1. Theories of Social Differentiation and Social Change
Graduate School for Social Research
Autumn 2010
Theories of Social Differentiation and Social Change
theoriesofsocialchange.wordpress.com
Kazimierz M. Slomczynski
Joshua K. Dubrow
Irina Tomescu-Dubrow

2. The Nature of Science
Epistemology: division of philosophy which studies the foundations of knowledge and understanding
Goal of (Social) Science
Know and understand the world around us.
Research questions - need to be scientific
We should be able to answer them based on observations that identify the conditions under which the event of interest occurs.
Critiques to the “Science” Approach
Skepticism about possibility of discovering general principles of human behavior

3. Terminology for Social Science Theoretical Work
Concepts
Names for classes of phenomena (i.e., objects of perception categorized into groups or classes; concepts are names for these classes).
EX: Concerning political attitudes--concepts like liberal and conservative.
Concepts may be abstract; refer to aspects or qualities that groups of things hold in common.
Ex: deviants include many different groups named by such concepts as "cult members" or "drug users."
Minorities include such groups as "Indians," "Hispanics" and "Asian-Americans."
Constructs
Concepts less directly observable in the data; more abstract; more analytical;
Refer to higher order concepts, where ‘higher order’ means the degree of abstraction in constructs and in propositions linking constructs.
EX: Needs, drives, instincts, love, pride, control, exploitation.
Empirical Generalizations
Statements of fact(s); without explanatory power of their own;
EX: Women are more frequently religious than men;

4. Hypotheses
Predicted relationship between two or more concepts/variables within a given theory.
EX: "cohesive groups have fewer suicides per capita than non-cohesive groups.“
Laws
Hypothesis which has received repeated confirmation over a period of time and has been accepted by the relevant community of scientists.
EX: All highly differentiated groups are stratified in terms of power.
Propositions
Statements of relationships between phenomena referred to by two or more concepts.
Empirical generalizations, hypotheses & laws are stated in propositional form. Can be true or false, but not both true and false.
Theories
Sets of propositions, in which a small number of higher order propositions involving a few relatively abstract concepts, subsume under them many more specific propositions.
EX: Organizations cannot grow indefinitely large because of increasing costs to scale.
Judge by: Parsimony; explanatory/predictive power; whether it is falsifiable

5. EXPLANATION AND CAUSALITY
Max Plank (Where is Science Going?, 1932: 147):
"Scientific thought is identical with causal thought, so much so that the last goal of every science is the full and complete application of the causal principle to the object of research."

6. Covering-law model of causal explanation.
Carl Hempel and Karl Popper
Law(s)
Statement(s) of initial conditions - the explenans
The phenomenon explained - the explanandum
For any x, if x, then y.

7. Three contemporary approaches to causality
(Daniel Little, Varieties of Social Explanation, 1991):
1. Causal mechanism
C is a cause of E iff there is a series of events Ci leading from C to E, and the transition from each Ci to Ci+1 is governed by law L.
2. Inductive regularity
C is a cause of E iff there is a regular association between events Ci and E, and Ci happens reasonably before E.
3. Necessary and sufficient conditions
C is a cause of E iff events Ci are necessary condition for the occurance of E, and events Ci are jointly sufficient to give rise E.

8. CAUSALITY AND SCIENTFIC STATEMENTS
Distinctions:
Analytic and synthetic.
Analytic statements are those that are true (or false) by virtue of the meanings of the terms they contain; they are logically necessary.
Synthetic statements are those that are true (or false) by virtue of their empirical content.

9. A priori and a posteriori
An a priori statement is one that can be known to be true (or false) without reference to empirical evidence.
The truth of an a posteriori statement can be established only by an examination of what is empirically the case.

10. Idiographic and nomothetic.
An idiographic statement focuses on historical particulars.
A nomothetic statement seeks to establish general law following a natural-science model of knowledge.
[Wilhelm Windelband, , Neo-Kantian German Philosopher: ideographic cultural and historical studies vs. nomothetic sociology and economics ]

11. CAUSALITY AND MODELS OF SCIENCE
Hypothetico-Deductive Model of Science
Logical positivism. Vienna Circle: Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Carl Hempel Verification Principle.
Karl R. Popper (Logik der Forschung, 1935, trans. The Logic of Scientific Discovery)
Scientific knowledge advances only through an internal logic:
(1) a theory T1 appears incompatible with experimental data, i.e. it is falsified;
(2) a theory T2 is capable of explaining those data
already explained by T1 as well as those incompatible with T1.
The scientist's activity is explained by the rules of scientific game. The main rule: Falsification Principle

12. Opposition to the Hypothetico-Deductive Model of Science:
I. Analytical induction
Logical inference. Mill's comparative schema. Experimental Principle
Philosophy and Sociology of Science
Thomas S. Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolution, 1962):
Science can only be properly understood as a historically and socially located product.
The concept of paradigm: paradigms are general ways of seeing the world; they dictate what kind of scientific work should be done and what kind of theory is acceptable. Normal science. Scientific revolution. Anomaly Principle.
Imre Lakatos (Falsification and Methodology of Scientific Research Programs, 1970). Paradigm vs. SRP. Gaining Knowledge Principle.
Paul K. Feyerabend (Against Method, 1975; Science in a Free Society, 1978). There exist no final rules of method and no single identifiable basis of rationality. Scientific knowledge is relative to a particular scientific paradigm. Interpretation Principle.