Relativism

Abstract

Where philosophers of science seek, but fail to establish, an independence of nature from ideas of nature, social theorists seek to establish at least some independence of human ideas and values from natural constraints. For the most part, they wish schemes which will unite a practical science with a freedom of action. They wish to suggest different forms of competent behaviour consistent with the structures of science, but not determined by them. Giddens, as we have seen, distinguishes making society from transforming nature, Habermas distinguishes cultural issues of inner nature from material considerations of outer nature, and Parsons distinguishes a cultural hierarchy of cybernetic control from a material hierarchy of necessary conditions. The claim is that the data of the social sciences are, at least to some extent, distinct from those of the natural sciences, though most social theorists wish to dissociate themselves from an extreme inter-pretivist position which would make cultures distinct to the point of eliminating the domain of ‘outer nature’ as a significant influence upon human experience.