1. A brief introduction to the problem, and the importance of Metaphysics
2. What do we mean by Truth? as the object of scientific discovery.
3. So What? The case for post-modernism
4. Problems for a practicing, applied social scientist: The crux of the matter: why post-modernism will not do as a replacement for the realist conventions for social scientists
5. So, What should we do, then?. A speculation on the nature of a synthesis between relativism and realism.

Is there, even in principle, any chance at all that we might actually be able to discover such universals or characters in anything like what we might recognise as objective, rigorous or provable scientific terms?  Isn't the human condition so beautifully and tragically complex, and near infinite in its variation and behaviour, that any attempt (qualitative or quantitative) to describe or understand it systematically is bound to end in failure? 

Isn't the very notion of social science just a contradiction in terms, if we restrict ourselves to the conventional scientific method?  What do we get from asking questions and then seeing if the answers make sense with what we think and see?

How presumptuous can we get?  Not much more than this, I suggest.  If we think it possible to ultimately know all about how and why our worlds work - the objective of science - then we aspire to be gods, or part of God.  Until, or unless then, we all have to live with our g.o.ds - our given outside determinants - the things, rules and behaviours which are simply beyond our true understanding.

More prosaically - these are exactly the same questions of the so-called scientific method and associated quantitative research approach - as outlined in the session on Qualitative methods.

• "They are committed to the naturalistic perspective, and to the interpretative understanding of human experience.  At the same time, the field is inherently political and shaped by multiple ethical and political positions”  (Nelson et al., 1992, p4).
• Qualitative information is subjective, involving feelings and impressions rather than numbers (or quantitative data).
• Qualitative research attempts to capture data on the perceptions of local actors “from the inside”, through a process of deep attentiveness, of empathetic understanding, and of suspending preconceptions about the topic under discussion
• Most analysis is done with words.  The words can be assembled, subclustered, broken into semiotic segments.  They can be organised to permit the researcher to contrast, compare, analyse and bestow patterns upon them.
• Methodology based on the argument that order rationality of the positivist approach denies the complexity of the social and cultural world in which we live.
• And thus stresses the importance of symbolic, subjective experience.
• But leads to a problem - who is the researcher and how can 'objectivity' be ensured?  ->  the crisis of representation and legitimisation.
• Avoided by concentrating on the local, avoiding grand-scale meta-narratives, dealing only with context specific theories and problems, and an emphasis on social critique
• The Theory:  Symbolic Interactionism
• The individual derives a sense of identity from his/her interaction and communication with others.
• Through this process of interaction and communication, s/he responds to others and adjusts his and her understanding and behaviour as s/he negotiates a shared sense of order and reality with others
• The notion that people continually change in the light of the social circumstances in which they find themselves is central to this process
• The individual's sense of identity is constantly being constructed and reconstructed as s/he moves through differing social contexts and encounters different situations and different people.
• In conclusion:  “Qualitative research is:
• An attempt to capture the sense that lies within, and that structures what we say about what we do
• An exploration, elaboration and systemisation of the significance of an identified phenomenon
• The illuminative representation of the meaning of a delimited issue of problem”
(Bannister et al, 1994)

So, how do we choose what sort of approach to use?  How do we know when we have discovered something of real and lasting value?  How can we tell when we have discovered this, rather than simply telling some more or less plausible story with more or less ephemeral and transitory significance?

SOME BASIC PHILOSOPHY

• how we know what we think we know (under the general heading of Epistemology, OED: "the theory or science of the methods or grounds of knowledge");
• what we count as facts, objective and reliable information (Ontology, OED: "the science or study of being; that department of metaphysics which relates to the being or essence of things, or to being in the abstract");
• how and why we think the world works and behaves (Metaphysics, OED: "that branch of speculation which deals with the first principles of things, including such concepts as being, substance, essence, time, space, cause, identity, etc.; theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of Being and Knowing").

Conventional science is also naturally focused on reductionism - Deutsch, 1997 (p21): “A reductionist thinks that science is about analysing things into components.  An instrumentalist thinks it is about predicting things.  To either of them, the existence of high-level (metaphysical) sciences is merely a matter of convenience. ... But to everyone else scientific knowledge consists of explanations, and the structure of (scientific) explanation does not reflect (or respect) the reductionist hierarchy.”

In short, the world operates as a whole, while science has tended to be conducted in parts, largely because it is only through reductionism that one can sufficiently confine the external world as to be able to produce replicable conditions. In addition, it is clear the prediction is only a small part of the task of explanation, which is a necessary precursor to conviction of political constituencies or market populations.

