the case of sociology, which is the topic of this essay, the Genesis could be paraphrased as: “In the Beginning was Positivism...”. Ever since the so-called father of sociology, Auguste Comte, coined the term sociology in 1824 (Horkheimer & Adorno 1973:12), the field has been biased towards and in favour of the doctrine of Positivism or what Comte himself described as a Science Positive and equally often termed social physics. It is therefore an indisputable fact that Positivism has been in a coign of vantage compared to other epistemological traditions within the field, and it will not be an overstatement if one claims that Positivism has been in a hegemonic position in sociology throughout the last more than 170 years although “attempts to establish any sort of Positivist hegemony in sociology have always faced numerous challenges that alternative understandings of the social world are more appropriate to the human nature of its subject matter” (Halfpenny 1982:120). At the same time it is evident that this hegemony has not been unchallenged which this paper sets out to illustrate. Questions such as: Why is the “spell” of Positivism presumably broken and which tendencies in

0‛†I would like to take this opportunity to thank B.Sc. Angela Swales (University of Sunderland) for taking the time and effort reading, discussing, constructively critisizing and contributing with valuable comments on the points of view forwarded in this essay at the interim stages of its completion. Furthermore I would like to express my appreciation to Professor Charles Ragin (University of Chicago) for accessing and evaluating the perspectives offered here during the Oslo Summer School for Comparative Social Science in 1998. For the record it must be noted that this essay is a further development of the ideas presented in another essay titled The Sociological Problem of Definition - A Critique and Deconstruction of Positivist Sociology. University of Aalborg, 1995, copies of which can be

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sociological theory brought about the supposed fall of Postivism?; What are the pitfalls and insufficiencies of Positivism and how can they be overcome conceptually, theoretically and empirically?; and finally: Can Positivism, as a doctrine of philosophy of science within sociology, anticipate an ‘Indian Summer’ within the field ? are essential to an adequate understanding and explanation of sociology’s position today - both internally within the scientific field as well externally in the general social space. One claim is, metaphorically speaking, that Positivism, as an epistemology of truth and knowledge, has performed as a scarecrow in the somewhat impoverished and dessicanted theoretical field of sociology and, hence, that the knowledge produced about i.e. human behaviour/action has had limited scope and dubious value. Another viewpoint, at the other end of the continuum is, that Positivism was (and still is) the scientific pioneer bringing about an Entzauberung of sociology, and that sociology without Positivism would be in a primordial position and an utterly conjectural affair. It can be postulated, that bringing Positivism back to life, is the trend in some parts of current sociology (Cohen 1980 and Turner 1985) whereas in the 1960’s and 1970’s the aim of the so-called creative, interpretative, constructionist or alternative sociologies was to bring an end to the Positivist order. The question of vital importance to raise is whether or not Positivism is the best applier of sociological truths ? But initially, as an appetizer for the subsequent discussion, it must be investigated exactly what Positivism is and not until then can the nature of sociological truths be applied to the question. Thereafter different relatively recent views on Positivism within sociology must be presented, as will be done throughout parts 6, 7, 8 and 9 first of all to answer the question of the status of sociological truth claims related to Positivism, and, secondly to evaluate Positivism’s influence today. Initially it is important to gain a slight insight into the two main concepts in this essay: ‘Positivism’ and ‘truth’. An inchoate approximation as to what Positivism really is could be answered quite compressed as: “...sociological Positivism...in essence...reflects the attempt to apply models and methods derived from the natural sciences to the study of human affairs. It treats the social world as if it was the natural world, adopting a “realist” approach to ontology. This is backed up by a “positivist” epistemology, relatively “deterministic” views of human nature and the use of “nonothetic” methodologies” (Burrell & Morgan 1979:7).

distained through the author.

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Though this is not suffient to gain a full understanding of Positivism it nevertheless compressedly outlines many of the features of Positivism. The matter will be treated more profoundly below in part 3. The other concept, sociological truth, cannot either be satisfactorily developed in one single line. It will suffice, for the moment, to question whether truth necessarily always is coherent and systematic (Guenon 1972:16) and ask if truth is not, on the contrary, relative and that truth is not always scientifically graspable (Cohen et al. 1976: 79). These claims will also be evaluated further below in part 4. One of the interesting features of sociological truths is nevertheless whether or not they can be said to be scientific at all and what makes them either scientific or non-scientific. This raises yet another question as to what is science and the criterias for scientificality ? An answer will be sought and estimated throughout this essay and particularly in the fourth part. The question: ‘Is Positivism dead ?’ will probably seem trivial and rhetorical at first sight to many social scientists today. They will claim that Positivism suffered its first major defeat in the so-called Methodenstreit1 in the 1890’s Germany between Positivists and Subjectivists (Ritzer 1992:113) exemplified with the dispute between Gustav Schmoller and Carl Menger, and that Positivism was totally annihilated during the massive Positivismusstreit2 -

Positivist Dispute - in German sociology throughout the 1960’s. Basically it is not a question of who lost or who won the

battle. Yet, it is evident, which this essay will illustrate, that Positivism is still alive and kicking in the empirical,

methodological and theoretical debates in sociology. This is verified by relatively recent controversies about Positivism

(Fjellström 1969, McHugh 1970, Giddens 1974 and 1978, Bryant 1975a, Cohen 1980, Roth 1984, Turner 1985, Collins

1986, Turner 1987, Alexander 1991, Cole 1994a, Cole 1994b etc.).

This essay will provide the reader with an insight into this renewed controversy. The standpoint in the controversy,

which has gained most widespread acknowledgement, is that Positivism is demised or collapsed and has had a symbolic

burial (Halfpenny 1982:12, Stauch 1992:338 and McHugh 1970 passim). It is nevertheless pointed out, that “only when

different understandings of positivism have been systematically elucidated and evaluated can other controversies be joined,

such as whether and in what sense positivism is dead or alive...” (Halfpenny 1982:12). Others offer a much more clear cut

account of the state of Positivism: “It is unadvisable to proclaim a doctrine dead: that it is treated, by some, as though it

1 Some claim that “at first sight the Methodenstreit seems to be passé, a local phenomena in the past” in sociology, but that it is still influencial particularly in economics (Meissner & Wold 1974:140). 2 This dispute was mainly a German controversy but it had widespread consequences throughout the entire spectre of sociological theories. Main characters in the dispute were on the side of Positivism Albert and Popper: the latter later partly changed his allegiance. Against Positivism were Habermas, Adorno and Horkheimer and their critical social theory (Adorno et al. 1972 passim).

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were dead tells us, perhaps, that it is unfashionable: but a doctrine that is unfashionable today is, among sociologists,

almost guarenteed to be fashionable tomorrow” (Cohen 1980:141).

And yet even others claim directly, that Positivism is the only prolific direction for sociology to be heading (Turner

1985 passim) while some of these (Turner 1987 and Pawson 1989) shows reminiscents of Positivist ideals in their writings.

Cohen’s statement above is not empirically substantiated, but examples of his thesis on theoretical cycles or paradigm shifts

in sociological fashion could be for an instance phenomenology which regained recognition throughout the 1960’s and

1970’s disguised and transformed into Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology or the renewed sociological interest in systems

theory, which was quite popular in sociology in the 1940’s and 1950’s, as recently revived by amongst others Niklas

Luhmann in sociological theory. So if a sociological tradition is declared dead, it is claimed, it is almost certain to be

ressurrected at some other point in time. This is somewhat the issue that the next part of this essay, part 2, will deal with in

relation to schools, Zeitgeists, paradigms and discourses in sociology.

So fundamentally we are confronted with a Janus-faced polemic and seemingly irreconciable viewpoints on the relationship

between Positivism and sociology. A classic remark on science in general, which could be easily transferred particularly to

sociology and Positivism, is Alfred North Whitehead’s comment that “[a] science which hesitates to forget its founders is

lost” (Whitehead in Raison 1969:9). If one takes this viewpoint, then it would mean that, to avoid a kind of self-destruction

in the end, sociology should abandon Positivism. The same view, though more moderately and less bombastically stated,

was forwarded by Stinchcombe (1982). Alvin Gouldner replied, though disagreelingly, to Whitehead: “But to forget

something, one must have known it in the first place. A science ignorant of its founders does not know how far it has

travelled nor in what direction: it too, is lost” (Gouldner in Raison 1969:9).

Thus, the dilemma of the historical relevance and weight of the classics in sociology, particularly Positivism, is

ubiquitous in this dispute. There can be offered no position betwixt and between Positivism and anti-Positivism or can there

? This is the enigma that sparks off this essay, which will seek to investigate the matter into some detail so as to be enabled

to answer the questions posed above.

2. Positivism as a sociological school of thought, a discourse, an SRP or a paradigm:

Ever since the publication of Thomas S. Kuhn’s already classic work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, and

reprinted numerous times since then,3 sociology has been haunted by several attempts to analyse the structure of scientific

progress, innovation, growth and development within the field. It seems quite absurd considering the fact that the aim of

Kuhn’s work was exactly not the so-called ‘soft’ sciences, to which sociology belongs, but that Kuhn aimed solely at the

natural, exact and ‘hard’ sciences. Kuhn’s work, though, was instigated by the enigma of the emulations in the social

sciences, which did not seem to occur to the same extent in the natural sciences. Kuhn says that what sparked off his interest

in paradigms was that he was particularly “struck by the numbers and extent of overt disagreements between social scientists

about the nature of legitimate scientific problems, and methods...the practice of astronomy, physics, chemistry, or biology

3 Actually Kuhn was not the first one to mention scientific revolutions or paradigms for that matter, although he recieved the credit for it. To the best of my knowledge it was Nicholas S.Timasheff (1950) who was the first to touch into some detail upon the subject of paradigms and the scientific revolutions and their nature.

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normally fails to evoke the controversies over fundamentals that today often seem endemic among, say, psychologists or

sociologists” (Kuhn 1970:viii). My claim is that Kuhn’s theory of scientific progress was interesting to sociology in the

1960’s and 1970’s exactly because the theory assisted sociology in its urge for the recognition of being scientific, although

Kuhn’s theory initially was only oriented towards the natural sciences.

My thesis is substantiated by Mokrzycki (1983): “sociology, together with related disciplines, such as psychology

and political science, is in an exceptional position: it is a discipline in which the very status of being scientific is at stake”

(Op.cit.:4). Especially in the fields, in which Kuhn had no intention to direct his theory, such as history, political science,

anthropology, art, theology and sociology, did it have an immense impact (Eckberg & Hill 1979:925 and Peterson 1981).

Why is this? Due to the fact that exactly these disciplines could not live up to the high, and perhaps even

unattainable, standards provided by the natural sciences as to what science and scientificality really is. Positivism in the first

place and in many respects, as will be illustrated in parts 3, 4 and 5, was the saviour which provided sociology, not just with

a scientific base, but also with the paradigm which it had previously lacked. Positivism believes in science as an

evolutionary enterprise. This is directly at stake with Kuhn,4 who instead spoke of scientific revolutions and according to

Kuhn there is no reason to assume that the paradigms following each other would necessarily reach higher states of what

might be termed ‘scientificality’. These revolutions followed a universally applicable pattern: Normal science (paradigm I)

puzzle-solving anomalies crisis new hypothesis new theory revolution new normal science (paradigm

II) more puzzle-solving and so forth ad infinitum. The further this chain develops - as Positivists cliam we have witnessed

ever since the Enlightenment era in the sciences - we also move further away from atavistic and pre-paradigmatic sciences to

mature or paradigmatic sciences5, so in a way Kuhn also works within an evolutionary framework to some extent.6

Elsewhere it is claimed that the so-called ‘soft’ sciences are by virtue of their nature non-paradigmatic whereas the

“hard” sciences are paradigmatic (Peterson 1981:8). As the Danish social scientist, Sren Kjrup, states: “All of the social

sciences and the humanities have and have constantly had a pre-paradigmatic situation - if we are to use Kuhn almost in

the literal sense of the word. But at the same time one can in many periods and for many social sciences or humanities point

to a wide range of challenging, but separately quite distinct ‘schools’ and each such ‘school’ could with a reasonable

extention of Kuhn be regarded as a paradigm” (Kjrup 1985:145)[my translation]. Is this view true ?

The paradigm concept is widely used and misused and its meaning is constantly blurred by the multitude of different

and equivocally striving usages. One can even go as far as saying that there has been a vulgarisation of the term juxaposing

paradigm with everything from Weltanschauung, school of knowledge, discourse, field, trend, fashion, tradition or scientific

4 Some critics (Urry 1973) saw the introduction of the Kuhnian concept of a paradigm as a Positivist relic. This view, though, was discarded by amongst others Bryant (1975b:354), who pointed to the anti-Positivist traits of the paradigm term. 5 The differences between the humanities and the natural sciences were also recognised by Charles Snow (1993) in his depiction of two entirely heterogeneous cultures or by Isiah Berlin (1974). 6 Also Arthur Stinchcombe (1982:2) participated in the paradigm-debate saying that “[a] paradigm is a case of a beautiful and possible way of doing one’s scientific work”. Relating paradigms to the reading of the classics, the sociological curriculum and canons he developed six links between these and the construction of a paradigm.

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research program. A clarification is desparately needed.

A paradigm, as used by Thomas Kuhn, has been described above and its role in the quest for knowledge depicted. A

paradigm is not a term relative in application,7 but is an exact term consisting of “some accepted examples of actual

scientific practice - examples which include law, application, and instrumentation together - provide models from which

spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research” (Kuhn in Bandyopadhyay 1971:7). Exactly the pinpointing of

laws and models gives the paradigm concept a natural scientific twist. Positivism, as will be shown, also takes a dearly held

interest in naturalist terminology. If we accept the paradigm concept within social scientific frameworks, which has been

done on a regular basis (Eckberg & Hill 1979, Effrat 1972, Friedrichs 1970, Ritzer 1975, Ritzer 1992 and Walsh 1972a), we

must be able to find particular existing or pre-existing paradigms within the field. This in particular has caused sociologists

much distress (Eckberg & Hill 1979:930). But all attempts have, in one way or the other, been prepared to point to some

variant of a Positivist paradigm or a position closely related herewith. The attempts are as follows, without being an

exhaustive account:

¬ Positivistic paradigm (Walsh 1972b).

7 Margaret Masterman (1970:61-65), though, shows that even Kuhn was rather inconsistent in his paradigm definition using up to 21 different characterisations of a paradigm. She divides his 21 paradigms into three main typologies: 1) Metaphysical or metaparadigms, 2) Sociological paradigms, and, 3) Artefact of construct paradigms.

∧ Nomological paradigm (Sherman 1972).

∨ Hypothetical-statistical paradigm (Douglas 1972). ⇔ Priestly paradigm (Friedrichs 1970). ⇐ Social facts/social behaviourist paradigm (Ritzer 1975 and 1992). ⇑ Functionalist paradigm (Burrell & Morgan 1979). ⇒ Consensus paradigm (Lehamn & Young 1974). ⇓ Closed-system model paradigm (Eisenstadt & Curelaru 1976).

