1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910149434903321

Autore

Cunningham Frank

Titolo

Objectivity in Social Science / / Frank Cunningham

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto : , : University of Toronto Press, , [2017]

©1973

ISBN

1-4426-3795-1

1-4426-5342-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (165 pages)

Collana

Heritage

Disciplina

300/.1

Soggetti

Social sciences

Objectivity

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Chapter One. Objectivism and anti-objectivism -- Chapter Two. The nature and history of science -- Chapter Three. Linguistic relativism -- Chapter Four. Perceptual relativism -- Chapter Five. The social-scientific subject matter -- Chapter Six. Postscript on the morality of objectivity -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Selected Index

Sommario/riassunto

The debates over objectivity in the social sciences have a long history; there have been contributions by philosophers and social theorists from a variety of viewpoints, including empiricism, phenomenology, pragmatism, and Marxism. Objectivity in Social Science combats the widespread opinion that objective inquiry is impossible in the social sciences by drawing together and exhibiting the weaknesses of arguments, taken from positions in the philosophies of science, social science, language, and perception, in favour of anti-objectivism, arguments which have recurred in one form or another throughout the course of these debates. As the author puts it, 'What I have attempted to offer is at the least a convenient map for finding one's way about in the tangle of issues surrounding the question of objectivity in social science and at the most a set of arguments sufficient to convince the perplexed, and presently wrong-headed, of the (objective) falsity of



social-scientific anti-objectivism.' In the course of the book arguments advanced by such influential figures as Thomas Kuhn, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Karl Mannheim, N.R. Hanson, Peter Winch, Michael Polanyi, P.K. Feyerabend, and Jürgen Habermas, among others, are critically examined, as are attempts of pragmatists, phenomenologists, and others to construct alternatives to the objectivist interpretation of conflict and progress in the development of social-scientific knowledge.