Wiskunde, natuurkunde en sociologie

Samenvatting

A study of the relations between sociology, mathematics and the natural sciences. A brief historical account of the relations between mathematics and physics leads up the rise of the scientific method, based on mathematics in its application to science during the Renaissance. But the application of this scientific method, developed for the natural sci's, to the study of social realities met with initial difficulties. The failure of the classical mathematical models was due to their concentration on the energetic aspects of mathematics. These are useful for the study of physical and technical systems, but are inadequate for the study of biological systems, which have informational as well as energetic aspects. Only when mathematics developed informational techniques (cybernetics, games theory, etc) could it be usefully applied to sociology. But the cooperation between sociol'ts and mathematicians has lagged for the following reasons: (1) the academic training of sociol'ts gives them little respect for mathematics; (2) social research, with its interest in concrete individuals and groups, discourages interest in abstract mathematical reasoning; (3) European sociology, unlike the US, has an antiempirical bias, due to the persistence of the old German philosophical approach; (4) natural scientists, with their clear-cut problems and solutions, do not like the 'uncertainties' of social research. The remedy lies, in the first place, in a radical reform of the teaching of social sciences that would make students acquainted with the reasoning of natural sciences and the language of mathematics. I. Langnas.