Hence, I argue, metaphysics is the key to a systematic understanding of the way the world works - an understanding which is coherent, consistent with what we see, and generally accepted as legitimate and valuable.

We can feel that this systematic deconstruction (and subsequent reconstruction) of our lives and histories leaves out too much of what really drives us and constrains us.  We can feel that this rather mechanistic view of the world, and thus of us, is too mechanistic to be real.  Furthermore, we can feel that conventional science cannot possibly embrace the nuances and complexities of human behaviour and actions - we, after all, are mostly convinced of our own free will, and our own capacities to both invent and break our own rules of behaviour. 

Conventional (natural, biophysical) science does not deal with the key questions of why we want to know, or how we will use the results. For that, we need a convincing story or metaphysic about the way the world really works.  We need some sort of agreement about our own social truths.  Yet many of our conflicts and difficulties stem from disagreements about the way the world actually works, and consequent disagreements about the ways in which it might work, and might be made to work better.

There appear to me to be two major streams (or extremes, perhaps) of thought about what an appropriate metaphysics might look like, as a general understanding of how the world works.  [One example of this dichotomy can be found in Sokal and Bricmont, 1998.  A little more detail on my understanding of each of these extremes can be found by following the links.]

• One, which might be roughly labeled "relativism", suggests that the only things we can be sure of, as individuals, are our own conceptions and existence.  Everything else is subjective, interpreted by us as individuals, and then negotiated and discussed with others to form  social constructions. These social constructions, or social truths are then open to continual reconstruction, misconstruction, debate and "negotiation".  Some seem to call this view "postmodernism" - though the view itself denies convenient labels and resists taxonomy or meta-narratives - stories or theories of the way the world works.  In any event, conventional science, under this heading, is a social construction rather than a provable reality. A fortiori, social behaviour patterns and insitutions are social constructions. Hence, how dead is Jaques Derrida? is a legitimate question, which admits of multiple answers.
  

• The other I label "realism" for want of better term.  There are such things as realities which we can take to be independent of our own existence and which we treat as objective facts or truths. These include social facts and truths, such as incomes, prices, quantities traded, social class, education levels etc.  Furthermore, there are some systematic processes through which these facts and truths are generated and related to one another.  The objective of science, as organised and careful investigation, is to deduce or infer what these relationships and processes actually are, and assemble evidence for their existence and behaviour patterns.

Coherence theory holds that the truth of a judgement or statement is established with reference to its coherence with other statements.  Thus, various conclusions can be logically drawn from a given set of axioms (founding assumptions) and a given set of relations or rules for operating on them (with mathematics as the classic example).  The legitimacy of these truths ultimately rests on the meanings of facts and axioms and the validity of the rules used to relate axioms and facts.  Coherence theory is really a theory about the internal consistency of logical argument. It is, in short about Ontology.  In other words, coherence theory can only establish the validity of an argument, but not necessarily its veracity, which relates to the coherence of the valid arguments and logical deductions with the facts and founding axioms.  Even then, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem shows, in short, that (Deutsch, 1997) “for any set of rules of inference, there are valid proofs not designated as valid by those rules.”  In other words, sure though we may be of the internal consistency of our logics and reason, we necessarily fall short of "truth" by reason alone, for two major reasons:  first our reason itself is necessarily incomplete - it has to rely on faith in some external assumption or rule;  second, and even so, our reason must relate to belief in some relationship between our logics and our "facts" or experiences, and consequently on belief in these experiences as real.

The correspondence theory of truth, elaborated largely through the influence of Bertrand Russell’s writings, holds that in essence (Edwards, op cit., Vol. 6, p 427) “truth consists in some form of correspondence between belief and fact” and seeks to provide for the establishment of veracity.  However, this establishment depends on there being some reference to commonly accepted ‘facts’, which need to be held as self-evidently or proven to be true outside the confines of correspondence theory (or of coherence theory).  Nevertheless, it is correspondence theory which underpins the scientific method, where ‘ontology’ - the theory of what counts and what does not count as fact - is deemed to be critical in this dissection of truth, and Epistemology is critical in confronting these theories (Ontologies) with the given (or taken) facts.

