H. Scott Gordon

In The History and Philosophy of Social Science, Scott Gordon seeks to raise the history of social sciences to the same level of critical examination as the natural sciences. Gordon proceeds roughly chronologically, generally omitting ideas like psychoanalysis that are no longer practiced. He also omits much discussion of fields like general psychology and anthropology. The work itself represents a synthesis of vastly disparate periods and strains of intellectual thought. Gordon argues, “The philosophy of science has two objectives: to prescribe the procedures that must be employed if one aims to make true statements about empirical phenomena that penetrate beneath their surface appearances; and to describe the procedures that are in fact employed by practising scientists and scholars” (pg. 391).
Of his broad approach, Gordon writes, “Something of contemporary value can be gained from a study of the efforts of our forefathers to understand the nature of social life, even when they failed; and, indeed, we can learn more from their successes if we are aware of the weaknesses and limitations of theories that we regard, for the nonce, as true” (pg. viii). He continues, “When social sciences began to develop, they were inspired by the achievements of the natural sciences; they attempted to apply to human sociality the new conceptions that the natural sciences had been successfully using in the investigation of natural phenomena” (pg. 16). Gordon identifies progress and perfection as key to the development of social science in the early nineteenth century. Progress characterized society as always moving in a linear fashion. Gordon writes, “A related idea, which also exerted a profound influence on social thought, is the conception of ‘social perfection’: the vision of a social order that would meet all the requirements of man’s animal, social, and moral natures” (pg. 148). These reflect “a notable feature of Western thought during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” of “the growth and spread of the idea of the worth of mundane benefits: more food and housing, better health and clothing, and suchlike” (pg. 150). This superseded earlier goals to provide purely spiritual and moral benefits. Due to these early goals, “until the nineteenth century, the natural sciences impacted on social thought mainly through their general metaphysical and epistemological canons rather than their substantive findings” (pg. 494).
Gordon pays particular attention to the study of history, writing, “The development of history as an intellectual discipline in the eighteenth century, and its continued growth since, are due in part to its socializing role. Today that role is accepted almost automatically. That is the main reason why history, alone among the social sciences, is an obligatory school and college subject” (pg. 390-391). Gordon elaborates, “That humans are the products of enculturation, and that cultures differ, cannot be denied…But this does not force one to the conclusion that the findings of science are so culture-bound that no claim to objective validity can be certified” (pg. 607).
Working toward his ultimate goal and as a path forward, Gordon outlines an agenda for the philosophy of science: “(1) It should give a reasonably accurate generic account of the methodology that has been practised by sciences that may be considered to have achieved some measure of success in providing rational explanations of empirical phenomena. (2) It should, however, be able to accommodate the conception of scientific knowledge as tentative rather than final… (3) It should be able to explicate the relationship between theoretical hypotheses, which are imaginative mental constructs, and empirical data. (4) It should account for scientific progress in terms of the replacement of one explanatory hypothesis by a better one and by improvement in the techniques for obtaining empirical data. (5) It should provide a satisfactory account of the relationship between pure science and its practical applications. (6) It should explain the difference between scientific propositions and other beliefs” (pg. 608). In this way, Gordon summarizes the main points he makes and argues their significance to the social sciences today.… (mere)