All these definitions of paradigms, which will become evident in parts 3, 4 and 5, show adherence to Positivism and its

doctrines and furthermore its conception of truth. However, it is a general view that sociology, in sharp opposition to natural

science, is a multiple paradigm science (Ritzer 1975) and that in sociology many paradigms are able to coexist. One

paradigm may be in a temporary hegemonic position but others also provide knowledge which might even be in direct

confrontation to the predominant view. Therefore, the paradigm concept is not the most useful tool in the description of the

state of affairs in the sociology of scientific knowledge.

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Though, Kuhn’s concept of paradigm-incommensurability may prodide the key to a revival of the paradigm concept

(Shapere 1971:708 and Hacking 1983:3), which has experienced a virtual famine in usage so to speak since the mid 1970’s

as the list above also suggests.8 On a macro level of paradigm discussion Ritzer (1992:661) moreover shows the diffusion

within metatheory to identify paradigms properly in the realm of social science. One main approach seems to identify the

functions of a paradigm as that of a separation to differentiate one scientific community or one academic discipline from

others. Another more minimalistic approach uses paradigms in a differentiation amongst cognitive groups within the same

scientific field. Inconsistency in usage is the reason for the flaws in paradigm discussions so far in the social sciences.

On a more micro-oriented paradigm level Keat and Urry has clearly stated how a leap from one paradigm to another

takes place for the actual persons involved (and it is important to keep in mind that paradigms are not impersonal structures

but consists of real human beings with real opinions and ideas): “For individual scientists, the change of allegiance from

one paradigm to another is often a ‘conversion experience’, akin to gestalt-swictches or changes of religious faith” (Burrell

& Morgan 1979:25). As will be shown below the analogy of scientific groupings to religious communities is not entirely

fruitless.

Kjrup (1985), above, equated (with a ‘reasonable extention of Kuhn’) a paradigm with a school of thought. Harvey

(1982:85) is sceptical in this juxaposition, claiming that ‘school’ and ‘paradigm’ are two essentially different concepts, the

former relating to any field whereas the latter concept is confined solely to the ‘hard’ sciences. When a paradigm - via

anomalies leading to internal crisis and finally revolutionary scientific practice - is overthrown, a school, on the contrary,

tends to have another nature and behaving in quite a different manner to academic opposition: “Arising in opposition to the

status quo, a new school both introduces innovations into the accepted idea system of a discipline or specialty and

challenges the authority structure of its field” (Amsterdamska 1985:332).Whenever the existence of a paradigm presupposes

consensus and ‘normal science’, a school, on the other hand, can function perfectly well in an environment of antagonism. A

school does not necessitate an overthrow of the existing scholarly elite (Ibid.:332), and hence the term ‘school’ is much

more broad, flexible and useful in the social sciences.

Harvey (1987:245) refers to a ‘school’ when we are talking about a grouping of academics or researchers who either

may or may not constitute an identifiable administrative unit. Understood this way a ‘school’ bears close resemblances to the

type of paradigms Masterman (1970:65) referred to as metaphysical paradigms. One of the most exhaustive elaborations and

accounts of the school-concept is developed by Edward Tiryakian (1979). To him, then, a scientific school “consists of a

small group of practitioners in close contact who consciously and explicitly establish an alternative approach to a subject

discipline...a school is similar in its formative stage to a religious sect” (Harvey 1987:250). So here a school is a kind of

pre-paradigmatic unit, actually in open conflict with mainstream thought and eventually it loses its own distinctiveness and

is either incorporated into the mainstream ideas or develops its own relative hegemony.9 So where a paradigm seemingly

8 Furthermore Kuhn is extremely useful in stating that “there are no timeless, context-free ‘truths of nature’ which the laws of science might capture” (Kuhn in Roth 1984:237), which is the opposite view of that of particularly Positivism. 9 Tiryakian, in another piece of work, concludes that schools normally evolve around a charismatic leader (Tiryakian 1986:418) which puts him in opposition to Kuhn for whom it was the basic belief system and not personal attributes which was the foundation for

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was a too narrow term, a school concept on the other hand seems too broad and uncharacteristically non-descriptive lacking

at least the internal dynamic inherent to a paradigm.

Another widely used concept for the description of academics with similar viewpoints is Imre Lakatos’ scientific

research programs (SRP). This term, in my view, is extremely fitting when it comes to a conceptualisation of the Positivist

community in sociology: “Structurally, we may say that an SRP is a set or series of theories interrelated in a conceptual

framework” consisting “of a hard core of ontological assumptions...as well as a methodological set of prescriptions and

proscriptions” (Tiryakian 1986:418). Instead of one SRP being annihilated by another, as happens with paradigms and to

some extent schools, Lakatos speaks of a progressive problemshift which is actually the case for Positivism when we review

the doctrine and its history in parts 3, 4 and 5.

The last metascientific constructs to pay attention to are the so-called discourses initially articulated by Michel

Foucault.10 His theory of discourses evolves around five characteristics:

academic group cohesion. Harvey (1987:241) also states that a school’s members hardly ever are aware that they constitute a school or scientific community. Schools often consists of invisible collegues or are mere networks of scholars. 10 My short review of Foucault’s discourses is based on Barry Smart’s (1985) brilliant biography Michel Foucault. Chichester: Ellis Norwood.

¬ A common object of analysis. ∧ A common mode of statement and internal coherence. ∨ A system of permanent and coherent concepts. ⇔ A persistent theoretical theme. ⇐ Discourses aim at explanation.

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In his genealogy and archaeology of knowledge and discourses he furthermore states that discourses relate to history which

in turn is connected to power and language. The lack of utility in the discourse concept in relation to the situation of

Positivism becomes evident when part 3 is completed. Suffice to say for the moment is that numbers 1-4 in Foucault’s

definition of discourses above are in direct contrast to the developmental features of Positivism. If, though, a discourse is not

taken in the strict Foucauldian sense but on a more general level we can conclude that most “social scientific discourses are

aimed at truth, and they are constantly subjected to rational stipulations about how truth can be arrived at and what truth

might be” (Alexander 1993:559).11 In this respect discourses relate to matters of ontology, epistemology and methodology

in one and the same time - exactly like Positivism.

In sum, it is extremely difficult to put an epithet on Positivism as either a paradigm, school, discourse or scientific

research program. A term not discussed thoroughly here is that of ‘tradition’, or ‘convention’ for that matter, due to its lose,

broad and historically bound up implications. I would personally view Positivism as a scientific research program with all

that follows from this. Perhaps Positivism is, more accurately, a kind of M̊ which Ritzer (1992:657) referred to as

“metatheorizing as a source of perspectives that overarch sociological theory”. No doubt that Positivism is no longer the

preferred scientific research program (a shift instigated, in my view, during the switch from the Durkheimian based Harvard

hegemony to the symbolic interactionist based Chicago hegemony in the mid 1920’s).12 The Positivism came back in the

1950’s in the form of structural functionalism, behaviourism and systems theory only to disappear in the muddy waters of

the 1960’s and 1970’s subjectivist waves of sociological constructionist theories - which also have characterized the late

1990’s. The 1980’s, though, has shown a renewed burgeoning of interest in Positivism (Cohen 1980, Roth 1984, Turner

1985 and Turner 1987).

Sociology does not adhere to paradigmatic patterns that might seem valid in natural scientific practice but on the

other hand is not either characterised by discourses or distinctive schools as for example in the field of history or critical

literature. I would support the claim that sociology is dominated by a wide variety of scientific (and the word scientific is

ultimately very important) research programs existing alongside each other, mutually supportive or conflicting, fading out

only to be revived on a later stage. Sociology is like a multi-coloured patchwork with one particular colour or fabric being in

fashion and demand only to experience a fading of its flambouyance later. Positivism is only one of these patches and I will

now elaborate more profoundly on the nature of Positivism and its relation to sociological and scientific truth.

11 It was actually Hegel who, in his elaborations on the foundations of truth, said that only the rational is real and hence only the real is rational (Bauman 1992) - a remark proving to be instrumental in separating science from non-science from the Enlightenment project onwards. 12 Tiryakian (1979:224-229) sums up the domination of hegemonic schools in sociology as a triology: Durkheimian School Chicago School Parsonian School. I would apply to this the 1960’s and 1970’s where we witnessed a strange mixture and co-existence of neo-marxism, structuralism and interpretative sociologies (phenomenology and ethnomethodology) followed by post-modernisms, critical theory and post-structuralisms in the 1980’s. What about today then ? Difficult to say, but my bid for the near future in sociological theory is the experience of a ressurrection for realism in the years to come (and perhaps even a renaissance for Positivism as well) accompanied by a continuing interest, of

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3. Positivism and its doctrines:

So, now that the form of Positivism (as a scientific research program in sociology) has been investigated, the more exact

content of the doctrine needs specification. Much, unneeded, complexity has been added to the mere term ‘Positivism’ and

even more to the definition and substance of Positivism throughout the history of sociological analysis. To try and sum up

what Positivism is, is an almost impossible task, just as it proved difficult to give a coherent definition of the concept of a

paradigm above. It is an inherent feature of the social sciences, that the main concepts are avoiding a consistent definition,

which, amongst others, was recognised by Anthony Giddens: “The word “positivist” like the word “bourgeois” has become

more of a derogatory epithet than a useful descriptive concept” (Giddens 1974:1). William Outhwaite went on to call

‘Positivism’ “notoriously ambigious” (Outhwaite 1987:161) and Ben Agger (1987:122) went as far as characterising the

usage of Positivism as “obfuscating”.

Compared to the hard sciences, towards which Positivism strives to gain a kind of resemblance on behalf on the

social sciences, sociology in particular and social science in general lack universal acceptance of the meaning of concepts.

Take, for example, concepts such as class, deviance, action, interpretation, meaning, paradigm, culture, structure and

Positivism. It has been said about economics, that if one hundred economists got together one would get one hundred

different theories and viewpoints. The same accusation applies to the field of sociology, which is characterised by a relativity

of usages of concepts. It is true that sociology uses categorisations, but these are often very blurred, whereas the hard

sciences have definite categorisations for e.g. molecules, species, chemical elements and so forth.

So to conclude, the interpretations of Positivism are as many as social scientists involved in the debate. From Comte’s own

coinage of Positivism as a Science Positive13 and Saint Simon’s (who was the first to coin the phrase Positivism)(Lübcke

1994:350) social physiology or social physics (Swingewood 1991:37), via Charles Wright Mills’ somewhat obscure

denotion of an abstracted empiricism as a neologism of Positivism particularly aimed at Paul Lazarsfeld (Mills 1959:50-75)

in his Sociological Imagination (1959), to the three different understandings of Positivism offered in parts 5-7 in this essay.

As commented by Peter Halfpenny on the complexity of the term: “There are differences that depend upon whether the term

is used to label oneself or one’s enemies, for the positivism of positivists differs from the positivism of anti-positivists. There

are differences among anti-positivists, who use the term loosely and indiscriminately to describe all sorts of disfavoured

forms of inquiry. And there are differences even among positivists themselves, for they have continually developed and

changed the central ideas out of which they have fashioned various forms of positivism at different historical times”

(Halfpenny 1982:11). It is my aim below to present a definition and clarification of Positivism, which may seem rather

broad, but nevertheless sums up most of, and the main components in, the sociological tradition’s interpretations.

The most widely quoted definition of Positivism is derived from Leszek Kolakowski’s by now classic work Positivist

Philosophy (1972), and although it relates primarily to philosophy, it can be a useful tool to the field of sociology as a

guideline to Positivism. Kolakowski enumerates four main features of Positivism: the rule of phenomenalism, the rule of

nominalism, the unity of science thesis and finally the reducibility of normative statements (Kolakowski 1972:11-19). The

quartet of theses all perform as cornerstones in the so-called Vienna Circle (logical Positivism/logical empiricism), which

course, in post-modern social theory. 13 Hacking (1983:42) notes that Auguste Comte used the word positive in Positivism for no other obvious reason than its happy connotations.

17

dominated sociology and particularly the philosophy of science in the first half of this century (Cohen 1980:141).14

Though these points are not nearly enough to gain a profound explanation of Positivism, its theoretical source and its

implications for the understanding of sociological truth. Halfpenny (1982:114-115) has neatly summed up the aspects of the

twelve Positivisms he detects within sociology. I have personally added a few more vital points, to underscore the variety of

the character of Positivism.

Positivism no.: Source: Definition:

Positivism (1) Comte A theory of progressive history leading to growh in knowledge and social stability.

Positivism (2) Comte A methodology claiming that the only sound scientific knowledge is grounded in observation

(empiricism). This was later extended to include analytical truths as in logic and

mathematics (operationalism and pragmatism).

Positivism (3) Comte A unity of science thesis according to which all sciences can be integrated into a single

hierarchial natural system, in which sociology has the highest degree of synthetical

complexity (naturalism).15

Positivism (4) Comte A secular religion of humanity to the worship of society.

Positivism (5) Spencer A historical theory in which the motor of progress is competetion between increasingly differentiated

individuals (social evolutionism and social Darwinism).

Positivism (6) Durkheim A natural science of sociology consists of the collection and statistical analysis of quantitative data about

society (quantificationism).

Positivism (7) Logical Pos. A theory of meaning according to which the use of phenomenalism and logicism leads to the

understanding of a proposition through the principle of verification (hypothetico--

deductivism).

Positivism (8) Logical Pos. A programme for the unification of the sciences based on the principles and standards of

scientificality derived

from the natural sciences

(Einheitswissenschaftlichkeit)(unity of science).

Positivism (9) Hempel A theory saying that science consists of a corpus of interrelated, true, simple, precise and wide-ranging

universal laws which lead to prediction and explanation.

Positivism (10) Hume A theory of science in which sciencific phenomena are explained and predicted through causal

laws (causality).

Positivism (11) Bacon A theory of scientific method according to which science progresses by inducing laws from

observational and experimental evidence (inductivism).

Positivism (12) Popper A theory of scientific method in which science progresses by conjecturing hypotheses and

14 Apart from the Vienna based logical Positivists a stronghold for Positivist thought was also to be found in Poland in the Lvov-Warszawa School whose impact on the debate surrounding the philosophy of the social sciences was nevertheless rather meagre. 15 Also Durkheim is a self-designated naturalist or modified Positivist: “Durkheim himself describes his position as that of a scientific rationalist; he wishes to extend to the study of human behaviour the methods and procedures of natural science” (Keat & Urry 1975:81). This is basically, however simplistic it might sound, what naturalism is all about on a

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attempting to refute them (falsificationism).

Positivism (13) Skinner A behaviourist theory according to which all human and non-human action can be reduced to shere

behaviour (behaviourism), and that all action basically can be said to stem from

stimuli resluting in physical responses.

Positivism (14) Lundberg A theory according to which science via mental hygiene purifies itself of metaphysical and hence

nonsensical knowledge (neo-Positivism).

Positivism (15) Durkheim An epistemology exclaiming that all social facts should be regarded as if they were things (physicalism).

Positivism (16) Turner The metatheoretical standpoint that Positivism, with its emphasis on formal propositions and

analytical models, is the only safe and prolific way for sociology to fare (analytical

Positivism).

