At 10:15 PM 6/11/2009, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:
snip
>In the philosophy of the physical sciences, this positive position was
>abandoned by Popper. There is no independent "reality" out there; it remains
>the external referent of the discourse.
>
>In the social sciences--
There is no reason the social sciences should be this isolated blob
floating unconnected to the rest of science. One of the
accomplishments of the physical sciences in the last two centuries is
to merge all science into one fully connected/consistent block of
knowledge. That work may not be complete yet, but the goal is
largely accomplished. I.e., physics and chemistry merge at the edges
and there is nothing inconsistent in biology with the rest of
science. The complexity of biology is constrained by physics and
chemistry and is now a well understood result of evolution.
I know this is in some circles an *extremely* unpopular viewpoint,
but the social sciences should entirely consistent with evolutionary
biology and evolutionary psychology. Try here:
http://www.fathom.com/feature/35533/index.html
A earlier incarnation of evolutionary psychology was
sociobiology. http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep010109.pdf
>the subject of this list--the problem is even more
>serious. Social order is different from the physical one in terms of adding
>an order of expectations. Prices, for example, are expectations of values.
Economics grew out of the ecosystem's limited capacity to feed bands
of humans. So did war.
Cialdini (1984). p. 256: "It is easy enough to feel properly warned
against scarcity pressures; but it is substantially more difficult to
act on that warning. Part of the problem is that our typical reaction
to scarcity hinders our ability to think. "
>They are not given, but constructed. Yet, they may be predictable in some
>models. When intentions, meaning, etc., are involved, measurement becomes
>much harder. Yet, these notions belong to the core of the social sciences.
>(Weber's Marx critique; Husserl's "Crisis").
>
>I don't mean this against striving for explanatory power; the latter is an
>(unintended, since at the supra-individual level) result of improving on the
>discourse.
Rooting simulation models in evolutionary biology/evolutionary
psychology is more likely to get result connected to the real
world. Unpleasant results probably, but the world is like that.
Keith Henson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson
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