Abstract
This article examines the connections among heuristics, the epistemological and ontological presuppositions that underlie theorizing, and substantive explanations in sociology. It develops and contrasts three heuristics: “doing as knowing” (DK), “categorizing as knowing” (CK), and “praxis as knowing” (PK). These are each composed of four dimensions: the theory of knowledge, the theory of reality, the theory of the growth of knowledge, and the theory of knowledge producers. The article then shows the importance of heuristics for empirical work by demonstrating how they shape explanations in the sociological subfield of the historical sociology of knowledge. The essay draws two main conclusions: it argues that PK offers a more useful basis for developing explanations in sociology than either of the two alternatives (DK and CK) that currently shape substantive work; furthermore, it claims that the exposition of heuristic assumptions is an important task for sociology.
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Notes
The classic example of phenomenalism is the rejection of the notion of causality as an unobservable mechanism in favor of the idea of the constant conjunction of antecedents and consequences (see the discussion in Bunge 2009, p. 42).
Lukács (1984, p. 354) suggested here a different connection between the history of the development of science and the development of technology. “Insights based on praxis have in the course of human development proceeded according to two often intertwined paths: on the one hand, the results of praxis, correctly generalized, were brought into line with the totality of the knowledge achieved up to that time, which was a decisive motor for scientific progress, and led to the rectification and truthful elaboration of the human image of the world; yet, on the other hand, people have remained stuck at the level of what was directly useful for their immediate practice; in other words, they have generally been content to manipulate certain objects and subjects with knowledge gleaned from their practical achievements.”
We use the term “classification” to indicate the process of labeling insiders or objects by outsiders or observers. We use the term “categorization” to indicate the process of mutual labeling by insiders. The products of both these processes are “categories,” as the term, “classes” is difficult to use given its multiple meanings.
Hannah (2000, p. 175) hinted at this reality, writing: “Over the following ten to fifteen years, particularly after the ‘labor troubles’ of the mid 1880s, Walker came to believe that immigrants were responsible for practically everything that was wrong with the otherwise healthy American political economy.” But he did not integrate this observation into his theorization of knowledge.
By 1850 the situation had changed. Partially under pressure from a rising group of experts in “race science,” the census was now re-oriented toward tracking demographic patterns of different races conceptualized as quasi-species. Thus, race was for the first time clearly separated from legal status and slaves were classified according to whether they were “Black” or “Mulatto” (Emigh et al. 2016b, p. 60).
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by funds from the Committee on Research at the University of California, Berkeley, from the UCLA Fiat Lux Program, and a UCLA Senate Faculty grant. We would like to thank Edwin Ackerman, Jonah Stuart Brundage, Michael Burawoy, Graham Hill, John Lie, Corey O’Malley, Sandra Susan Smith, Emanuela Tallo, Jasmine Vatani, William Welsh, and Emigh’s Working Group for helpful comments on this article. We would also like to thank Professor John Connelly who provided invaluable help in translating some passages from Lukács. We also would like to acknowledge Eamon Riley’s help with the bibliography. All translations are ours.
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Riley, D., Ahmed, P. & Emigh, R.J. Getting real: heuristics in sociological knowledge. Theor Soc 50, 315–356 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09418-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09418-w