Abstract
Our knowledge is trapped in the discourse about causality. This trap is set by the common language notions of something causing something else and its penetration into scientific domains. The crucial feature of the phenomena in the social sciences is the flexibility for intentional coordination of conditions of personal and collective cultures with social representations which is a feature absent at the lower levels of catalysis. This is made possible for the use of sign systems at various levels—personal, communal, societal, economic, and political. We can look at human phenomena as semiotically catalyzed. Social sciences introduce a new demand for philosophy of science—to account for the agency of purposeful actors and their co(unter)-actions in any generalized scheme of catalytic processes. This demand is an opportunity that may lead all social sciences toward understanding the dramatic realities of the human condition.
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Notes
- 1.
Pseudo-empiricism is the research practice in which empirical investigation is undertaken to prove some propositions that already are given in the normative system shared by the researcher and researches. The result is camouflaging the normative implicit knowledge by its “empirical discovery” in the data.
- 2.
Since every straight line can be viewed as a part of an infinitely large circle—where both ends of the straight-looking line eventually meet.
- 3.
The psychology and sociology of religious feelings were an honorable research topic in the social sciences in its history, all through to the 1920s. After that it declined in favor of comparative perspective—comparing various religious denominations with one another, without looking into the functions of particular religious rituals in human lives.
- 4.
Painters painted mountains without leaving their studios. It was only on rare occasions that they were asked to paint from the nature itself.
- 5.
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The suggestions on an earlier version of this chapter by Svend Brinkmann are gratefully acknowledged.
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Valsiner, J. (2019). From Causality to Catalysis in the Social Sciences. In: Valsiner, J. (eds) Social Philosophy of Science for the Social Sciences. Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33099-6_8
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