Together, coherence and correspondence theories lie at the heart of the search for ‘natural’ laws, rules or principles of the Universe.  They are theories about how epistemologies and ontologies tie together in a "metaphysic" - frequently used as a term of abuse within the strict confines of the scientific method.  Science, in short, is governed by the consistency of logic - pure reason; and by the rules of observation, experience and experiment, which have to be taken as given for science to be able to operate.

Strawson (1949), on the other hand, advances a third sort of theory: the performative theory of truth - that “true” is primarily used as a performative expression: that is, not to make a statement but to perform an action - the action of agreeing with ‘the truth’, or accepting it, or endorsing it.  The establishment of truth thus becomes a communal or collective action of agreement, acceptance or endorsement of particular ideas, concepts or understandings.  This is close to Peirce’s pragmatic theory of truth:  “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth.” (Edwards, op cit., ibid., p 428f).  Edwards’ contributor also notes that Dewey allows that truths are provisional rather than absolute (as presumed by Peirce) and argues that truth “happens to an idea” when it becomes a commonly verified or warranted assertion; when confirmed by an investigator.  This, for students of this sort of intellectual game, comes very close to Thomas Khun’s ideas about normal science - the use of a commonly accepted set of theories, facts and methods (their scientific paradigms or working truths) to solve day-to-day problems. In a sense, these ideas seem to represent the practical ethical  foundation of our research.

James (1909, p vii.), however, goes even further, and associates the nature of truth with peoples’ needs and desires:  “The true is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the right is only the expedient in our way of behaving” - truth is what ‘works’ for an individual. This concept of the truth seems very close to some post-modernist versions, as whatever we as individuals choose to believe - the expedient theory, whose antecedents seem logically to be the Sophists of the ancient world (see relativism). This, then, echoes the moral aspect of what we claim as research -and leads more or less naturally to conspiracy theories of behaviour.

We can simplify this discussion, following de Bono (p 63), by supposing that what people are prepared to accept as truth comes in four major forms:

1. Veracity:  experiential, confirmed by independent and reliably replicable evidence;
2. Validity:  game ( rule ) truth, as in mathematical truths or social laws;
3. Value:  belief, on the basis of its intrinsic worth and ethical foundations.
4. Vernacular:  habitual or expedient to accept as true.

References:
Deutsch, D., 1997, The Fabric of Reality, Penguin. (a readable book on the possible nature of a more general, even universal, theory of how the world works.  Deutsch, a physicist, suggests that there are four principal elements to such a general account:  Quantum Mechanics; Evolution; Chaos and Complexity theory; Epistemology.)
de Bono, E. Parallel Thinking, Penguin, 1995
Edwards, P (ed), 1967, The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Macmillan.
James, W., 1909, The Meaning of Truth, New York.
Kuhn, Thomas, 1970, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press
Strawson, P.F., 1949, “Truth”,  Analysis, 9 (6), reprinted in MacDonald, M. (ed.), 1955, Philosophy and Analysis, Oxford.
Sokal, A. and Bricmont, J., 1998, Intellectual Impostures, Profile Books (an account of the hoax postmodern article submitted and accepted by a physicist (Sokal) to an American journal of cultural studies (Social Text), as an intended parody of postmodernism, and as a documentation of the reasons and sources Sokal used in preparing the hoax).  This book is marketed with the following two quotes highlighted in the front cover:  "A devastating critique of some of France's best known thinkers" (Independent on Sunday);  "C'est la guerre" (Figaro).

First, even science does not follow its own strict prescription of falsification - it accepts the theory of evolution as a powerful explanation, even though the theory is incapable of providing any strictly testable hypotheses, either as predictions of what might happen in the future, or as retrodictions of what we might expect to find in our past history.

Second, the curiosity of the Laws of Thermodynamics - the ones which tell us that there is no such thing as perpetual motion, so that all closed systems (physical, biological, or human, will run down and cease to operate if left on their own - and the apparently necessary implication that we are living in an inherently chaotic world, which is "far from equilibrium"   (or are driven by some unknown but continual injection of new and unobservable force) also means that any attempt at prediction (and thus attempts to falsify theories and follow the prescription of the scientific method) are doomed to failure.

Third,  the apparent "fact" as currently told by the most pure of scientists - mathematicians and particle physicists - the description of the world of quantum mechanics, which describe and predict so accurately the behaviour of sub-atomic particles of which we are all constructed, as one in which nothing is real unless and until it is observed. Thus, the world is fundamentally of our own discovery, and does not exist until we choose to observe and measure it. Which seems to fit well with the rather obvious "fact" of our social worlds - that our social truths are matters of our own invention - we make them up as we go along.  Also, the quantum "theory that the world is governed by the accumulation of outcomes of essentially random "choices" of possibilities at the quantum level" (Gribbin, op cit., p. 4) also seems very close to one we can all believe in as also describing the social, economic and political worlds we live in.