Positivism (17) Logical Pos. A theory emphasising that scientific inquiry must be kept strictly apart from normative

statements (objectivity and value neutrality), and moreover that science cannot

provide politics with the goals but merely pointing to the most appropriate means

for attaining a ceratin goal.

Positivism (18) All Pos. An employment of a metonymic form of encodement in which the whole is known through its parts, or

even reduced to its parts (methodological individualism).16

There are, in this model of Positivism, some discrepancies which ought to be highlighted although the majority are self-

explanatory and self-evident. The most severe one, that has had a deep influence on sociological truth and philosophy of

science, is the immanent incompatibility between Positivism (7) and Positivism (12). Either you support falsificationism, as

did for instance Karl Popper (and to some extent Mary Hesse, Paul Feuerabend and Thomas Kuhn),17 or you support

hypothetico-deductivism, as did members of the Vienna Circle. These two standpoints are elementarily and mutually

exclusive, although both lead to an accumulation of knowledge through the following of quite different paths. No matter if

you support verification or refutation, sociology will never be able to show the same degree of accumulation of knowledge

as does for instance the natural sciences (Cole 1994a, 1994b and Gans 1992), and this basically comes down to sociology’s

‘pre-paradigmatic’ situation.

Another relatively important aspect of Positivism is the scientific optimism that lies behind it and hence its

unreserved support of the project of modernity. Moreover, as mentioned above, Positivism rests on the assumption that

scientific knowledge is cumulative. Lundberg, who is a so-called naturalist, observed: “...creating a new theory is not like

destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider

views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich environment”(Lundberg 1963:50). So

descriptive level. 16 Durkheim and Comte though, with their origin in the French social theory tradition, would not adhere to this point due to their support of methodological holism/collectivism. 17 Kuhn, though, said that “it is better to understand the history of science/knowledge gathering in terms of increasing distance from falsity rather than closeness to truth” (Kuhn 1970). This statement is difficult to deciphre but Kuhn allegedly meant to debunk Popper’s falsification principle (Abercrombie et al.:1984:95) although it could equally well be interpreted in the diametrically opposite way. Popper and Kuhn also disagreed on whether a scientific community is a hermetically closed or open society (Masterman 1970:61).

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Positivism is not a revolutionary scientific experience but rather demonstrates what has been called “incremental

architechturalism” (Brown 1990:66), in which each study or article being another building block for an ever-extending

disciplinary structure. Relating this to the paradigm discussion of part 3, Positivism shows an ubiquitous adherence to

normal science construction and evolutionary cumulative knowledge, which in Kuhn’s view was quite a normal stage in the

development of particularly the natural sciences but generally every science - although, as mentioned above, Kuhn himself

did not attach any normative accessment to the historical developments within scientific paradigms.

It cannot be emphasised strongly enough, that Positivisms (3), (8) and (15) have had an immense impact on the way

truth has been perceived within sociology throughout an enduring span of years. This means that especially the physicalistic,

behaviouristic and naturalistic features of Positivism have been dominant and that they have dictated how sociological truths

are to be conceived. The physicalistic understanding, which is almost equivalent to the naturalistic one, means that “...every

sociological assertion which is meaningful, that is to say, in principle verifiable, has as its subject-matter nothing else than

states, processes and behaviour of groups or individuals (human or animal), and their responses to one another and their

environment and consequently that every sociological statement is a physicalistic statement” (Hempel in Mokrzycki

1983:55). The verifiability principle is the mark of distinction of most Positivisms but received its most prominent position

in the works of the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists: “The Vienna Circle or Wiener Kreis was a band of cutthroats that

went after the fat burghers of Continental metaphysics who had become intolerably inbred and pompously verbose. The

‘kris’ is a Malaysian knife, and the Wiener Kreis employed a kind of Occam’s Razor called the Verifiability Principle. It

performed a tracheotomy that made it possible for philosophers to breathe again” (Scriven 1969:195). So the verifiability

of a proposition or an experience is central to Positivism as is physicalism.

The critique of physicalism as launched by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is perhaps the most devastating one ever

raised: “Es dämmert jetzt vielleicht in fünf, sechs Köpfen, da Physik auch nur eine Welt-auslegung und Zurechtlegung...und

nicht eine Welt-erklärung ist” (Knorr-Cetina 1981:335). Physicalism is not the only Weltanschauung but just one out of

many - one with a previously dominant position in the sciences partly due to the so-called mechanization of the world

picture from the Industrial Revolution onwards (Dijksterhuis 1961). Furthermore, physicalism causes a neglection of mental

states or at least “that every mental substance is a physical substance” (Jaeger 1979:424).

This is also a characteristic of Skinnerean behaviourism, which seeks to eliminate the label of an “autonomous man

from the social world - indeed, from the world” (Ritzer 1992:417). So behaviourism and physicalism agrees on the

exclusion of mental properties from scientific inquiry, or demands that these are treated as if they were physical objects - as

Durkheim wanted us to treat social phenomena as if they were things. This leads to naturalism, in which the social sciences

should be moulded by images from the natural sciences and finally transmogrified totally into a natural science of society.

As Charles Wright Mills, the brilliant observer of the state of the social sciences, rightly concluded in his somewhat

rudimentary and obscure conception of Positivism: “The style of social research I have called ‘abstracted empiricism’ often

seems to consist of efforts to restate and adopt philosophies of natural science in such a way as to form a program and a

canon for work in social science” (Mills 1959:57). As Mills showed, and which will later be illustrated here, this kind of

adherence to natural science objectivity is not necessarily the right way for sociology to be heading. Moreover this

adherence to philosophies of the natural sciences also supports the use of naturalistic methodologies in research and the

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quest for empirical truth with an emphasis on statistics, observation and other quantitative technicques.

So the credo and ethos of Positivism’s empirical investigative program could aptly be summarized with the statement

from the popular TV-series The X-Files: ‘The truth is out there’. This must be understood on two different levels. First, as

we saw, Positivism neglects mental states or reduces them to physical states which can be analyses directly from overt

behaviour. So the truth is out there and not in there. Secondly, it means that every part of social life can be objectified and

observed out there in either social or physical nature and therefore that social life is always empirically graspable.

Positivism’s negative connotation in today’s sociology (Alexander 1985:24) is therefore partly due to Positivism’s

adherence to physicalism, naturalism and behaviourism. These are nowadays, by many, regarded as relics from what

Giddens called the orthodox consensus, which was an amalgamamation of Positivist philosophical logic, functionalist

methods and modernisation- and industrialisation theories (Giddens 1982:2). Other periphrastic forms of Positivism within

sociology are mainstream sociology, the standard view (Outhwaite 1887b:6) or the positivist persuasion (Alexander

1982:5).

Finally, Positivism is shown to be anti-theoretical, due to its emphasis on empirical research (Brown 1990:64 and

Alexander 1982:5-8), and in its empirical investigations it tends to see the observer as superior to the person studied (Brown

1990:65) and even treats subjects as objects. American sociologist Alvin Gouldner strongly disapproved of particularly this

trait of Positivism stating in contrast that “the development of a Reflexive Sociology”, in opposition to Positivism, “in sum,

requires that sociologists cease acting as if they thought of subjects and objects, sociologists who study and ‘laymen’ who

are studied, as two distinct breeds of men. There is only one breed of man” (Gouldner in Lemert 1993:467). The Positivistic

view of the actor strongly affects the way truth has been perceived within sociology previously and our entire way of

knowing about the social world.

Also Positivism (14), the so-called neo-Positivism, needs to be treated into some detail. Lundberg, who is the main

proponent of this variant, I will return to throughout the essay. Other neo-Positivists include George Zipf, Stuart Dodd and

Franklin Giddings (Timasheff 1950:26). The latter, as Lundberg, argued that “sociology is a science statistical in method

and that a true and complete description of anything must include measurement of it” (Marshall 1994:353). Lundberg

characterised neo-Positivism as consisting of three components: 1) Quantificationism, 2) Behaviourism, and, 3) Pragmatic

philosophy (empiricism) (Lundberg 1955:192). Concerning this position and Positivism (6) it has been unappraisingly noted

that the specific trait of quantificationism is particularly prevalent in today’s social theory: “Among the features

characteristic of modern mentality is the tendency to bring everything down to an exclusively quantitative point of view”

(Guenon 1972:9) hereby losing sight of the quality in subjects and objects.

Concerning all the Positivisms above is the topic of normativity or what Kolakowski (1972) referred to as the

reducibility of normative statements. Comte, as one of the founders of Positivism, claimed on normativity that any

proposition which could not be reduced entirely to a simple statement of fact was devoid of sense (Friedrichs 1970:93).

Value-neutrality, the feature of Positivism (17), is at the heart of Positivism, applied18 as well as theoretical, and the natural

18 Hart (1958) applies Positivism to the field of practical legislation and proves how it is possible for a Positivist approach to law to separate morals (understood as normativity) from practical legislation hereby avoiding falling prey to value-biased viewpoints that is not reducible to facts.

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scientific approach to social theory in general. The attempt to keep normativity in science at bay has increased immensely,

through so-called procedures of mental hygiene and strict logical and axiomatic connections, throughout the historical

development of Positivism. Value-neutrality, actually a feature of Weber’s interpretative sociology, though, was not as

important for Comte, Durkheim and earlier Positivists as for the later ones in the Vienna Circle and neo-Positivism. The

former two did not try to conceal that their scientific theories had both political and ideological purposes behind the

scientific facade and that they wanted to transform society.19 The latter Positivists, the Vienna based Logical Positivists, on

the contrary, denounced any political or religious interference in science exemplified by Rudolf Carnap’s urge to separate

his socialist ideas from his scientific endeavours (Johansson et al. 1979:27).

However, the person who gave birth to the concept of Positivism, Henri de Saint Simon, nevertheless also saw a missionary

potential in a science of society based on positive ideals when he in his The Reorganization of the European Community

(1814) stated: “Poetic imagination has put the Golden Age in the cradle of the human race, amid the ignorance and

brutishness of primitive times; it is rather the Iron Age which should be put there. The Golden Age of the human race is not

behind us but before us; it lies in the perfection of the social order. Our ancestors never saw it; our children will one day

arrive there; it is for us to clear the way” (Saint Simon in Kumar 1978:13). So, although Positivists generally refuse any

allegiance to political programs, some of them - particularly Saint Simon, Comte and Durkheim - still had reformatory and

rather utopian ideals regarding the services which science could provide for society in general and social order in particular.

Positivism, just like marxism for that matter, claimed to be a pure science and not a vehicle for ideological ideas. So,

if adhering to the principles of value-neutrality combined with the essence of the other 17 characteristics of sound and valid

scientific enterprise listed above truth will, inevitably, be universally valid across time, space and cultural boundaries. The

consequence of this universality of truth is that the philosophy of the social sciences, and hence sociology, will be exactly

equivalent to the philosophy of the natural sciences. So to conclude briefly, Positivism acknowledges only truths insofar as

they are positive, meaning objectively given, empirically graspable and scientifically valid.20 Is that what we as sociologists

really want ? Are we still under the spell of Positivism and the project of modernity or have we entered a new phase of post-

Positivism (Giddens 1982:14 and Alexander 1993) and post-modernity ?

Considering the above description of Positivism it must nevertheless be noted that “...every debate about the

relation between positivism and sociology is clouded by the diversity of the term “positivism” - uses that are so varied that

some can pronounce positivism dead while others find it still the vital force that dominated sociology” (Halfpenny 1982).

So what becomes clearly evident is the fact that any portrayal of Positivism as a single coherent configuration of knowledge

is utterly impossible. Keeping this aspect in mind we now move on to the different interpretations of what constitutes

sociological truths as compared to other scientific truths. One of these views about truth in sociology was, as we saw above,

the Positivistic one. And this view has dominated social science since the embryo of Positivism in the aftermath of

19 Particularly Comte held utopian visions and ideas concerning amongst other subjects female emancipation and a levelling of the distribution of wealth (Anbro et al. 1972:53). 20 This might seem quite absurd considering that the use of the word positive by Comte seemed to be totally coincidental. It is claimed that the word humanistic would have fittet his theory much better, which certainly also would have altered his views on what constitutes sound and valid knowledge (Bridges 1979:199).

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Enlightenment philosophy. My view is that Positivism has provided sociology with a narrow, discriminate and clinical

conception of the reality of the social world.

Instead of proposing 18 counterpoints to those of Positivism shown above, part 11 will include a discussion of the

possibility, necessity and desirability of alterations in Positivism’s rigid and rudimentary conception of the social world and

its graspability. After this examination of the nature, configuration and trajectory of Positivism we will now look at some of

the implications for sociology and social thought following the dominance of Positivism by looking at different perspectives

on Positivism offered by various social theorists.

4. Ritualistic truths in sociology derived from the reign of Positivism:

Sociology, ever since its association with Positivistic thought in the embryo of the discipline, has been biased in favour of a

perspective on society and human beings that is closely connected to Positivism’s ideals. One could mention numerous of

such instances but I have decided to narrow the perspective down to three broad categories: Fisrt I will look briefly at the

way sociology has viewed the individual human being as a result of the permeation of Positivistic thought, secondly I will

consider sociology’s orientation towards society due to the Positivistic influence, and finally will I look at sociology’s ideal

of a social researcher investigating that very same society - how Positivism due to its relation to the natural scientific

methodology has been instrumental in breeding and cultivating a ceratin type of sociologist.

I have titled this part ‘ritualistic truths in sociology’ since sociology is still suffering from its inheritance, as Charles

Tilly noted:“The 19th century’s heritage to the social researchers of the 20th century appears like an old house one has

inherited from a rich aunt: shabby, excessively decorated and messy but probably salvagable” (Tilly 1984:16). Positivism

relies heavily on the so-called methodological individualism described in detail by Agassi (1960) and Lukes (1977) and as

such sociology has also been biased towards such a perspective as we for instance see it in Weberian sociology, structural

functionalism, rational choice sociology and generally in action theoretical schools of thought. Methodological

individualism also spells out an atomistic view of society which is strongly opposed to the methodological

holism/collectivism we find in Durkheimian and Marxist thinking. Although the agents traditionally are regarded as

powerful and creative in action theory, the influence of Positivism has instead led to a view in which the agents are regarded

as passive, unreflexive and generally oversocialized (Wrong 1961) and in which ‘behaviour’ speaks louder than ‘action’.

One could say that homo sociologicus (the role-oriented and objective agent) has had presedence over homo faber (the

creative and subjective agent), or to use the terminology of philosopher Martin Hollis (1977) that plastic man has dominated

autonomous man: “Where Plastic Man has his causes, Autonomous Man has his reasons” (Op.cit.:12).

Therefore the so-called ‘double hermeneutic’ which the British sociologist Anthony Giddens has conceptualised,

according to which sociological knowledge spirals in and out of the social universe thereby transforming that universe and

itself in the process, does not work and sociological knowledge becomes insulated and abstract. If we do not regard actors in

the social universe as reflexive (and equipped with Dauerreflexion), active and knowledgable we will not be able to discover

the motives and meanings guiding action. Positivism’s influence in sociology, both classical as well as contemporary, has

worked detrimental to such an understanding of actors and their relation to society in general since “the repetitive, regular,

predictable, unfree nature of human, individual or collective, behaviour, is an indispensable assumption which must be

made by anybody claiming the status of positivist science for his kind of sociology” (Bauman 1972:190).

