Methodology Transfers Between Social Sciences and Humanities in Relation to Natural Sciences, Technology and Government Policy

Abstract

ed from each of natural sciences. An analogy is the difference between behavioral sciences (the set of behavioral psychology, behavioral sociology, etc.) and behavioral science as a general concept. The general concept abstracted from natural and social sciences and humanities (including arts) are referred to as knowledge (the modern version of medieval scientia). This chapter mainly or almost exclusively discusses western knowledge and ignore eastern or southern one because western knowledge is worldwide dominant in the latest centuries. The global transfer of methodologies of knowledge is a challenging theme but too comprehensive for one chapter. Therefore it will be left for future research. Since the Renaissance, particularly the Galileo’s revolution of physics from Aristotelian phusika or scholastic physica, many philosophers have discussed the characteristics and methods of natural sciences. They have also discussed social sciences but very differently in discussing natural sciences. This chapter discusses their differences to clarify the fundamental characteristics of social sciences in relation to humanities, instead of presenting a particular theory of or the particular application of a theory of social sciences or humanities. In this discussion, the separation of social sciences from humanities are considered as a ‘crisis’ of knowledge, where crisis (krisis) means the decisive turning point in clinics or the radical change by conflict in drama as originally meant in Greek. Later, crisis began to mean the crossing to sharply or crucially change the direction. Hereafter, premodern knowledge will be referred to as scientia. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Social Sciences and Knowledge Management 34 2. Paradigms of social sciences and their shifts Humanities was central in scientia and concentrated itself on the study of the classics. Humanities was relatively free from the paradigm shift because it founded itself on the succeeded classics having the eternal values, although the introduction of Aristotelian metaphysics to West affected the paradigm of Bible-based knowledge and the comprehensive recognition of the entire Greek classics affected the belief in Christianity. Despite these influences, humanities retained the exegetic methodology of the classics. This affected the methodology of social sciences, and many social scientists were scholastically engaged in closely reading and faithfully interpreting or commenting on the classical books by Smith or Marx. The rise of social sciences little affected the paradigm of humanities at first. The concept of paradigm has been associated with science revolution [Kuhn, 1962] and used as a general (sometimes too general and ambiguous) term. This chapter uses this word as a general term and replaces this with methodology in more specific discussions. Before the medieval era like in Greece, without particularly established ‘bibles’, humanities (particularly, philosophy in Greek) was rather natural historic (if not natural scientific) in embracing what may be called zoology, cosmology, etc. Greek knowledge was transferred to and developed in East, but not transferred to Europe except for Islamic Iberia. The Greek classics were rediscovered and became central in humanities in Europe in the Renaissance almost for the first time although Aristotelian metaphysic was already influential there. Legal systems and their enforcements have often been called justice. This shows that they have been originally founded on ethics or religions. Pre-modern legal scientia was founded by jurisprudence that was a branch of theology or humanities. This helped political leaders persuade people. Policy-making and the implementations were founded by philosophia including social ethics, religions, and the view of history and historical lessons, all in humanities. This stabilized the paradigm of social scientia and prevented it from the paradigm shift against the social development. In the modern legal system, the constitutions mean the fundamental principles supposedly stable for decades, found other laws, and constrain “the evolution of law”. This idea is extended to technology as the standardization, often stipulated by law. When the close studies of ethical or religious texts were developed, the exegetic method dominated the study of classics. This method sought for the eternal truth uninfluenced by the shift of ‘vulgar’ life in time, and was developed by scholiasts as a positivism to strictly respect what was really written and to ignore the prevalent practices in contemporary life. This positivism prevented scientia from paradigm shift. While humanities specialized itself in the study of classics, the exegetic method influenced jurisprudence in the interpretation of laws, which was supposed to be eternal. Ironically, classic-based humanities for the eternal truth drove a radical revolution in entire scientia, called the Renaissance. This revolution was to revolve from the Christian classics (the Bible) to non-Christian Greek classics or to rediscover the latter, and to transform the positivism but not to deny the positivism. The Renaissance physicists succeeded the exegetic positivism and successfully transformed it from reading the given texts like scholastic physica (translated from Aristotelian phusika) into experimenting the earthly movement, as ancient and medieval astronomers observed and predicted the heavenly movement. Motivated by the theological system, Newton unified the earthly and heavenly movements Methodology Transfers Between Social Sciences and Humanities in Relation to Natural Sciences, Technology and Government Policy 35 into a universal theory by mathematically formulating the observed data. Centuries later, this founded the physics-mimicked economic theories, although the Galilean experimentalism is succeeded in social sciences only by psychology except for the recent experimental or behavioral economic methods. . The denial of the Aristotelian phusika led to the denial of Aristotelian multi-disciplinary unification of knowledge encompassing oikonomia, politika, ethikos, zoologia, kosmologia, meteorologia, and many others. Modern science proudly distinguishes itself from scientia or metaphysics by the specialization of knowledge into narrow branches. The unification of theories of physics is only within physics, as the unified axiomatic system of geometry is only within geometry. This scientific systemization by narrowing the zone contributed to the success in scientific development. Many philosophers and historians of natural sciences have almost unanimously regarded the Galilean and Newtonian methodologies as the first great steps of modern scientific paradigm. But they have no consensus about the paradigm of social sciences. Some of them seem to regard social sciences as occupied by para-dogmas or pseudo-dogmas, although paradigm is believed etymologically unrelated to dogma. Dogmas or not, social sciences have had their paradigms and shifted them several times in the last few centuries. Each shift has been investigated by historians of social sciences, but little has been discussed about the shift in general. Philosophers usually prefer general discussions rather than case studies, but few succeeded in the general discussion of paradigm shifts in social sciences. To avoid the confusion of paradigm with dogma, the discussions below will avoid this term and use the word of methodology. 3. Views of humans and history in social sciences In the ancient era, the studies on law and politics were founded on the ground of theological idea of justice. After theology was replaced with humanities, social scientia borrowed the methodology from humanities, which often explained social phenomena by historical background with the view of human behaviors and acts in the course of historical development or as path-dependent. Upon the view of history of ideas, Hegel founded his Encyklopädie of total knowledge and unified various branches of knowledge via dialectical logic demonstrated in the historical development of various ideas. Introducing the economic or materialistic view into the dialectic logic in historical development, Marx presented the view of history as the unifying core of social sciences. In opposition to founding social sciences upon history, however, the ideas of social engineering and social technology blamed the Marxian view of social sciences as the ‘historicism’ or the mixture of social sciences with social philosophy. In the meantime, the view of humans as homo economics rather than homo sapiens has been the core of the prevalent neoclassic economics, where sapience means wisdom or intellect and is often synonymous to the humanness or benevolence possibly to selflessly consider others (altruism). Before the homo economics view, the view of humans as homo sapiens was (and is outside economics) almost exclusively prevalent and has been used as the terminology of anthropology in distinction from more primitive humans (e.g., home erectus). The view of humans as homo economics or the economic rationalism validated the physicsmimicked economic theories. Physics took the economy-mimicked view of nature and Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Social Sciences and Knowledge Management 36 successfully constructed a set of calculations of variations to explain natural ‘behaviors’ as minimizing the ’power’ or ‘energy’. This method led physics to successfully explain the ball shape of the earth as resulting from the ‘purposed effort’ to minimize the surface area for the given volume. Economics imported this economy-mimicked methodology of physics and successfully modeled the human behavior to minimize the cost and similarly to maximize the profit by multiplying by -1. The success of modern science largely owes to that of physics, particularly that of mechanics. The Cartesian view of human body (phusike) as a machine was successfully extended to so