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Social Insight, Nuance, and Mind-Types: A Polar Hypothesis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Extract
The complexity of social data has been a barrier which sociology has seemingly been unable to surmount. Consequently sociology, like other social sciences, has tended to divide itself into groups advocating different emphases in approach, concerning themselves respectively with the “quantitative” or “qualitative” aspects of social data. These two camps may be seen to diverge along distinct lines, the former approaching material from what is conceived to be a “scientific” frame of reference, posing problems which—it is hoped—will be “explained” by the mathematical arrangement of materials; whereas the latter constructs questions the answer to which will make for “understanding”—ordinarily of behavior—through verbal symbolizations. Explanation usually is accomplished through the achievement of a formula—if couched in mathematical terms it is viewed as the highest order—and this group views the achievement of “understanding” a useless procedure, for—since “understanding” is not mathematically exposited—it is necessarily incapable of being validated. On the other hand, he of the group desirous to understand behavior, finds the problems posed by the “positivist” irrelevant to the larger problems in which his interest lies, and unenlightening for all of the devious steps taken to arrive at a solution; more in the manner than in the spirit of science.
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- Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1941
References
1 Notably political science with its political “philosophers,”—concerned e.g., with sovereignty—and its proponents of “practical government,”—e.g., persons concerned with municipal taxation—, or psychology with its introspectionists and behaviorists.
2 This is witnessed by much of the quantitative work on attitudes.
3 Examples might be Cooley's observations on the growth of the self, and its place in personality structure; or Dollard's treatment of caste in the southern United States.
4 Goldenweiser, Alexander, Anthropology, (New York, F. S. Crofts, 1937), 42.
5 Other factors may be here involved such as the extent to which emotional blockage occurs either from manipulating givens, or social role playing, the rapidity with which situations change, his relations with teachers, and so forth.
6 A psychiatrist who as a child had been in a social position of considerable normality is more likely to mechanically employ concepts as “givens” than to have social insight with reference to his patient.