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The footprint of Positivism on the notion of ‘society’ in sociology has also had drastic consequences - or should I

rather point to Positivism’s extremely inadequate notion of ‘society’ ? Society, due to the methodological individualism of

Positivism, has been viewed as the sum total of the preferences of individuals inhabiting a certain territorial area. Therefore

such central concepts such as ‘sociality’, ‘altruism’ and ‘reciprocity’ have been difficult to handle and therefore have often

been skewed to the fringes of obscurity of sociological theorizing. Furtherfore has it proved difficult for sociology to escape

from the four myths (Giddens 1972) haunting sociology concerning the societal perspective. According to the presence of

these four myths in sociology, which can actually be traced back to the Positivistic influence from Comte and Durkheim,

contemporary sociologists find it extremely hard to come to grips with a conflict perspective opposed to the prevailing

consensus perspective, sociology cannot deal satisfactorily with diachronism and social change as opposed to theories based

on synchronism and social stability and societal equilibrium, sociology is also caught to some extent in Conservative thought

- also a heritage from Comte and Durkheim - and sociology regards itself as the provider of grand theories with wide-

ranging explanatory power.

No matter how much of the content of these myths really are true in current sociology is not at issue here - but it is

certain that Positivism’s influence in many of these areas has been of a negative character in furthering an adequate

understanding of social dynamics and social reciprocation.

The last issue I wish to put in the limelight here is the role of the social researcher in Positivistic methodology.

According to the Positivistic ideals the social researcher must be a detached observer showing the highest degree of

‘disinterestedness’. This is primarily due to the heavy influence of natural science in Positivism and is legitimized by

reference to the natural science researcher who - during controlled experiments in a laboratory - remains completely value-

free and objective. The ‘purity’ and methodological ‘cleanness’ of the natural science researcher as opposed to the ‘dirty

hands’ of the social scientist (Hirsch 1987) is not to be regarded as a negative feature of social scientific research but as its

most fundamental strength and we need not feel inferior merely because we are closer to reality than many of our fellow

researchers in other disciplines.

Even the most rigorous attempt to distance oneself - to ‘objectify one’s objectification’ to use Bourdieu (1991) -

proves in vain in sociology since we are always an integral part of the universe we observe or describe - something that

Weber, Dilthey and Rickert fully recognized and about which Bauman (1972:185) wrote the following: “[I]n the

professional life of a sociologist his most intimate, private biography is inexcricably intertangled with the biography of his

discipline; one thing the sociologist cannot transcend in his quest for objectivity is his own, intimate and subjective

encounter-with-the-world”. We are not inferior in either of the aforementioned areas - the agent perspective, the society

perspective and the researcher perspective - to the natural sciences but if we continuously adhere to the principles of

Positivism there is little doubt in my mind that a possible inferiority-complex quickly will turn into paranoia.

After having delineated some of the implications for methodological and theoretical thinking and praxis in sociology

following from Positivism’s hegemony it is now appropraite to reconsider the nature of truth in sociology and how truth per

se is constituted and supported by a certain epistemological basis.

5. The search for a scientific sociological truth:

What is truth ? This was the question which appeared in the beginning of this essay and it was furthermore questioned

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whether truth can be said to be absolute, objective, universal and total or, on the other hand, that truth rather is relative,

partial, subjective and of limited validity. To these two juxapositions of scientific truth we can add whether truth is

theoretical or empirical, concrete or abstract, analytically logical or sophistic, scientific or metaphysical ? Is a sociological

truth actually different from natural scientific truth ? Does truth lie in the means (methods) used in science or the ends

(utilities) ? Does it even matter: is the whole question of any relevance to sociology whatsoever?

After reviewing Positivism in part 3 all these questions certainly seem relevant to sociology and they all seem

contestable as well. According to the doctrine of Positivism, taken under one heading, to recapture some essential features,

what characterises ‘good’ science and which contrasts it to ‘bad’ or even ‘non’ science is exactly the way that truth is said to

be objective, absolute and always scientifically founded via explanations and that the truths offered by natural science are

better than those offered by social scientists. This is well captured by Habermas (1988:1): “The positivist self-understanding

prevalent among scientists has adopted the thesis of the unity of the sciences; from the positivist perspective, the dualism of

science, which was considered to be grounded in the logic of scientific inquiry, shrinks to a distinction between levels of

development” and maturity one might add. The figure below is a revised version of that offered by Jeffrey C. Alexander

(1982:40) and illustrates very well the entire possible spectrum of sociological truths and how they can be analytically

polarised whereas a practical separation of social scientific enterprise will be more precarious.

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FIGURE 1

Metaphysicalenvironment ofscience (non-empirical)

Physical environmentof science (empirical)

THE CONTINUUM OF SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT

Anti-scientific relativism

The Positivist persuasion

Increasing generality Increasing specificity

Presuppositions Ideologicalorientations

ConceptsModels Classifications Laws Methodological assumptions

Observational statements

‘Scientificality’

As we can extract from the above figure we fundamentally have the Positivists (Positivist persuasion) at one end of the

continuum and the anti-Positivists (metaphysics or anti-scientific relativism) at the other. To adopt a Positivist terminology

we can also claim to have science at one end and anti-science at the other (Holton 1993) although I personally do not accept

that rigid distinction. Relating this to the aforementioned discussion of normativity and Positivism in part 3 the figure

certainly shows that presuppositions, values and ideological or normative orientations are regarded as less scientific than

empirical observation, experimentation and methodological assumptions. We could from this conclude that the means-

oriented sociologist, then, is more scientific than the goal-oriented sociologist. Alexander notes elsewhere quite rightly,

without reference to the above figure, that “in the social sciences...arguments about scientific truth do not refer only to the

empirical level. They cut across the full range of non-empirical commitments which sustain different points of view”

(Alexander in Lemert 1993:558). So according to Alexander, and many others, it would be a fallacy to believe that the right

hand side of the spectrum in figure 1 represents the truth and the left hand side the negation of truth so the middle can be

occupied by half-truths (or even half-lies).

In any view, one should refrain from regarding the truth as an ossification of valid knowledge and instead accept the

existence of a kaleidoscope of reciprocally contending conceptions and understandings of truth. Truth, in the sociological

sense of the word, is not only what is true but also what is good and what is useful. C. Wright Mills (1959:71) put this more

euphemistically by asking: “Is there any necessary tension between that which is true but unimportant and that which is

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important but not necessarily true ?”. The true is not just what meets the eye, or other perceptive units, but also what is

hidden, latent and represented in another guise, which realism, hermeneutics and structuralism agree on. Truth always lies in

the eye of the beholder - as well as considerations about the aestethic, the ethical and the right course of action.

To return to Positivism’s relation to truth it was said that truth is regarded as absolute. What did this mean ? That

truth is regarded as absolute might sound equivalent to Hegelian accounts of the existence of an absolute spirit, and actually

the analogy is not totally useless and without merit. Like the Hegelian absolute spirit,21 which mankind through

evolutionary development and historical progress comes to resemble and gain deeper insights into, so will an approximation

to truth be sought within science according to Positivism. This process is that of the so-called principles of verification or

falsification (or refutation) or what has been referred to as the ‘incremental architechturalism’ of Positivism (Brown

1990:66). Truth, then, is something we eventually will be able to grasp entirely when our instruments of measurement is

thoroughly sophisticated and fully developed and once we have entzaubered science for metaphysical and theological

speculation.

Popper’s falsificationism actually offered some comfort to scientific relativists when claiming, in opposition to the absolute

truths of the hypothetico-deductivists of the Vienna Circle, that truth is something we eventually and incrementally will

arrive at but nothing initially given and immediately graspable. That is why we need falsificationism and the refutation of

theories. Axiomatic truths, then, do not exist in social reality but only in philosophically and logically constructed realities

and scenarios. There is in other words according to refutation a ‘virtual impossibility of truth’. Popper empahsized that the

vitality of a science eventually depends on the quality and quantity of falsifiable hypotheses available as grists for the

scientific refutation mill. On a more fundamental level the Positivist, and hence the acclaimed scientific, model of social

inquiry could roughly be put on a horisontal formula of checks and balances: observation of data intelligibility of data

data must explain themselves in a self-evident and self-explanatory way valid knowledge certainty about data procedure:

reasoning from data scientific sociological truths. The scientificality, as noted by the early English Positivist John Stuart

Mill, furthermore increases as the degree of generalisations via logical causal laws of the data increases (Raison 1969:48).

How do we relate these points on truth to science, sociology and the position of Positivism ? Polish philosopher of

science Stefan Nowak once said, that science is the domination through truth. The science of society - sociology - then, has

been dominated profoundly by the scientism and ostentatious scientific superiority of Positivism. Basically this alleged

superiority, which I will return to later, comes down to the claim that the truths of Positivism are more objective than the

purely speculative and subjective truths about society as offered by the Geisteswissehschaften. I believe that Borna Bebek’s

21 It must, nevertheless, be reminded that Hegel in no way at all could be said to be a Positivist. On the contrary he was an archtypical idealist. Although he believed thoroughly in rationality his belief was grounded entirely in metaphysical speculation compared to the rationalism of Positivism. Marx, who utilised Hegel’s dialectic, was more Positivistic when he stood Hegel on his head and hereby letting the material being supercede the mental or spiritual being. As Marx said: “It is not the consciousness of men that determine their social being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness”. Sentences of this character have lead and mislead many to categorise Marx as a pure Positivist or with severe Positivistic remnants (Swingewood 1991). In my view Marx is best described as a realist though.

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(1982:34) statement, derived from the existential philosopher Karl Jaspers, should debunk any uncritical attempts at the

establishment of the existence of objective knowledge related to social scientific studies: “There can never be an objective

knowledge of being. Objective knowledge or science deals only with the objective aspects of an object; however, the reality

of an object is not exhausted by its objective predication. By definition sciences divide up reality into objects. To think

scientifically then is to have access to only one kind of data...but the content of a [social] being, total reality, existence, is

not limited to objective data” [my brackets]. This viewpoint echoes the aforementioned position of Guenon (1972), who

attacked the modern mentality of quantity. Hayek (1952:25-35) also took this standpoint of Bebek and Guenon, which we

shall return to later.

So to confine oneself exclusively to one kind of inquiry or one kind of knowledge as scientific and others as non-

scientific is not just academic obscurantism but also a fallacy: “The usual conception of the scientific method is clearly

inadequate...the scientific method cannot be captured in a few general phrases. The operation of the scientific method is

bound up with the actual subject matter of the sciences; in order to understand the method, one must examine scientific

reasoning in the context of a particular field of science” (Radner & Radner 1982:29). This suggests that scientificality is a

unique and particular and not a general and universal feature.

The emulation and rivalry between an objective versus the subjective character of truth is not a novel phenomenon is

the philosophy of the social science - actually, in my view, it was the distinction between the two kinds of truth that led into

an order of precedence of the sciences in the last century characterized by Nietzsche’s distinction between Apollonian

(irrational) cultures and Dionysian (rational) societies, giving primacy to the natural sciences on behalf of the social sciences

in general and sociology in particular. This hierarchy of the sciences has been popularly depicted in Alan Bloom’s The

Closing of the American Mind (1992),22 Charles P. Snow’s The Two Cultures (1993) and to some extent in playwright

Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version. The prioritisation of the natural scientific way of inquiry is also described

academically by amongst others Fritz Machlup (1956 and 1963), Marvin Stauch (1992), Werner Cahnmann (1964), E. B.

Wilson (1940), Karin Knorr-Cetina (1981) and Isaiah Berlin (1981).

Machlup (1956) particularly has a strong case when he focuses on how the social sciences always have been in a

secondary position to the natural sciences: not that this position can be said to be justified though. This has lead to the

development of an “inferiority complex...which makes the sufferes over-apologetic, excessively aggressive, or looking for

other sorts of compensations” (Op.cit.:162). One of these compensations is the infatuation by many social scientists with

natural scientific methodologies. Especially the quest for social laws, like the laws of nature, has proved a stronghold in the

search for generalisationably facts. As we saw previously in part 3, the social sciences, in connection to the paradigm

discussion, are still in a stage of infancy. Therefore the laws should not be regarded as ‘real’ laws: “If the science is in an

eraly stage of development...the laws may be merely generalisations involved in classifying things into various classes”

(Braithwaite in Leinfellner 1974:309).

22 The Danish translation bears the more appropirate title Historien om Vestens Intellektuelle Forfald, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1992, in which the author concentrates on the condescending attitude towards the humanities, social and political sciences and philosophy. This is regarded by Bloom as a sign of the intellectual loss and moral decay of the times in the modern Occident.

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Machlup (1963) goes on to suggest instead that the social sciences are in fact not inferior at all but superior to the

natural sciences and that the ostracism of normativity is nothing but a fallacy trying to deny “the subjective difficulty of

maintaining scientific detachment in the study of human affairs. Few human beings can calmly and with equal fairness

consider both sides of a question such as socialism, free love or birth-control” (Op.cit.:162). Value-neutrality is nothing but

a mire in which scientists keep falling throat-deep only to drown in either entirely clinical and descriptive facts ot in the just

as undesirable pool of excessive normativity and idealism. The natural scientific superiority is discarded thoroughly by

Machlup who shows that the complexity of social science is as high, if not even higher, than in other sciences due to its

emphasis on ontology. Percy Cohen, a proponent of Positivism whom we will encounter again in part 7, states quite rightly

and fundamentally not in opposition to Machlup: “[I]f there is nothing in the substance of social reality to make it

significantly different from that of natural reality then there is nothing in it to demand a mode of inquiry different from that

of the natural sciences” (Cohen 1980:146). Is social reality really not essentially different from natural reality ? This view

will be contested thoroughly throughout the rest of this essay.

I will go as far as to agree with another writer who concentrates on the philosophy of the social science, but where

Machlup defended the social sciences, T. S. Harding is seriously doubting the validity of social science if distinct from

natural scientific standards: “In all sciences objectivity, exactitude, and certitude are but very relatively attained, and

scientific predictions are in any case only true to some more or less close approximation” (Harding 1936:503). But when

he goes on to claim that “no science differs categorically from the others. The fallacy of thinking the contrary has long

blocked progress in certain sciences. All science is one in method and human utility” (Op.cit.:503), I must object strongly to

several of his points.

Firstly, his claim that some sciences - ‘certain sciences’ - has been blocked in progress, is a typical feature of

Positivism. Also Lundberg stated something rather similar in content when concluding: “This persistent clinging to some of

the articles of our erstwhile metaphysical and theological faiths...while at the same time flirting conspicuously with

scientific ideas and methods, is precisely what has convinced our critics of our intellectual bankrupcy” (Lundberg 1939:44).

