Blog #3: Pragmatic social sciences needed

The critique of the social sciences has often centered on their gradual movement toward quantification as they aspire to gain equal footing with the physical and biological sciences. Economics is a prime example of this progression. In 1987, the dean of the country’s top school of economics was proclaimed national scientist by the President, upon recommendation of the National Academy of Science and Technology. This was no less than an imprimatur by the Philippine scientific community on the stature of the economics discipline as full-fledged science.

To be sure, the positivist approach adopted from the natural sciences has lent much-needed credibility to the results of research in the social sciences, at least from the point of view of the layperson. The neatness, certainty, and assurance provided by replicable empirical evidence (e.g., mathematical, statistical) in the physical and biological sciences are presumably at work in the way the output of the social sciences is appreciated by the public.

Galileo at the Leaning Tower of Pisa
from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140215-galileo-450-birthday-appreciation-science-history/

Thus, mainstream economists today can hardly think about economics without econometrics. Psychology is far ahead in this regard—in the Philippines, the most recent graduates of the course are about to take the first-ever board examinations for psychometricians, with the concomitant on-the-job training and intensive review classes. The way things are going, it would not be far-fetched to think that graduates of economics, which has become a highly mathematical discipline, would be asked to take licensure exams in the future. Why not? Financial market investors rely on them for expert advice. Economists are sometimes asked to appear in commercial courts to render testimony on the feasibility or infeasibility of corporate rehabilitation plans. Even governments depend on them to chart fiscal, monetary, and socioeconomic policy. Are economists, especially those who do technical consultancy or those who recommend policy, really different from, say, certified public accountants?

But the empirical positivist approach is just one way of doing social science.

Qualitative methodologies under interpretive approaches produce valuable insights and meanings—through hermeneutics, fieldwork/participant observation, and other tools—that even the most complex mathematical modeling cannot provide. Using critical approaches, the social science researcher is liberated further from the strictures of “value-neutral” science and is able to stand for something as well as analyze the human condition from a particular point of view.

There are two realizations here. First, the social sciences have to be pragmatic and acknowledge the fact that the totality of human experience cannot be subjected to the rigidity of “scientific” inquiry. The methods of natural science, strictly speaking, cannot entirely apply to the study of human experience. And this is because (second) the social scientist cannot claim value-neutrality all the time. The choice of a research topic is in itself a subjective exercise. More so is putting a premium on “objectivity” and the “scientific method”, which are, ultimately, products of subjectivity.

We have to confront this notion of objectivity (as Lukes points out) and reflect on what really is the purpose of scientific inquiry. In many respects scientific objectivity could be an illusion and thus an unnecessary burden on those who would like to make sense of what's happening in the world without being shackled.

Rorty puts everything in perspective in saying that the social sciences should be able to “enlarge” or “deepen” our “sense of community.” Without necessarily abandoning the useful methods of empiricism, interpretive and critical studies should help the social scientist achieve this goal.