Walter Wallace - The Logic of Science in Sociology

First published 1971 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

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The subject of this book is limited to the abstract form or logic of science (as applied particularly to scientific sociology). Therefore, neither the substantive content nor the social, economic, political, ethical, aesthetic, historical, and other causes, conditions, and consequences of any particular science, or of science as a whole, will be discussed here. My chief aim has been to compress, to simplify, and to organize into an easily understood and reasonably well-documented scheme some principal answers to questions such as: What makes a discipline scientific in the first place? What are theories, empirical generalizations, hypotheses, and observations; and how are they related to each other? What is meant by the scientific method? What roles do induction and deduction play in science? What are the places of measurement, sampling techniques, descriptive statistics, statistical inference, scale construction, tests of significance, grand theories, and middle-range theories? What parts are played by our ideas concerning logic, causality, and chance? What is the significance of the rule of parsimony? How do verbal and mathematical languages compare in expressing scientific statements?

The intended use of this book goes beyond these abstract questions, however. The discussion presented here may also serve a practical role in the sociology and history of science by providing a framework for reducing the enormous variety of scientific researches both within a given field and across all fields to a limited number of interrelated formal elements. Such a framework, it is hoped, may prove useful in assessing empirical relationships between the formal aspects of scientific work and its substantive, social, economic, political, and historic aspects.

Finally, I hope this book will be of use in constructing individual scientific researches. In this sense, it may be treated as a guide to consideration of the most general formal problems that seem intrinsic to all such researches.

For helping to make this book possible, I offer my thanks to Russell Sage Foundation and my colleagues there, whose support, intellectual stimulation, and books were the essential background and raw materials; to Alexander J. Morin, who always provides excellent criticism and ideas; to Richard J. Hill, who led me profitably to reconsider some problems discussed here; to Robert K. Merton, who commented encouragingly on an earlier draft of this book; and to Bern Fasse, who expertly typed my handwritten conglomerate.

Whatever else it may be, science is a way of generating and testing the truth of statements about events in the world of human experience. But since science is only one of several ways of doing this, it seems appropriate to begin by identifying them all, specifying some of the most general differences among them, and thus locating science within the context they provide.

There are at least four ways of generating, and testing the truth of, empirical statements: authoritarian, mystical, logico-rational and scientific. A principal distinction among these is the manner in which each vests confidence in the producer of the statement that is alleged to be true (that is, one asks, Who says so?); in the procedure by which the statement was produced (that is, one asks, How do you know?): and in the effect of the statement (that is, one asks, What difference does it make?).

In the authoritarian mode, knowledge is sought and tested by referring to those who are socially defined as qualified producers of knowledge (for example, oracles, elders, archbishops, kings, presidents, professors). Here the knowledge-seeker attributes the ability to produce true statements to the natural or supernatural occupant of a particular social position. The procedure whereby the seeker solicits this authority (prayer, petition, etiquette, ceremony) is likely to be important to the nature of the authoritys response, but not to the seekers confidence in that response. Moreover, although the practical effects of the knowledge thus obtained can contribute to the eventual overthrow of authority, a very large number of effective dis- confirmations may be required before this happens.

The mystical mode (including its drug- or stress-induced hallucinatory variety) is partly related to the authoritarian, insofar as both may solicit knowledge from prophets, mediums, divines, gods, and other supernaturally knowledgeable authorities. But the authoritarian mode depends essentially on the social position of the knowledge-producer, while the mystical mode depends more essentially on manifestations of the knowl- edge-consumers personal state of grace, and on his personal psychophysical state. For this reason, in the mystical mode far more may depend on applying ritualistic purification and sensitizing procedures to the consumer. This mode also extends its solicitations for knowledge beyond animistic gods, to more impersonal, abstract, unpredictably inspirational, and magical sources, such as manifest themselves in readings of the tarot, entrails, hexagrams, and horoscopes. Again, as in the case of the authoritarian mode, a very large number of effective dis- confirmations may be needed before confidence in the mystical grounds for knowledge can be shaken.