According to this position metaphysics and idealism are the evils that must be exorcised from a proper science. A former

president of Princeton University held the same contempt for the social sciences’ aspirations of being seculded from natural

scientific methodologies as Lundberg23 seemingly did on several occasions by saying inclemently: “The social studies are a

science only within narrow limits. They are concerned with self-conscious individuals who are within limits masters of their

fate and thus are able to circumvent prophecy. Science is impersonal; social life is incorrigbly personal. Science belittles

the individual; it is interested only in statistics. The method of science is repeated experimentation under controlled

laboratory conditions...” (Wilson 1940:665). Many of these views will be contested below especially the claim that science

23 Lundberg also showed his condescending attitude towards social scientific inquiry when saying that “I have no doubt that a considerable part of the present content of the social sciences will turn out to be pure phlogiston” (Lundberg 1963:44). The myth of phlogiston refers to a dispute in chemistry 150 years ago in which some held strong beliefs that there existed a primordial element in the process of combustion. Later it was discovered that this was entirely untrue and a complete delusion. Phlogiston, it turned out, was nothing but pure oxygen (Boulding 1980:836).

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is impersonal.

Secondly, Harding’s claim that all science categorically is the same: it has long since been established that the

sciences are inherently heterogeneous in content and form. German philosopher Immanual Kant was the first to do

comprehensive work on the fundamental differences in knowledge and how it is acquired. He distinguished between

knowledge about the outside world as either being classified as a posteriori, meaning empirically given, or a priori, as given

in for example logics. The distinction is fundamentally one between empiricism and rationalism, which both turned into the

amalgamation of Positivism in the mid-19th century.24 Neo-Kantianism,25 mingled with ideas on the negative development

of science by Friedrich Nietzsche, was the doctrine to introduce a clear-cut distinction between the sciences, actually a just

as sharp dividing line as that of Positivism.

The likes of Heinrich Rickert, J. G. Droysen, Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Weber and Wilhelm Windelband were

instrumental in pinpointing, from a hermeneutic and interpretative standpoint, that there are no grounds of asserting that the

natural and social sciences are the same or ought to be the same, even should provide society with the same type of truths.

Apart from pointing to the inevitability of subjectivism and interpretation - and to some extent to sympathetical introspection

and empathy - (Abercrombie et al. 1984:112), the neo-Kantians also argued that we are confronted with two entirely

different sciences; respectively the nomothetic sciences versus the idiographic (Kant referred to these as synthetic meaning

centering around idiosyncratic data) sciences, the former being the natural sciences the latter the social, humanistic, cultural

and moral sciences or under one heading the Geisteswissenschaften (Lübcke 1994:371).

Although their constructions of this distinction or dichotomy are different on the surface,26 they agree on the

fundamental ideas which are:

24 Extract from Sren Brier (1994:51): Videnskabens (The Island of Science), writings from the symposium Nordisk Sommeruniversitet, Aalborg. Gurnah & Scott (1981:30), though, claim that Positivism and empiricism are totally different and that Positivism is actually entirely rationalistic. Their position is not substantiated by facts in my view which the 18 Positivistic propositions in part 3 show. 25 Neo-Kantianism was mainly a German affair but also Anglo-Americans such as Peter Winch and R. G. Collingwood have shown certain features of neo-Kantianism and hermeneutics in their writings. Winch has even been termed an ‘extreme hermeneutic’. 26 Not just the neo-Kantians used this distinction between idiographic and nomothetic sciences. The British anthropologist, Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, in his Durkheimian and functionalist natural science of society, also utilised this distinction although his intention was in opposition to the neo-Kantians. Kruglanski (1991:224) also distinguishes between two kinds of science almost analogous to idiographic and nomothetic accounts. He refers to his distinction as that of an external science; founded on rational principles of a general nature which are neutral, and an internal science; founded on arational influences dealing with interests and social relations.

¬ The social sciences are more complex than the natural sciences (which even Comte actually also

recognised, though, under many different circumstances).

∧ The social sciences deal with subjectivity and intersubjectivity.

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∨ The main feature of social scientific data is the interpretability of it.

⇔ The method of verstehen (understanding) is essential to the social sciences.

⇐ Truth in the social sciences is context-dependent and historical.

⇑ The social sciences deal with culture which is a human construction.

The fourth point of verstehen is essential to the discussion of truth in sociology. We may ask: What are the purposes of

scientific data ? It has conventionally been the view, under influence from natural scientific practice, that ‘explanation’

(erklären) and ‘description’ are the two main features of the handling of scientific data. This was strongly contested by the

neo-Kantians who insisted that the ‘understanding’ (verstehen) of data is much more important, though complementary to

explanation and description, and to be able to understand data we need to be able to use value-judgements and in some

variants also sympathetical techniques. Meaning and the interpretation hereof is then at the heart of verstehen. Giddens

draws a clear dividing-line between ‘erklären’ and ‘verstehen’: “The contrast between erklären (explaining) and verstehen

(understanding), as portrayed by Droysen and Dilthey, is at the heart of the tradition of the Geisteswissenschaften...the

natural sciences develop causal explanations of outer events; the human sciences, on the other hand, are concerned with the

inner understanding of meaningful conduct” (Giddens 1978:277). This quotation does not, however, paint the whole

picture.

The Geisteswissenschaften are also concerned with explanation and description of both outer events and inner

meanings but this must be supplied with the method of verstehen to be complete. A discussion of these topics is evident

between amongst others Thelma Lavine and Ernest Nagel. Verstehen, hence, works on a deeper cognitive level than

erklären.

This points to a flaw in Positivism, although not recognised by the Positivists themselves, that “in the social

sciences, where the objects are either mental states or conditions in which mental states are embedded, the possibility for

confusing mental states of the observer with mental states of those observed is endemic” (Alexander 1993:558). If this is

true, then the declared possibility and desirability of an absolute value-neutrality hangs in a very thin string. But Lundberg,

as ever, has a reply to this: “Imaginings, thoughts, and feelings manifest themselves, if at all, through symbolic or other

neuro-muscular behaviour. As such, they are as proper a subject for scientific study as any other data. This holds for all so-

called introspective phenomena as well as for phenomena assured to originate outside the observer” (Lundberg 1939:47).

According to Lundberg’s statement, then, even the imaginings, thoughts and feelings of the observer, and not just the

observed, is scientifically graspable. If it is graspable then it must be real - if it is real, then it must be said to exist. Hereby

Lundberg actually recognises that value-orientation is endemic even to Positivist science. Many other points could be made

here but I will return to neo-Kantianism and traditional Kantianism in part 11 in my quest for a possible middleground

between the procedures and foundations of the ‘hard’ truth and that of the ‘soft’ sciences.

Related to the discussion of what constitutes ‘proper’ science and the exfoliation of metaphysics from scientific

practice is the much appraised and critisised demarcation criterion (O’Hear 1989:54 and Holton 1993). As was the view of

Positivism, the social sciences are experiencing a scientific period of incubation in which outdated and mystical modes of

thought are gradually being rejected like a transplanted organ in an imcompatible organism. This rejection is justified by the

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demarcation criterion which was first articulated by Sir Francis Bacon and later restated by Karl Popper (Lübcke 1994:80).

A criterion of demarcation operates to distinguish science from non-science or even para-science (Frazier 1976), and

“science, according to this view, must be kept from metaphysics; and this is achieved by, amongst other things, eliminating

the unobservable from its ontology” (Keat 1981:17). Again we end up with the view that Positivism and empiricism

(phenomenalism) are inextricably linked - a view that will be contested in parts 7 and 8. In connection to Positivism, the

rules of phenomenalism and nominalism have proved to be some of the main criteria to decide science from its negation.

Penultimately, to the discussion of scientific truth also belongs the utility of the data. We here see the classical

distinction bewteen the so-called context of discovery and the context of justification (O’Hear 1989:55). What is the purpose

and intention of science ? According to the context of discovery we need to be open to any kind of input of knowledge

without using the mental hygiene Lundberg suggested above or the demarcation criterion of Popper. Perhaps Rene

Descartes’ ‘methodical doubt’ is a fitting analogy to the curiosity needed to be used by social scientists. One of the attempts

to think aternatively is Feuerabend’s anarchic methodology which owes much to the context of discovery in which anything

goes. Science must, in this view, not be restrained by customs or rigid practices or precedences. The other position, the

context of justification, is where the hypotheses and speculations about nature are actually tested empirically

(experimentally) and either verified or refuted. In my opinion, the strict sense of science as verification and falsification is an

inevitable trait of science but should all science be confined only to the verification and falsification of data ? Should there

not be a place for scientific inventionsim and innovationism in a field such as the sociological one ?

Finally, I will elaborate on one of the most important contributions to the discussion of truths in the social sciences namely

the sociology of science - later re-established as the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), in which academic speculations

and polemics about the nature of social scientific truths has taken place. Within this field we locate prominent sociologists

such as Robert K. Merton and Michael Mulkay and metatheorists such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feuerabend. The debate

was mainly a British phenomenon in the 1970’s (Collins 1983 and Kucklick 1983) and evolved around what science

consisted of and why. Whereas Robert Merton and his fellow American sociologists focused on universal standards of

scientific practice and truth, the later British sociologists within SSK initiated a so-called relativist revolution within the

field (Marshall 1994:464), in which they drew attention to the fact that knowledge, and hence truth, is socially constructed

and that there is no access to a truth or a reality beyond human activity. Harry Collins, one of the pioneers within the field of

SSK, on the subject of the rivalry between the natural scientific and social scientific conception of truth, noted that it “is one

of cognitive tangentiality with...an admixture of academic antagonism” (Op.cit.:464).

The strength of this relativist revolution, in my view, is that it points to the fact that truths can be used or misused for

personal or ideological reasons (Cohen 1976:79), as we saw for example in the former Sovjet Union where science and

ideology was an elevated amalgamation culminating in the Lysenko Affair, or also in the Western sphere with the case of

Project Camelot. If truth is seen as utterly neutral, on the other hand, it can serve any purpose, even a purpose not intended.

Is it that certainty that we have to sacrifice in the name of “proper” science ? Robert Cohen rightly contends that “when

those in power need truth, they will sponsor science; when they need partial truth, they will sponsor incomplete science:

when self-delusion, then pseudo-science, when deception of others, then half-truths or manipulative social-psychological

science...science is the servant of power” (Op.cit.:84).

This was exactly what Michel Foucault mentioned in part 2 on scientific discourses and regimes of power (Marshall

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1994:446), so as we can see, all these matters are actually inextricably linked. This critique of the danger of totally value-

neutral science is also raised by the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory against Positivism: “The American sociologist

Lundberg, a representative of Positivism, has pushed this conception [of value-neutrality] to the extreme. According to him,

the results of a vigorous sociological science must be of such a nature that a Fascist could utilize them just as readily as a

Communist or a liberal” (Horkheimer & Adorno 1973:129). Was this the intention of Positivist theory?

How do we, then, view truths within the field of sociology ? We have in this part seen evidence of variations from

truth as impersonal, neutral, empirical and universal via accounts of truth as intersubjective and democratically and

pragmatically constituted to truth as personal, historical, theoretical and partial. If truth is democratic it means that it is

fundamentally negotiable and not an ossified entity - in other words that it is the majority (silent or overtly verbal) of social

scientists who decide what is right and what is wrong. If truth is pragmatic (James 1995) it means that truth is what serves

the best purpose which could well be interpreted as the utilitarian principle of a pain-happiness calculation. This part has

also shown that the Positivist contention that truth is incontrovertible (so-called positive truths) as long as it is scientific is a

fallacy which does not hold water. Attempts to integrate this view into sociology as the sole proprietor of truth has failed,

and failed miserably, although many has been mislead by Positivism.

There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that sociology is the science of society, but society is not a physical object

necessarily following causal or even rational laws. It is a science different to natural science which is needed just as well, if

not even more, and as it is claimed “science too (including sociology as a science) must be viewed as a specific form of

cultural knowledge, not as a discourse having prior claim to truth by dint of its methodological or procedural

characteristics” (Gurnah & Scott 1981:195). Science is not produced in a social recluse nor a cultural void - this goes even

for natural scientific laboratory experiments. Already when we, as Positivism, create standards for scientific inquiry, such as

value-neutrality, are we as normative as is possible. However, we need to ask ourselves: Is there a safe causeway between the

Scylla of normativity and the Karybdis of value-neutrality ? Parts 11 and 12 will try to answer this question.

After reviewing the nature of Positivism and truth we will now proceed by turning our attention to some relatively, at

least, recent accounts of the position of either Positivism or anti-Positivism dealing with Positivism’s position and raising

pros and cons to the doctrine. First, we encounter a highly critical account of Positivism followed by more symphatetic and

supportive accounts.

6. Peter McHugh’s antagonism towards Positivism:

We have now reached the parts of this essay in which we will dwell and elaborate on four different approaches to Positivism

and the two initial questions: ‘What is sociological truth ?’, and, ‘Is Positivism still alive ?’ The aim is not to give an

exhaustive insight into the debate but merely to touch upon and illuminate the fact that Positivism - whether we like it or not

- is still at the centre of attention in sociological debates on methodology and epistemology in particular.

The first account to encounter is a highly critical anti-Positivist position with relation to the sphere of the sociologies

of everyday life in general and ethnomethodology in particular. The following two are both, though in entirely different

ways, supportive of Positivism while the final contribution in the debate by Christopher G. A. Bryant is marked by

tergiversation on the issue with a slight flavour of Comtean Positivism..

Peter McHugh (1970) is attacking Positivism - not so much because of its erstwhile effects on sociological theory,

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but rather because he sees the Positivistic quest for truth as an unrealistic endeavour: “The world of positivism is a romantic

one” (Op.cit.:320). Why is the Positivist program utopian and a fallacy, then ? First of all, according to McHugh, it is too

hermetically private - meaning linked solely to the perception of the individual observer - hereby missing out on the social

and institutional features of sociological truth. Secondly, Positivism cannot grasp action because it relies on a behavioursitic

terminology viewing action as a physical object’s response to stimuli instead as an expression of meaning (Ibid.:321). From

these two criticisms he moves on to discuss the nature of truth according to Positivist epistemolgy. Generally we are faced

with two conceptions of truth called correspondence theory and coherence theory. The former asserts that a proposition is

true if, and only if, there is an object in reality corresponding to the proposition, and hence it has very close connections to

the aforementioned rule of phenomenalism. A coherence theory, on the other hand, asserts that a proposition is true insofar

as it is consistent with reality. The former - correspondence theory - is what McHugh sees as embracing Positivist

epistemology in particular.

On a general basis, McHugh contends that “truth has been asserted to have something to do with fact, both pure and

applied; with events, both seen and unseen; with ideas, both testable and untestable; and with language, both verbal and

non-verbal” (Op.cit.:322). Positivism relies on the pure facts, the seen events, the testable ideas and the verbal language.

Taken from a correspondence standpoint, as that of Positivism, truth can take on several images:

¬ Truth is a copy: Truth, in this view, exists when a statement reflects, as an immaculate picture, some kind of

substance in the real world (Langer and the early Wittgenstein). ∧ Truth is an image: Truth, here, relies upon the fact that words become concepts because they are associated with

mental images (Hume and Locke). ∨ Truth is a reflex: Truth is established in general words and statements which are the names of properties that exist in

particular objects and situations in the real world - nominalism (Austin and Woozley). ⇔ Truth is a test: Truth lies in those ideas we can verify, false are those we cannot - but more importantly, truth dwells

in those ideas that are useful and all useful ideas are logically true - pragmatism (James and Peirce).

