Barry Hindess - Philosophy and Methodology in the Social Sciences

First published in 1977 by THE HARVESTER PRESS LIMITED Publisher: John Spiers 2 Stanford Terrace, Hassocks, Sussex.

B. Hindess 1977

British Library Cataloging in Publication Data

Hindess, Barry

Philosophy and methodology in the social sciences.

1. Social sciences -- Methodology

I. Title

300.18 H61

ISBN 0-85527-344-5

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Redwood Burn Limited, Trowbridge & Esher

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The first six chapters of this book provide a systematic critique of epistemological and philosophical interventions in the social sciences and of prescriptive methodology in general. The first chapter examines the methodological doctrines of Max Weber and his definition of sociology a science of social action. I argue that Weber's definition of sociology is based on an essentially religious, metaphysical conception of man, that his methodology is relativistic and irrationalist, and that his concept of scientific objectivity is a faade for an underlying notion of verisimilitude, of plausibility and subjective conviction. The next two chapters deal directly with phenomenology and phenomenological sociology. The first is an extended critique of the work of Alfred Schutz, showing that it reduces the social sciences laterally to story-telling and, further, that far from being an application of Husserl's philosophy it represents a vulgar psychologistic distortion of it. The second examines Husserl's conception of the nature of the sciences and of philosophy in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology and argues that, despite its rigour, Husserl's epistemology is structured around a number of crucial contradictions which render it ultimately incoherent. It follows that there can be no rational or coherent phenomenological 'foundation' of the social sciences. In the next three chapters I have developed an extend

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ed critique of empiricist methodologies and of their epistemological bases in the positivist and neo-positivist philosophies of Carnap, Mill, Popper and others.

Two of these chapters have been published elsewhere and, save for minor revisions and corrections, they are reprinted here without change. The rest have their origin in lectures or seminars prepared for various audiences during the last few years. These have been heavily revised and expanded for publication in their present form. In all cases my approach has been abstract and theoretical. I have been concerned to examine the concepts and relations between concepts entailed in the methodological and epistemological doctrines in question and to investigate what might be called the logical character of the systems of concept involved, in particular their relative coherence and consistency. I propose no methodology or epistemology as an alternative to the positions criticized here. On the contrary I argue that the problems which these disciplines pose are false problems and that they arise only as a function of a conception of knowledge which can be shown to be fundamentally and inescapably incoherent. Epistemology and such derivative doctrines as methodology and philosophy of science have no rational or coherent foundation. In particular, then, there can be no rational or coherent prescriptive methodology. These arguments are outlined below.