Abstract
As with other sociological perspectives considered in this book, the analysis of empiricism takes as a central theme the problem, ‘What is social structure?’ We have already indicated that this theme can be broken down into two interrelated questions: what is the nature of social reality?; and, how can we know it?
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Notes and References
General discussions of empiricism may be found in L. Kolakowski, Positivist Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972);
G. Novack, Empiricism and its Evolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1969).
See A. Giddens, ‘Positivism and its Critics’, in T. Bottomore and R. Nisbet, A History of Sociological Analysis (London: Heinemann, 1979) pp. 237–86;
Kolakowski, Positivist Philosophy; P. Achinstein and S. F. Barker, The Legacy of Logical Positivism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969);
C. G. A. Bryant, ‘Positivism Reconsidered’, Sociological Review, 23 2 1975;
R. Bernstein, Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976) pp. 1–55.
Metaphysics may be viewed either as meaningless, as in Ayer’s empiricism, or as meaningful but non-scientific as in Popper. See A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971);
K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963).
On these variations in empiricist explanation, see E. Nagel, The Structure of Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961);
C. G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1965);
A. Ryan, The Philosophy of the Social Sciences (London: Macmillan, 1970);
R. Keat and J. Urry, Social Theory as Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975) pp. 9–22, 67–87;
T. Benton, Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977) pp. 46–77.
See Trent Schroyer, The Critique of Domination: Origins and Development of Critical Theory (New York: Braziller, 1973).
This has led, in recent years, to a number of attempts to reconstruct the bases of sociological theorising: see A. W. Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (London: Heinemann, 1971);
Bernstein, Restructuring of Social and Political Theory; Keat and Urry, Social Theory as Science; Benton, Philosophical Foundations; and A. Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method (London: Hutchinson, 1976),
Central Problems in Social Theory (London: Macmillan, 1979)
and A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (London: Macmillan, 1981).
On these points see R. Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (Leeds: Leeds Books, 1975)
and Possibility of Naturalism (Brighton: Harvester, 1979).
On conventionalism and problems of theory-neutral observation languages, see Bernstein, Restructuring, pp. 4–7; Keat and Urry, Social Theory, pp. 46–65; Benton, Philosophical Foundations, pp. 73–6.
On Skinner, and problems of Behaviourism generally, see B. F. Skinner, Verbal Behaviour (London: Methuen, 1957)
and About Behaviourism (London: Cape, 1974);
N. Chomsky, Language and Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968);
A. Koestler, Ghost in the Machine (London: Hutchinson, 1967);
S. Mennell, Sociological Theory: Uses and Unities (Sunbury: Nelson, 1974) pp. 9–13.
That positivist explanations rely on their capacity to predict and control their subject-matter has been stressed by those writers in the traditions of critical theory: see B. Fay, Social Theory and Political Practice (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975);
J. Habermas, Theory and Practice (London: Heinemann, 1974).
D. and J. Wilier, Systematic Empiricism — A Critique of a Pseudo-Science (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1973);
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (Oxford University Press, 1959) pp. 60–86,
and ‘The Ideology of Social Pathologists’, in Wright Mills, Power, Politics and People (Oxford University Press, 1967) pp. 525–52.
R. Blauner, Alienation and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964);
J. E. T. Eldridge, Sociology and Industrial Life (London: Nelson, 1971) pp. 139–96.
D. and J. Wilier, Systematic Empiricism, pp. 34–43.
J. Irvine, I. Miles and J. Evans, Demystifying Social Statistics (London: Pluto Press, 1979) pp. 87–110.
D. and J. Wilier, Systematic Empiricism, pp. 63–72.
On hypothetico-deductivism see P. Cohen, Modern Social Theory (London: Heinemann, 1968) pp. 1–17;
Keat and Urry, Social Theory, pp. 9–13; M. Lessnoff, The Structure of Social Science (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973) pp. 12–31, 75–109.
See W. Pope, Durkheim’s Suicide: a Classic Analysed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).
G. Homans, The Human Group (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950);
J. O’Neill, Modes of Individualism and Collectivism (London: Heinemann, 1973).
T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, 2 vols (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1937).
For recent sympathetic critiques of Parsons, see: S. Savage, The Theories of T. Parsons: The Social Relations of Action (London: Macmillan, 1981);
K. Menzies, T. Parsons and the Social Image of Man (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977);
G. Rocher, T. Parsons and American Sociology (London: Nelson, 1974);
Z. Bauman, Hermeneutics and Social Science (London: Hutchinson, 1978) pp. 131–47;
H. Bershady, Ideology and Social Knowledge (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973).
Structure of Social Action, Preface, pp. v–ix.
Bershady, Ideology and Social Knowledge; Savage, Theories of T. Parsons; Bauman, Hermeneutics.
T. Parsons, Toward a General Theory of Action (Cambridge, Mass., 1962)
and Working Papers in the Theory of Action (Glenco, Ill.: Free Press, 1953); Rocher, T. Parsons, pp. 28–51.
This point provides the central theme of K. Menzies, T. Parsons and the Social Image of Man (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
See also J. Turner, The Structure of Sociological Theory (Dorsey, Homewood, Ill.: 1974).
T. Parsons, The Evolution of Societies (edited version of Societies, 1966)
and The System of Modern Societies (1971) (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice Hall, 1977); T. Parsons, ‘Evolutionary Universals in Society’, American Sociological Review, 29 (June) pp. 339–57.
Societies, Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice Hall, 1966) p. 113.
See Toby, introduction to The Evolution of Societies, pp. 20–22.
S. Savage, The Theories of Talcott Parsons: The Social Relations of Action (London: Macmillan, 1981) pp. 105–27;
also, A. Giddens, ‘Power in the Recent Writings of Talcott Parsons’, in Giddens, Studies in Social and Political Theory (London: Hutchinson, 1977).
Parsons, Evolutionary Universals.
N. Smelser, Social Change and the Industrial Revolution (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959).
Parsons, Evolutionary Universals.
P. Cohen, Modern Social Theory (London: Heinemann, 1968) pp. 47–66;
C. G. Hempel, ‘The Logic of Functional Analysis’, in L. Gross, Symposium on Sociological Theory (New York: Harper & Row, 1959) pp. 271–302;
E. Nagel, ‘A Formalization of Functionalism’, in Logic Without Metaphysics (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1956);
S. Mennell, Sociological Theory: Uses and Unities (London: Nelson, 1974) pp. 141–65.
R. K. Merton, On Theoretical Sociology (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1967) pp. 39–73.
Ibid, p. 47.
Ibid, pp. 149–50.
Ibid, pp. 82–4.
Ibid, p. 106.
K. Davis, ‘The Myth of Functional Analysis as a Special Method in Sociology and Anthropology’, in N. J. Demerath and R. A. Petersen, System, Change and Conflict (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1967) pp. 379–402.
Cohen, Modern Social Theory, pp. 47–66. C. G. Hempel, ‘The Logic of Functional Analysis’ in Llewellyn Gross op. cit., pp. 271–307.
Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, pp. 728–37.
R. Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959);
J. A. Banks, Marxist Sociology in Action (London: Faber, 1970).
T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago University Press, 1970);
K. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Basic Books, 1959);
I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 1970);
A. Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method (London: Hutchinson, 1976).
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© 1984 Terry Johnson, Christopher Dandeker and Clive Ashworth
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Johnson, T., Dandeker, C., Ashworth, C. (1984). Empiricism. In: The Structure of Social Theory. Contemporary Social Theory. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17679-3_2
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