McHugn is strongly opposed to all these four points, which he finds paints a vulgar and superficial picture of the social

world as a sociologist would see it. The picture is also extremely simplistic reflexing the Positivist credo: “Ask and you will

hear, look and you will see” (Op.cit.:326). McHugh, particularly interested in language and its formation as many other

lingusitically interested ethnomethodologists, contends against truth as a copy or a picture of reality, that pictures show

things whereas sentences and words state things. Showing something is representing and arranging; stating, on the other

hand, is referring and describing. Truth cannot be a copy since stating and showing are incompatible.

Truth as an image of language is debunked because language often incorporates nonmaterial abstractions and hence

is much more multi-facetted than language simply reflecting material images. Abstractions and real objects are not one and

the same thing (although both Durkheim and Lundberg would probably disagree). Truth as a reflex, McHugh discards due to

the fact that it lacks relational and comparative properties. Objects, in this nominalistic view, cannot be compared, which is

one of the main features of the interpretative approaches to the social sciences.

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Truth as a test does not hold water either according to McHugh’s position. This is because of the mixture of the two

concepts of utility and truth: Utility does not distingusih between that which is true and that which is false (Ibid.:326); just

keep C. Wright Mills' words in mind about the tension between usefullness and truth as we saw earlier. All in all, none of

the images of truth offered by Positivism can satisfy Peter McHugh.

Eventually McHugh ends up turning his back on the whole of the Positivist project. First, on a general basis,

Positivism disregards social organisation and hence interaction. Truth is established, according to McHugh, in interaction

with others and not is a solipcistic recluse. Second, Positivism tends to view truth as an absolute endpoint we will eventually

arrive at but McHugh instead sees truth as an inevitably procedural affair. The sequestration of theory from its project is a

misapprehension of the fact that method is theory and theory is method - they are inseparable. Third, truth is not eternal and

context-independent: “That truth might reside in some thing, universally and eternally there for the discovery, is to

formulate an insoluable problem” (Op.cit.:329). Truth is not substantive but an institutional and social grammar and

arrangement. Fourth, which is related to the third point, truth is not subjective and internal to every single individual (and

here McHugh breaks with the metaphysical and idealistic images of truth) but is intersubjectively constituted and collective

in character: “Knowing something is a collective act, requiring some public enabling rule which can generate validation

from others who are engaged in the endeavour. The scientist as an individual is a senser, but science as an enterprise is

knowing. Consequently the collective activity called science cannot use the scripture of sense impressions, for two different

people cannot have the same ones” (Op.cit.:331).

Positivism is accused, rightly or wrongly, of being either physical reductionists focusing only on sense data or

psychological reductionistic in that they equate truth with the activity of one observer in his own laboratory or out in the

field. Is that truth ? And finally, the claim of Positivism that the scientist is superior to the layman is also a fallacy in

McHugh’s view: Science as knowledge is collective and produced just as much by the ordinary members of society as by the

scientists (cf. Giddens’ double hermeneutic).

After this extremely relativistic position we will turn to the defenders of Positivism. How do they see Positivism ?

McHugh, obviously, must have seen Positivism as a threat to sociological truth, and hence as a still existing set of ideas,

since he so fiercely attacked the position.

7. Percy S. Cohen’s defense of Positivism: Bringing Positivism back to life:

Today sociologists would rarely openly admit to adhere to the principles of a Positivist position. I am as ever grateful to

those few - such as Henri Poincaré who turned his back on the conventional wisdom of the natural sciences - who dare admit

their Positivistic roots or tendencies in the face of obstracism and gaining the epithet: “He/she was a Positivist - even when

Positivism was declared dead and buried”. It is important that we have scientists who are not afraid to stand vis-á-vis

academic persecution or excommunication and swin against the stream as Weber (1958) advertised for. Science, in my view,

develops through a pattern of dialectics (position negation negation of the negation)27 and conflicts between polarised

positions and there would be absolutely no progress in today’s sociology if it was not for the ongoing classical disputes:

“Current disputes between interpretative and causal methodologies, utilitarian and normative conceptions of action,

27 The dialectical process could also be depicted as follows: Thesis antithesis synthesis.

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equilibrium and conflict models of societies, radical and conservative theories of change - these are far more than empirical

arguments. They reflect efforts by sociologists to articulate criteria for evaluating the ‘truth’ of different non-empirical

domains” (Alexander 1993:561). As we shall see in the two, probably even three, subsequent parts, Positivism is at the heart

of this debate between theoretical and empirical conceptions of truths.

Percy S. Cohen is one of the few articulating a categorical Positivist position within sociology in the 1980’s and

1990’s. To Cohen (1980) Positivism is far from dead - it is merely hibernating. Cohen is aware that today “most sociologists

would consider themselves to be either nonpositivists or even anti-positivists” (Op.cit.:143), but he nevertheless detects

several Positivistic characteristics in sociological theory - remnents from the stronghold of Positivism in the 1940’s and

1950’s. Utilising Kolakowski’s (1972) four characteristics of Positivism, as we reviewed in part 3, he step by step goes on to

point out that in many positions we find similarly held Positivist tendencies.

Concerning the so-called rule of phenomenalism - that all essences must be reduced to concrete phenomena - Cohen

states that this is a common feature of structural and scientific marxists, which becomes evident if we for example take the

later Karl Marx (who was more of a structuralist than the young and humanist Marx) as an exponent of some kind of a

structural approach. He stated in the 3rd volume of Capital (1867) that “if appearences were the same as essences, there

would be no need for science”. To Marx there was a need for science to go behind appearences and discover the essences

and Marx here epitomizes both a structuralist and realist view. Cohen, though, notes that the neo-marxists of the Frankfurt

School of Critical Social Theory are strongly opposed to structuralism and hence phenomenalism and Positivism in the last

instance. Anyway, Positivism is still breathing in at least left-wing sociology when it comes to phenomenalistic articles.

The second article of Kolakowski’s Positivism scheme was the rule of nominalism - that general abstract terms refer only to

particular instances of physical things and not to some general properties, as such. Cohen admits readily that nominalism is

utterly dead in today’s sociology (Ibid.:145). So, in this respect it is impossible to conclude that Positivism should still be a

popular doctrine.

The third article - the unity of the sciences thesis - which we touched on previously - is certainly very important even

nowadays, although the debate, according to Cohen, has been overshadowed by the discussion between the inductivist

approach and that of the hypothetico-deductivists (respectively Positivism (11) and Positivism (7)), which was evident in the

sociology of science in the 1950's, the philosophy of the social sciences in the 1960’s, the Positivismusstreit in the 1960’s as

well, and in the sociology of scientific knowledge in the 1970’s. Comte, who was the founder of Positivism, certainly was

not a simple empiricist, which part 7 will also show, and his method was definitely not one of inductivism. Durkheim was

more inductivistic but the Vienna Circle was almost entirely devoted to the logical aspects of truth and hence hypothetico-

deductivism. The neo-Positivists sought to integrate both. Despite these inconsistencies in Positivism, the heavy leaning

towards analytical models, system (or organism) analogies and behaviouristic terminology, in Cohen’s view, tells us that

Positivism may still have some saying as an influencial metatheoretical doctrine.

The last mark of distinction of Positivism is the reducibility of normative statements - meaning that all normative

statements are scientific nonsense, emotional commands, or reducible to factual statements (Ibid.:171). Positivism is still

influencial in this respect in that they have challenged “some anti-positivist humanists - including some Frankfurt Marxists -

who do not wish to maintain the separation” (Op.cit.:171) between fact and value-judgements. It is still a commonly held

belief in sociology, as in any other science, that factual (faktualität) - and hence empirical or strict logical - statements are of

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a higher scientific relevance and value than subjective, value-ridden or ideological expressions.

Cohen’s conclusion is that Positivism is, in his view, still alive and still going strong to some, however diminished,

extent compared to the glory days of the doctrine. He finally hails the position of Positivism: “Perhaps, positivism will

reform itself and become resurrected; or, perhaps it really is dead. Either way, three cheers for it would be both

inappropriate and excessive. But two ? Or just one ?” (Op.cit.:172). Cohen’s conclusion, however ambivalent, must be seen

in the light of Halfpenny’s (1982:11) statement that Positivism might be considered dead in itself but as being alive in its

negation, the anti-Positivists, who continuously devote academic energies to debunk Positivism. Now we will turn to a

totally different account than that of Cohen, although, as we shall see, it is still an uncompromising defence of Positivism.

The ends are the same - the means different.

8. Jonathan H. Turner and the revival of a Comtean Positivism:

Percy Cohen is not alone in his Uriah position and support of a revitalisation of Positivism. Also American sociologist,

Jonathan H. Turner, in several writings (Turner 1985 and 1987) presents an unequivocal defence of many of the articles of

Positivism. The position of Turner, which I designated Analytical Positivism (Positivism (16)) in part 3, is most explicit in

his article In Defense of Positivism (1985).

Turner, though, is not blind towards Positivism’s negative connotations in contemporary sociology. But, where we

in part 3 concluded that Positivism is fundamentally anti-theoretical, Turner is of the totally opposite view claiming: “My

belief is that ‘theorists’ in sociology rarely theorize, and as a result, we know embarrassingly little about the social

universe. This lack of knowledge is not because of positivism; on the contrary, it is because we have failed to be positivists

in Comte’s sense of this term” (Turner 1985:24). He turns against the notion of Positivism as equal to crude and raw

empiricism and a naivity about the real workings of humans - this is but a deterrent, a picture painted to make scientists turn

their back on Positivism. According to Turner, then, the usual picture of Positivism is utterly distorted. Real Positivism is

not the thoughts emanating from the Vienna Circle and early English empiricists, who together formed an anti-theoretical

alliance. Real Positivism is the line of thought developed by Auguste Comte in his System of Positive Philosophy from 1830.

So what did Comte say about reality, science and truth ? Apart from his stage model of scientific development

according to which societies move from a religious via a metaphysical to a scientific end stage, as we also touched upn

previously, he offered important and indispensable insights into many other aspects of social life.

As became evident already in part 3, an exhaustive and entirely fair description of Positivism is an impossible mission. We

furthermore saw, that the way truth is conceived within Positivism is generally depicted and viewed within sociology as that

of a very concrete, universal, empirical and authoritarian line of approach denying the abstract, particular, theory and

subjectivity any space. According to Turner, this view needs to be altered drastically.28 Comtean sociology, with its

emphasis on a secular religion of humanity amongst other features - see Positivism (4) - is entirely, and paradoxically,

28 Also Randall Collins recognised this trend: “In sociological metatheory, we have had almost two decades of argument critiquing positivism for its neglect of theory, of the subjective, of the practical and active and the human agent. But although this at first was regarded as liberating and refreshing, the long-run result has been exactly the reverse” (Collins 1986:1343). Collins fears that we have ended in the doldrums - referring to the fact that sociology in the recent decades has turned out to be far too relativistic.

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different from the way we tend to regard Positivistic sociology. Comte gave us three guidelines to a Science Positive:

• The social universe is amenable to the development of abstract laws that can be tested through the careful collection

of data.

• These laws will denote the basic and generic properties of the social universe and will specify their natural relations.

• These laws will not be overtly concerned with causality or functions.

Turner feels that the social scientists have refrained from utilising this scheme, not becuase they are apprehended to be

classified as Positivists, but, on the contrary due to a fear of the opposite. We have been reluctant to be Positivists because

we do not undersatnd what it really entails. Of course Comte refers to laws, which is a common feature of Positivism, but

these laws are not to be concrete but abstract, and should not be concerned only with causality and functions. Does this

mean that even the dialectic method can be accepted by Comtean Positivism ? There is, at least not within Turner’s

approach, any discussion of this matter. Positivism, in Turner’s view, is not a metatheory, which is excessively philosophical

and speculative, but instead pure theory, which is actually practically applicable.

Like Comte, who concluded that “sociology, at the apex of the hierarchy of the sciences,29 logically presupposes

the laws of each of the other scientific disciplines while similarly retaining its autonomous subject matter” (Comte in

Giddens 1978:240), so does Turner believe in a sociology, which by the utilization of naturalistic/Positivistic schemes

(Turner 1985:24), will eventually realise what ‘proper’, sound and valid scientific enterprise is.

Through an extensive discussion, too complicated to recapture here, Turner concludes that what sociologists should

be preoccupied with to be able to generate testable theories, as the foundation of a science of society, are analytical models

which are placed betwixt and between crude empirical generalisations (Durkheimian and to some extent Vienna Circle-

Positivism) and speculative metatheory. This would be in the spirit of Comte’s Positivism which argued “that the best

theoretical statements are those which are highly abstract and denote generic properties of the universal while, at the same

time, they are sufficiently precise so as to be testable” (Op.cit.:28). Comparing Turner’s view with that of Alexander

(1982:40), and hence the above Figure 1, we can actually locate Positivism in at least two different places.

Alexander saw Positivism as the crudest of empiricists placed at the far right of his spectrum. Turner, utilising the same scale

for the sake of the argument, would on the contrary locate Positivism at the points of laws, models and propositions - two of

which comes very close indeed to the anti-Positivist camp. Once again we witness the difficulties in finishing the jigsaw of a

universally accepted definition of Positivism. So to conclude: the Positivism Turner is desperate to revitalise is admittedly

not the same, not even in form, as the much condemned Logical Positivists but on the contrary a much more flexible

Comtean variant.

Like Cohen in part 7, who also supported a Comtean Positivism, however different, Turner sees contemporary

sociology as being in a situation of theoretical famine without the influence of Positivism: “In sum, I think that sociology

has avoided the one kind of theorizing that can cumulate knowledge. We have either retreated up into the meta-theoretical

29 Comte constructed the hierarchy of the sciences as an inverse triangle with logic at the bottom followed upwards by mathematics, physics and biology with sociology at the apex. The Vienna Circle saw the hierarchial structure the totally opposite way around.

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stratosphere or buried ourselves under mounds of raw data. We have, in other words, avoided being Positivists...I think that

we ought to go back to Comte, get comfortable in our armchairs again, and start theorizing” (Op.cit.:29). Alexander

(1993:559) also recognised that the social sciences face the problem of either theoretical overdetermination or empirical

underdetermination or vice versa. Positivism, still, is in the middle of this quarrel.

9. Christopher G. A. Bryant and a reconsideration of Positivism:

This article by Bryant falls somewhat out of the previous discussion of the applicability of Positivism, indeed the desirability

of Positivism in sociology, and can be regarded as an excursion if compared to the other three contributions in this essay.

However, it shares with the other writers, excluding McHugh, a concern with the general misunderstanding of what

Positivism originally was intended to be and in fact stands for.

According to Bryant (1975a:400-404) the usefulness of Comtean Positivism can be narrowed down to six points.

According to Comte a Science Positive consists primarily of the following six theses:

¬ There is a single unified objective world.

∧ That which cannot be known scientifically cannot be known at all.

∨ The discovery of laws of historical development will enable the past to be explained, the present

understood and the future predicted (Savoir pour prevoir).

⇔ Moral and political choice should be established on a scientific basis.

⇐ Social order is the natural condition of society.

