De sociale wetenschap en het zoeken naar een rechtvaardige samenleving

Samenvatting

The Social Sciences in the Search for a Just Society. The contemporary social sciences are currently debating the role of three categories of opposition: (1) macro/micro; (2) global/local; and (3) structure/agency. These controversies can be placed within the context of the age-old philosophical and theological arguments about free will and determinism. The inability to resolve this dilemma forms a stumbling block in any attempts by social scientists to tackle the problems of a constantly changing world; the recent construction of the social sciences has actually compounded the problems. Special attention is given to 19th- and 20th-century arguments that were revolutionary for the challenges they posed to Calvinistic determinism and to the uneasy coexistence of secular and religious cultures. In the 19th century, the nomothetic trio of social sciences (economics, sociology, and political science) emerged as the dominant paradigm, maintaining an attitude of superiority over philosophy and the humanities. However, the great methodological debates forming the basis of this trio were actually pseudo-debates. Perhaps the dissolution of the present type of society in the coming 25-50 years will lead to an opening for healing the rift between philosophy and the social sciences. M. Meeks