Emergent Approaches
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Can Heterodoxy Undermine Science? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session James Clark
Heterodoxy is defined as “deviation from accepted or orthodox standards or beliefs.” I ask here whether this movement could include deviation from such accepted standards of science as reliance on empirical observation and objectivity to determine whether theories, hypotheses, and other conceptual entities correspond to reality. Being an accepted standard certainly can not mean that any method should be rejected out of hand, especially if it has been well established after multiple successes and despite numerous challenges to its validity. Science as traditionally understood meets such criteria in abundance. After establishing this claim, I turn to a criticism of alternative “ways of knowing” that are promoted in part on their being heterodox challenges to the hegemony of so-called “Eurocentric” science. The validity of such alternative epistemologies is found wanting in numerous respects, notably the demonstrable fallibility of proposed methods, the openness to contradiction, and the unwarranted and partisan substitution of ideology for the goal of objective understanding. There are three implications of this thesis, if correct. One, any social “science” aspiring to merit the label is ill-advised to further weaken its already tenuous standing as a science. Second, people who have much to gain from the scientific study of humans and their societies lose if we adopt lesser tools inadequate to such a challenging task. Third, those committed to science should extol its virtues loudly, and resist heterodox or other challenges to its special status relative to any other claim to truth-telling.
Humanism as Heterodox Sociology: An Approach to Zygmunt Bauman's Hermeneutics View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Elena Alvarez-Alvarez
During his long academic career, Bauman has asked many times what does it mean 'understanding' in social sciences. This question lead him to marxism, to structuralism and finally to hermeneutics. From the beginning, though, his approach is decisively humanistic, near to philosophy, arts and literature, and strongly critical to the positivistic and empirical approach to society. Humanist sociology is, according to him, concerned with linking individual experiences to systemic situation, applies imagination and figuration, and is engaged with the existential troubles of common people, with their freedom from coercion and their freedom to actively participate in society. For these reasons, it is a way of doing sociology close to morality and concerned with issues far from the classical socio-economic prevailing themes, such as freedom, love or culture. Bauman is still strongly critizised for a sort of "lack of method". The proposal of this paper is to review the genesis of this paradigm for social interpretation in Bauman's sources, to assess how it meets of the requirements of scientific knowledge, and to give reason of its impact upon the broad public and among social philosophers and social scientists. We focus on some works by Bauman about social interpretation, such as "Towards a Critical Sociology" (1976) and "Hermeneutics and Social Science" (1978), "Thinking Sociologically", and "Intimations of Postmodernity" (1992). Though they are far before Bauman got known as the sociologist of "liquid modernity", these works set the basis for a humanist perspective on society that provides a still useful approach.