⇑ ‘Man’s subjection to the laws of nature, history and society precludes evaluation of social forms in terms

other than those of conformity with these laws.

It is not so much that Bryant is sympathetic to these six manifestos for a Positivistic science of society but he is aiming more

at the criticism launched at Positivism by Talcott Parsons in The Structure of Social Action (1937) and Alvin Gouldner’s

The Coming Crisis in Western Sociology (1971). According to Bryant these two prominent writers have totally confused the

real meaning of Positivism with a straw man version of Positivism.

Parsons confuses the voluntarism and action theory of Weber with a Positivist notion of society and therefore he is

not able to create a unified theory of social action. This is because Parsons supposedly is blind to the French tradition and

origin of Positivism and therefore assumes that Positivism per se is oriented towards voluntary human action although

Positivism is more concerned with universal laws governing human behaviour. The voluntary aspect of human action is

simply not present in real Comtean and Durkheimian Positivistic thought. Gouldner, on the other hand, makes the totally

opposite mistake since he focuses entirely on the French tradition of Positivism thereby ignoring the Anglo-American

inspiration. Gouldner confuses the French tradition with the American trend in many respects such as methodology, research

methods, the idea of science as the religion of humanity and therefore he is not capable of pinpointing the real flaws in

Positivism as it was practiced in American sociology but instead focuses on the Positivist ghost from 19th century France.

The main point of Bryant’s article is to draw a distinction between a French intellectualistic Positivism and an

American instrumentalist and empiricist Positivism. Much of the debate surrounding what Positivism is and ought to be

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centres around this misunderstanding of different positions within Positivistic thought - positions that has been highlighted

already in part 3 of this essay. Bryant is not sympathetic to Positivism in general but is concentrating on the confusion in

contemporary sociology that has led to much of the unwarrented criticism aimed at Positivism and its principles. His

conclusion appears to be as follows: In order to criticize Positivism one needs at least to clarify, indeed understand, what

Positivism is and what the doctrine stands for.

The four above contributions to the dispute surrounding Positivism’s influence in the recent decades of sociological

theory have each provided us with useful insights into what Positivism is, what sociology ought to be, and to what extent

sociology and Positivism should continue to be wedded to each other in the future. The questions have been multiple, the

answers few, although both Cohen, Alexander and Bryant all have hailed the Comtean Positivism and its quest for certain,

positive, organic, precise and useful knowledge. Therefore I will now try to construct a position that both recognises the

importance of supporting some of the tenets of classical Positivism whilst also recognizing that Positivism is incapable of

saving sociology from its inferiority-complex (Machlup 1956 and 1963). The position, as we shall see, also tries to steer

clear of both rigid Positivistic as well as extreme hermeneutic conceptions of truth and how exactly to arrive at it. But before

this let us return briefly to a previous question posed in this essay by entering an excursion.

10. Excursion: The death of Positivism or Positivism hibernating?

As we have seen in the foregoing parts Positivism is not exactly alive and kicking as in its days of prosperity in the early and

mid-20th century. But the opposite claim, that Positvism as an epistemological doctrine was annihilated by the Positivis-

musstreit in the 1960’s does not seem to hold water either. This is testified by the two researchers Lincoln and Guba who

states: “We shall take the position that the positivist posture, while discredited by vanguard thinkers in every known

discipline, continues to this day to guide the efforts of practitioners of inquiry, particularly in the social or human

scineces...” (Lincoln & Guba 1985:15). What we need to do is to keep in mind that Positivism means many different things

to many different people at many different times and that the alleged demise of the doctrine normally concerns Positivism in

its logical empiricist guise while many of the principles of Cometan Positivism or psychological Positivism still haunts the

corridors of institutions of research and education even today.

Positivism, as Halfpenny (1982) and Phillips (1987) rightly conclude, is still breathing first and foremost through its

enemies’ continuous production of works relating to the faults and inadequacies of Positivism, and secondly Positivism is

still alive to some extent in watered-down versions in contemporary theories such as the empiricism of Pawson (1989) or in

the writings of the neo-behaviourists and neo-functionalists.

No matter which view one supports: the one celebrating the demise of Positivism or those mourning it and

desperately trying to revitalise Positivism, I believe that every sociologist with respect for himself and the science he

represents could learn a useful insight from one of the greatest sociologists ever, Max Weber, who succintly stated: “If the

professional thinker has an immediate obligation at all, it is to keep a cool head in the face of the idols prevailing at the

time, and if necessary to swim against the stream” (Weber 1949:47). To swin against the stream in the mid-century was to

oppose Positivism, in the 1960’s and 1970’s it was to defend Positivism in the wake of the severe criticism directed against

it, and today I believe that to follow Weber’s proposition would amount to try to create a hybrid between Positivism and

anti-Positivism which has been the attempt of this essay.

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Although we need to keep in mind that Positivism for many reasons often has worked detrimental to sociology’s

integration into broader society we must still remember that “the logical positivists contributed a great deal towards the

understanding of the nature of philosophical questions, and in their approach to philosophy they set an example from which

many have still to learn” (Ashby 1964:508). So while this essay does neither mourn nor celebrate the alleged disapperance

of Positivist thought it still recollects Positivisms contribution to the bulk of knowledge we normally refer to as social

science - sociology would, as it were, completely be in the doldurms (Collins 1986) was it not for the inspiration also offered

by Positivism.

11. A proposed middleground: Kantian philosophy and Weberian sociology:

After reviewing these four relatively recent contributions to the discussion on Positivism there can hardly be any doubt

whatsoever that the doctrine is still an influence in whatever way in contemporary sociology. Positivism has many important

contributions to sociology, but just as many defects and flaws. Is there a possible middleground between a hardcore

Positivism, as for example that of Franklin Giddings and George Lundberg, and a radical anti-Positivism, as that of the

somewhat obscure Geisteswissenschaften of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, phenomenology or existential

sociology ? Can we bridge these, on the surface, irreconcilable positions ?

Although, we have seen in parts 7, 8 and 9, Positivism is not equal to an extreme empirical and quantitative type of

research, this is nevertheless the way it is generally viewed - as a Juggernaut crushing every subjective and ideological

expression in the name of science. That was particularly why Positivism, in the wave of the upheavals against functionalism,

also came so mightily under attack in the 1960's: "To some extent, this failure of quantitative research to make significant

breakthroughs is what gives so much self-satisfaction to the antipositivist metatheories that are predominant on the

qualitative and theoretical side of sociology today. Positivism is identified as the Establishment of the bad old days before

the 1960s revolt" (Collins 1986:1342). What has to recognised, though, and what has been the credo of much anti-Positivist

thinking, is that "truth claims, after all, need not to be limited to the criterion of testable empirical validity. Each level of

supra-empirical discourse has embedded within in distinctive criteria of truth" (Alexander 1993:561). What we need to do

is to bring theory back in without disregarding the empirical side. This was exactly what Comte, according to both Percy S.

Cohen and Jonathan H. Turner sought to do, and what Peter McHugh believed had been a failure in Positivism - but we

must keep in mind that the reign of Positivism owes just as much to the Vienna Circle than to Comte - perhaps even more,

and that is why Positivism is juxaposed with empiricism and logical models.

There is not a lack of anti-Positivisms to put up against that of Positivism, on the contrary (Stockman 1983).

Phenomenology and to a lesser extent ethnomethodology critisised Positivism for ignoring the mind, consciousness and

intersubjectivity and hence in the last instance the action perspective. Existential sociology brought life experiences, liberty

(freedom) and political praxis into the picture. Symbolic interactionism brought, during their years of ‘loyal opposition’ to

especially functionalism, meaning and its social interactional construction into the limelight. Feminism attacked Positivism

for neglecting emotions, for discarding partiality and for adopting an impersonal naturalistic mode of inquiry. The

hermeneutics30 and the verstehen-tradition was opposed to Positivisms ignorance of culture, tradition, history and values

30 One of the dominant hermeneutics of his days, Heinrich Rickert, totally gave up on the

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and in addition to these points also Positivism's natural scientific imperialism in the cultural and social sciences.

Critical Theory, one of the most vigorous negations of Positivist sociology, saw Positivism as inherently

conservative and unimaginative and supportive of a technological reign of terror. Critical Theory - also called the ‘dialectical

hermeneutics’ -build the core of their attacks, during the Positivismusstreit in German sociology in the 1960's, around the

three main criticisms:

notion of truth being founded on agreement with reality. Reality, according to him, is whatever agrees with truth - and truth eventually comes down to what he referred to as ‘our primal duty’, which echoes Kant and is in direct contrast to the Positivist notion of value-judgements as commands (James 1995:91).

• Philosophy of science should not be reduced to epistemology.

• Social science asks for a particular method of analysis.

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•Society cannot be grasped by the functional notion of a system, but only by the dialectical notion of totality

(Meissner & Wold 1974:140).31

These attacks are uncompromising altogether. I sought, and found, a much more fruitful and compromising alternative to

both rigid Positivism and extreme, and often rather mystical, Geisteswissenschaften, in writings that have long since been

forgotten in sociology but needs to be brought back into the limelight. What I am referring to is Kantian philosophy - not the

speculative and theological kind - but rather the applied thoughts to social science. Initially I feel impelled to make it utterly

clear that the accounts of Kantian philosophy and Weberian sociology offered here are by no means exhaustive or do justice

to the writings or their authors - this would require many heavy volumes.

I have already touched upon some of Kant's ideas earlier on in this essay when I in part 4 introduced the neo-

Kantians. Where the neo-Kantians took Kant32 to extremes, he himself sought to reconcile the two main strands in Western

philosophy - and the philosophy of the sciences - namely rationalism and empiricism (Marshall 1994:267). We saw how the

neo-Kantians chose the rationalistic, and idealistic, course attacking Positivism for being far too physicalistic and

empirically oriented. The split was fundamentally between the two kinds of knowledge Kant developed: a priori and a

posteriori. These can be subdivided into either synthetical or analytical33 modes of knowledge according to Kant. Not only

did he try and reconcile these two, as we shall see, but also to build a bridge over the troubled waters of religion,

metaphysics and science - no doubt about the fact that Kant fully believed in science, but this was not inconsistent in

believing in God or Nature either. Actually science was constituted on the foundation provided by religion.

The bricks to this construction of a reconciliation was to be morality - a word utterly appalling to most Positivists. The

major contribution Kant made in his middleposition, which was far from a result of tergiversation, was his materpiece The

Critique of Pure Reason (1781). His mission here was basically to disregard truth and to "deny knowledge, in order to make

room for faith" (Solomon 1988:26). Kant, though, did not seek to discard either science or metaphysics, as did for example

Hume and Locke - some of the founders of the empiricist movement - viewing metaphysics as a relic of superstition. To

Kant even metaphysics had an indispensable place in a search for truth: "That the human mind will never give up

31 Another of the main confrontations was led by Herbert Marcuse who caluminated that "empirical reason is always destructive - not only when it is employed for barbaric ends...empirical reason necessarily and inherently examines its object (society) from an instrumental perspective, which accordingly reduces its object to objectified processes to be controlled, manipulated and dominated" (Marcuse in Sewart, John J. (1978:19): ‘Critical Theory and the Critique of Conservative Method’. American Sociologist, 13 (1)). 32 My sources on the thoughts of Immanuel Kant are, apart from Susan Stedman Jones (1980), also extracts from Robert C. Solomon's Continental Philosophy since 1750, R. S. Woolhouse's The Empiricists, and John Cottingham's The Rationalists, all Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988. In addition I found valuable information in David Applebaum's (1995) The Vision of Kant. Rockport: Element Books. 33 Actually, according to Kant, there exist both analytical and synthetical a priori but only synthetic a posteriori (D. W. Hamlyn (1970:256): The Theory of Knowledge. Basingstoke: Macmillan. The Positivist truth seems to centre around the a posteriori or to some extent analytical a priori.

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metaphysical researches is as little to be expected as that we, to avoid inhaling impure air, should give up breathing

altogether" (Kant in Solomon 1988:28). Science and metaphysics - Positivism and Geisteswissenschaften - are inseparable

in the quest for truth about the universe, society and human action.

Others, more radically, stated the utility of metaphysics in contrast to Positivism's dismissal hereof: "Metaphysics,

however inadequate for the understanding of the movement of social reality and its transformation, at least understands the

discrepancy between appearence and essence, the universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete" (Horkheimer

1972:xvi). Kant himself would not go as far. He was doubtlessly the most important philosopher since the Ancient Greeks,

but he was - and is - also useful in the field of social scientific research as amongst others Susan Stedman Jones (1980) has

proven. She claims that all methodology can be traced back to Kant, and she points to the fact, as also recognised by Kant,

that social science is not a matter of discovering, explaining and understanding the relationship of man to nature where we

only have one unknown and unformulated variable (man), but, on the contrary, a much more delicate matter of the intricate

relationship of man reflecting on man's relationship to man. We have, at least, two if not three unknown variables. Hence,

law-formulations are not enough (Ibid.:100).

So in what way can Kant reconcile empiricism and rationalism, without breaking the rules of sound argument ?

Fundamentally, we can derive three indispensable insights from Kant:

• The proper use of intellectual concepts is to provide a framework for empirical inquiries.

• The experiences we have are conceptually controlled.

• Morality and science, then, "are compatible in the lived world of human experience".

This might sound like a circular argument - and actually it is. Concepts are formed by experience (a posteriori) but our

experiences are in return formed by our concepts (a priori). Hence, there is a room for both empiricism and rationalism, and

in the last instance theory as well as empirical investigations. The common aim of both is to liberate the individual so that

he/she can act freely without constraints. The freedom of the individual, which is the ethos of Kantian philosophy, is

possible in a world subjected to strict determinism because we are the creators (constructors) of that determinism. Autonomy

is possible despite causality.

Our perception is controlled by the ‘categories’ we are all equipped with. Truth, then, emanates from the cooperation

of sense and reason, empirical research and theoretical (and conceptual) background. If we discard either side, as did the

neo-Kantian anti-Positivists or the naturalist Positivists, we will never come one single step closer to truth - to find out the

nature of ‘things-in-themselves’ (die Dinge-an-Sich). What Kant furthermore did was to recognise that social being is not

just bound up in knowledge but also, and just as importantly, in action: "To be human is not just to know; it is also to do. We

are agents as well as observers; we are not just objects in the world, but we can change it" (Solomon 1988:37). And to

Kant our actions, and together with them our knowledge, are guided by moral imperatives - morals and science are hence

inseparable - which the Positivists failed to recognise.

I will, like the historian Kuno Fischer in 1860, plead for ‘a return to Kant’ as the saviour of sociology (Marshall

1994:352). A return to Kant, though, as has been shown, does not mean a total dismissal of Positivism - Durkheim, for one,

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was heavily influenced by the ideas of Immanuel Kant (Jones 1980:104) - and so should we allow ourselves to be.

