From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Wed 03 Mar 2004 - 05:53:34 GMT
"While there are differences between, among, and within the creative
sociologies, they all belong together in their resistance to using the
methods of the natural sciences in studying social phenomena. Underlying
them all is the assumption that human beings are different from the subject
matter of other sciences in that they create, or construct, their social
reality in interaction. They are joined in their opposition to sociological
approaches that assume that human behavior is determined by social structure.
"Sociology is not the only discipline experiencing schisms of this
kind. It is well known that the field of psychology is sharply divided
between "humanists" and clinical or experimental psychologists, 1 but it
is, perhaps, less commonly known that similar differences divide
anthropologists and historians of science, as well as those in other
disciplines, including some of the natural sciences. In the history of
science, the debate is between the "internalists" and the "externalists."
"The question concerns whether the origin and growth of science
depend upon factors external to the substance of science itself, such as
social and economic influences, or whether scientific ideas have a life of
their own, insulated from the general cultural, economic, and social state
of a nation or a community of nations. 2"
Page 173
_An Excursion into Creative Sociology_ by Monica B. Morris; Columbia
University Press, 1977
You sure find some bizarre statements in Sociology because both halves of
the last sentence are true. It is historically obvious that social and
economic influences had a determining role in the origin and growth of
science, early science having very much depended on people with time and
money to spend on it. It is also true that what science finds, such as
elements, is "insulated from the general cultural economic, and social
state of a nation or a community of nations."
(Assuming a consistent real word, materials studies will find about a
hundred chemical elements, and you are no more likely to find an element
between carbon and nitrogen than you are to find a whole number between 6
and 7.)
Keith Henson
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