Another possible middleground between Positivism and anti-Positivism is the position of Max Weber, who

spearheaded the interpretative tradition in sociology. He, like Kant, focussed on action. Weber's theory of action and also his

more philosophical considerations on a social science are too detailed to be treated comprehensively here in this essay. But

we need to look briefly at what Weber thought about the distinction the Positivists urged us to construct between natural and

social scientific modes of inquiry. Although "Max Weber counted himself among the 'children' of the historical school; he

came to fulfill and not to destroy. He was a restorer of 'idealism'" (Cahnmann 1964:120), he nevertheless, together with his

contemporary Georg Simmel, would not give totally in to the neo-Kantian program either.

According to Weber, which was at the heart of his interpretative position, there is a meaning - possibly a

dauerreflexion in human beings directed towards meaning in the words of Helmuth Schelsky - attached to action and hence

an intention. Actions are motivated - caused by something. Actions, though, are not mere physiological reflexes as the

behaviourists thought. Weber sees the meaning as subjectively constituted but objectively graspable, although he has his

reservations about 'objectivity': "There is no absolutely 'objective' scientific analysis of...social phenomena independent of

special and onesided viewpoints according to which - expressly or tacitly - ...they are organised, selected and analyzed for

expository purposes" (Weber in Sherman 1974:177). The interpretation, then, is the keyword and this is why Weber is

conventionally regarded as the founder of the so-called Verstehende Soziologie (Anbro et al. 1972:96).

Interpretation is not appreciated, say accepted, in Positivist epistemology, because interpretation is bound up with

subjectivity, values and morality. To Weber, who found himself in an anti-Positivist position at the same time as he had

close resemblances to Positivism in many respects (Cahnmann 1964:155), this did not cause distress and was not a

contradition in terms.

Weber is an anti-Positivist in that his empirical research was of a historical and cultural character, a relic from the

hermeneutics, claiming that truth is eventually relative, not just in space but also in time. What was true yesterday might be

untrue today or tomorrow - what is true in Heidelberg in 1910 might be untrue, say, in Cambridge in 1999. Truths are

historically contingent and context-dependent. He is moreover an anti-Positivist in his fundamental description of

sociology's role: "I became one [a sociologist]", he claims, "in order to put an end to collectivist notions...sociology...is a

science concerning itself with the interpretative undersatnding of social action and thereby with causal explanation of its

course and consequences" (Weber in Ritzer 1992:124).

What is evident from this quotation is that Weber purposively puts himself in the middleposition of causality and

intentionality, explanation and understanding. He admits that an adequate causality (called Weber’s teleology) is a

necessary tool in sociology's understanding of reality but at the same time states that social reality is different from natural

reality (Giddens 1974:6). Yet another anti-Positivist trait of Weber becomes clear when turning to values and normativity.

He distinguishes between value-neutrality, a Positivistic feature, and value-orientation, an interpretative feature. The former

says, as we have seen previously, that the scientist must refrain from mixing personal interests of whatever kind with

objectivity in the process of scientific research (Anbro et al. 1972:105). But Weber also recognised that the mere

presentation of raw data would not be acceptable and therefore he introduces the concept of value-orientation (Wertziehung):

"Reality, whether natural or social, is extensively and intensively infinite; therefore any approach to the analysis of a given

event or phenomenon in reality must be selective, and guided by values..." (Weber in Giddens 1974:7). Value-orientation, or

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what Weber sometimes termed value-relevance, also works at the moment of the selection of a proper object for social

scientific inquiry.

My opinion is that Weber, however ambiguous, is completely right. Value-neutrality is desirable but value-

orientation is inevitable. Instead of being clinically value-neutral or excessively normative we must admit, as Kant pointed

out, that morality and science go hand in hand in the service of mankind and the search for truth. The distinguished Polish

sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has rightly stated, in a combination of neo-Weberian and neo-marxist theory, that sociology’s

raison d’tre is closely connected to the everyday lives of the downtrodden and deprived in the society and this is what

sociology is supposed to investigate and hopefully also rectify: “Either sociology will make sense of the human world

thereby giving power to the powerless, or it must admit its own powerlessness in making sense of its own existence”

(Bauman 1972:186).

This view, of course, is directly at stake with the Positivistic assumption of value-neutrality and a ‘disinterested’

observation of social facts but, on the other hand, it could also be translated as a support to the idea of value-orientation -

that sociology unavoidably will be practiced by human beings with particular preferences, values and norms and not by

objectivist robots standing on a higher reflexive ground than those observed by them. It is completely impossible, in

practical empirical studies as well as in theoretical ponderings, although Pierre Bourdieu would possibly disagree

considering his emphasis on clear cut ‘epistemological breaks’, to point to the exact spot where value-orientation ends and

value-neutrality begins.

Also others have offered a middleposition in relation to Positivism and anti-Positivism. Ralph Dahrendorf and his

Kantian-inspired ideal of a ‘homo sociologicus’ is but one attempt, Robert Merton’s ideas about a science of sociology owes

much to both camps of thought as well, and so does C. Wright Mills’ and Robert Nisbet’s humanistic sociologies (Marshall

1994:229), crying for the interdisciplinarity that the discipline so desperately needs. Friedrich Hayek’s (who was a great

believer in the wonders of science) criticism of the adoption of criteria from natural science to social science is also an

interesting position in this debate (Hayek 1952:44-45). It is not justifiable to think of all science as one. Max Eastman put

this categorically when stating: "Social science...does differ from physical or mechanical or any other kind of engeneering

in that the scientists themselves are a part of the material they work with, and what they think about the experiment may

affect its result" (Harding 1936:439).

So, what this part has shown is, personified in Kant and Weber, that discarding Positivism is not the same as

discarding science. Sociology is a science - essentially different from many other sciences. An appreciation of this would be

in place.

12. Conclusions: Sociological truth revisited:

The previous sections have sought to demonstrate the nature of the position of Positivism within sociology, and how this,

obviously privileged, position has had a severe impact on the way we as sociologists conceive of truth. It has been shown

that Positivism is far from dead - perhaps out of the immediate wave of fashion (Cohen 1980) - but nevertheless still on the

agenda and an important factor in contemporary sociology; not only as a classic but as a foretoken of what is yet to come

“and even if it [Positivism] in its simpler philosophical form is dead, the spirit of those earlier formulations continues to

haunt sociology, in a full range of guises, from the sociological technicians’ programme for a natural science of society,

46

pursued through increasingly sophisticated statistical manipulation of carefully quantified data, to the perhaps mythical

belief that sociology’s most urgent need is to be liberated from domination by Positivism” (Halfpenny 1982:121).

This quotation sums up two important aspects of the debate over Positivism. First, that Positivism is still a vital input

in sociological theory - even today. Secondly, that the notion of Positivism has been somewhat misapprehended - equated,

even by experts in the field, only with the strict empirical, logical, behaviourist and quantification approach of the naturalists

and the Vienna Circle. Positivism, e.g. the Comtean variant, as shown by J. H. Turner and P. S. Cohen in parts 6 and 7, is

something more than that reductionist and narrow description.For instance it relies just as much on theory than any other

social theory, at least in its Comtean and also Durkheimian expressions. Positivism, with its heavy relying on epistemology,

is perhaps rather outdated in an age where, at least in Anthony Giddens’ view, sociology is heading back to ontology -

something that also Kant would have appreciated in spite of his focus on epistemology. Ontology and epistemology are two

sides of the same coin - the one cannot be expressed without consideration to the other (just like learning to swin requires

the existence of water to swin in).

One of the most devasting criticisms launched at Positivism cannot, though, be rebuted: the claim that Positivism is

extremely static, conservative and detached from practical reality: “A theory must be evaluated by standards of coherence,

consistency, understanding, simplicity, explanatory power etc.”.34 A social theory, which I would argue Positivism should

be regarded as, however, in addition to these, should be judged according to its practical implications as well. So, in this way

utilitarianism in social theory is an absolute must - and here Positivism falters.

To briefly sum up the conclusions to the two initial questions we will first need to turn to the matter of Positivism’s situation

in 1990’s sociology and then link this answer to the question concerning truth and science. Positivism is present in all

sociological paradigms or traditions as an overarching and ambient empyrean such as in functionalism, realism,

structuralism, marxism, systems theory, and even in the self-proclaimed anti-Positivist traditions such as neo-Kantianism or

Weber’s interpretative approach. It is utterly impossible to touch on matters of some substance within sociology without

treading on the toes of the Positivists just as much as it is impossible to construct social theory without echoing either of the

sociological triumvirate of Durkheim, Marx or Weber: “A science that forgets its founders is lost” to rephrase A. N.

Whitehead’s statement in part 1. “Positivism may be dead in that there is no longer any identifiable community of

philosophers (sociologists) who gives its simpler characterisation unqualified support” (Halfpenny 1982:120), but as we

saw both Cohen (1980) and Turner (1985) supported the original version of Positivism. And the never-ending quest for

sociological truth, in which Positivism was the trailblazer, is still moulded and directed by Positivistic ideas and its

negations.

Positivism has had, and to a limited extent still has, an immense impact on sociology concerning matters of

ontology, epistemology, methodology, methodic heuristics, philosophy of science, theory as well as metatheory, and

research techniques. The claims that Positivism is either dead or alive and kicking are fundamentally antinomies in the

Kantian sense of the word: “An antinomy produces two conclusions, each supported by a perfectly sound argument, which

nevertheless cannot both be true...what is demonstrated by the antinomies...is the illusory nature of reason” (Solomon

34 Quotation from Christine Delphy (1980:84): ‘The Materialist Feminism is Possible’, Feminist Review, 7.

47

1988:35). Sociology, as this essay has shown, is inherently, like philosophy according to Kant, defiled with antinomies. The

dichotomy of Positivism and anti-Positivism and their reconciliation sought in part 11 above demonstrates the antinomistic

nature of truths in sociology:35

Positivism: Anti-Positivism:

Realism Ontology Nominalism

Objectivism Epistemology Subjectivism

Nomothetic Methodology Idiographic

Determinism Human Nature Voluntarism

Behaviourism Human conduct Intentionalism

Causal necessity Causality Adequate causality

Unity of sciences Scientific field Diversity of sciences

Truth lies not on either side of this scheme (which is admittedly not exhaustive and like any other scheme contestable) but is

encircling the entire scheme. Truth dwells neither in the extreme naturalistic conception of society as a physical object,

action as behaviour, structure as solidified and social being in general as following causal laws. Neither does truth rest in the

just as radical humanistic Geisteswissenschaften. Sociology is in the fortunate (and prosperous) position of being able to

borrow and adopt insights from the diversity of philosophy, natural science, art, political science, religion, history, literature

criticism and psychology without ending in the nothingness of relativistic metaphysics. Truth exists both in the inner man (as

St. Augustine testified) as well as outside him - it is the relationship between these two sociology needs to pay attention to.

I am not, in this essay, trying to sequestrate natural scientific methods from sociology36 which would include many

important remedies in discovering social reality (such as observation, statistics and laboratory experiments) but, on the

contrary, that sociology incorporates the complementary aspects of quantitative and qualitative methods equally. Without

both the field will face congelation. I am merely stating what has been stated previously, namely that “while a return to

positivism might appear the easiest way for sociology to heal ifself [from its process of decomposition], positivism’s very

lack of - sometimes denial of - larger meanings and moorings can be counterproductive. We live in a period when the false

option of crude empiricism competes with varieties of abstracted grand theory for the souls of disciplines already emptied of

human content. And this is a problem that all the social sciences face in common” (Horowitz 1994:14). So the problem of

Positivism is closely bound up with the problem of legitimation faced by contemporary sociology which again is but an echo

of the general problem of the social sciences in the 1990’s.

The academic dispute over the domination of the field of social science by Positivists and anti-Positivists - to apply

Bourdieu’s (1975) apt categorization of scientific disciplines as ‘fields’ (or perhaps even ‘battlefields’) - will probably prove

35 Developed further from Burrell & Morgan (1979:3). 36 Although some of the laboratory experiments carried out in the 1950’s U.S.A. - in the name of a natural scientific discovery of the laws governing social life and human conduct - by behaviourists involving rats and mazes - called vivijection to forecast human behaviour seem rather extreme and absurd.

48

to be a never-ending story with casulties on both sides. Sociology is not, and never has been, inferior to the natural sciences

and the people who have dedicated their lives to social scientific inquiry are not standing on a lower level of the ladder

leading to the academic Tower of Babel as it has been noted: “Many sociology departments have been notorious for their

role as refuge for mentally underpriviledged undergraduates...it is no wonder that the social sciences are being regarded as

the poor relations of the natural sciences and as disciplines for which students who cannot qualify for ‘the’ sciences are still

good enough” (Machlup 1963:176). It is bad enough that others presumably believe such claims - it is, however, worse if

we start believing it ourselves.

This essay has sought to provide a description and analysis of the delicate relationships between sociology and

Positivism, truth and science, sociology and truth, science and sociology, Positivism and truth, and science and Positivism.

In addition, an answer to the question of Positivism’s relative strength and position within current sociology has been

approxiamted. The search for sociological truth is a never-continuing mission, and if it was not, sociology, and together with

it Positivism, would wither away. It is indeed the quarrels and not the stasis that keep social science alive.

* * *

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Udgivelser i serien Sociologiske Arbejdspapirer

Nr. 1, 1999 Michael Hviid Jacobsen


Nr. 2, 1999 Erik Laursen

Den Ritualiserede Eufori

Nr. 3, 1999 Mikael Carleheden

Recontructing epistemology. Towards and normative Conception of Social Science

58



- A History of the Rise and Fall of the Reign of Positivism in the Social Sciences

Abstract

This essay belongs to the realm of the sociology of science, or more specifically, the sociology of scientific knowledge,

which concerns itself with the quest for scientific, and therefore also sociological, truth. This search has lasted for as long as

science has existed as a specific way of analysing, inquiring about and understanding social reality. Truth, in the scientific

understanding of the word, differs from religious, ideological or mystical interpretations of and speculations about truth

which amongst others Max Weber realised when he spoke of a proces of Entzauberung (a kind of demystification of truths, a

purification of what sound and valid knowledge is and the attempt at a rationalisation of the research process proper)

sweeping across society and science in modernity. One of the most vigorous and persistent attempts to metatheorise about

scientific truth has been the doctrine of Positivism, and especially in the field of sociology did Positivism for many decades

obtain an omnipotent position as the sole possessor of truth until it came mightily under attack from anti-Positivism. It is not

the aim entirely to annihilate Positivism within the realm of sociology which is the raison d’tre of this essay but on the

contrary to seek out the grounds for an adequate scientific truth that lies between the Scylla of Positivism and the Carybdis

of anti-Positivism. There is little doubt that nowadays the spellbinding effect of Positivism has been broken, at least the

majority of social researchers claim, and a soul-searching discussion about the adequacy versus the inadequacy of Positivism

has gradually risen within sociology. The writer here offers a limited account of this discussion and, in the final parts of this

essay, proposes a possible middleground between a strict Positivism and a just as rigid Geisteswissenschaftlich anti-

Positivism in the form of a combination of aspects of Weberian and neo-Kantian social philosophy.

ISSN: 1399-4514

ISBN: 87-90867-00-99

Tryk: Kopicentralen, Aalborg Universitet

Documents

The Search for Sociological TruthEver since the so-called father of sociology, Auguste Comte, coined the term sociology in 1824 (Horkheimer & Adorno 1973:12), the field has been biased