What more of a general theory do we need?  If this one will do for the physicists, surely it will do for us as well?  So, all our attempts to construct stories, theories, meta-narratives, call them what you will, are merely the ravings of a lunatic, signifying nothing, until or unless we observe what they do.

The second part of my case then rests on the following outline logic. There is no sense in trying to construct more or less elegant theories about why we behave as we do, and then trying to test these theories by confronting them with evidence.  Because, if we do, we inevitably will only end up seeing what we want to see, what our theories tell us to expect.  Even Karl Popper (the archetypical proponent of the scientific method) recognised that much science actually involves a lot of innocuous falsification - simply calibrating measurements to fit existing theories rather than actually testing theories and hypotheses - and also immunising strategems - adding extra conditions to theories to make them fit with otherwise inconsistent observations. "True" identities only exist when we observe them.  But, in observing them, we either "create" or change them.

Furthermore, what we treat as truth as far as social relations are concerned, are more importantly value and vernacular truths rather than the valid and veracious truths dealt with by science.  So the scientific method is unlikely to be of much use to social scientists.

So, what should we do?  Go and look very closely at how the world behaves, so far as is possible without disturbing the world we are looking at all, and try and discern how it seems to be behaving in this particular location and time:  the prescription for intensive, close participant observations and much "post-modern" social research.

But this simply will not do if we seek to provide advice about how to live better in this world.  I, and most other social scientists, can only expect to be paid to do what we do so long as other people find what do either useful or at least mildly entertaining.  Our only other claim on other peoples' spending or taxes is through an appeal to their innate charity and benevolence, presumably based on the proposition that independent intellectual thought is somehow helpful or useful to society in general.  In turn, such research must be presumed either to advance knowledge (in a reasonably effective fashion) or to constitute a genuine addition to the cultural assets of society - its great arts as uplifters of the human soul.  I have to say, I see very little evidence that most social scientists will earn much of a living either as entertainers or as great artists.

In order to provide meaningful and useful advice, we need to explain what it is we have found and why people should believe what we have found to be applicable outside the necessarily limited realms within which we found it.  But, to do so requires that we have some sort of more or less convincing metaphysic or metanarrative - a story of the way the world works - the very thing which a post-modern approach denies.

The concerns have been well-expressed by Lord Dahrendorf  (1995): “There remains a common theme for a science of human society, and that while much progress has been made in developing its various facets and aspects, it is still important to try and tie the parts together -not in search of a ‘world formula’ but to make sense of the social habitat in which we live, have lived and are likely to live”.  (Dahrendorf, R. 1995, “Wither Social Sciences”, 6th ESRC Annual Lecture, Economic and Social Research Council, Swindon, UK).

I agree strongly with Dahrendorf, Jung (see relativism) and, I suppose, with Kuhn.  We social scientists urgently need a metamorphosis - we need a new metaphysical framework which has to involve a synthesis of our present understandings.  Our normal sciences' epistemologies are in a state of chaos - disorder. The post-modern condition is strong evidence of the failures of our modern metaphysics and paradigms.  Even physics - our "hardest" science dealing with things that few would consider not to be everyday facts - we are all made of atoms, and hence of sub-atomic particles, and we all display energies of some sort  - is discovering that all is not as it seems at the root of our existence: in the quantum world, things are only there when we look at them, and when 'they' (whatever they are) 'know' we are looking at them.

This need for a metamorphosis, however, is currently not being met.  The very opposite.  Science is fragmenting into more and more specialist and reductionist sub-disciplines, with (at least in social science) a proliferation of methods and stories (they hardly deserve the term theory) about the way the world works.  These stories typically compete with, rather than complement each other.

It is people like me, who have already reached (possibly even passed) the zenith of our personal ambitions and capacities, who can now afford to indulge themselves in thinking about these issues and speculating on the possible syntheses and resolutions.

So, that is what I am trying to do - speculate as rationally as I can about the nature of a possible synthesis. To make progress, however, I need the participation of others to engage in discussion and debate about where it makes sense and where it does not.  This where you come in.  The nature of the synthesis should help social scientists to make sense of what they do and where it might fit with what others do.  In which case, the synthesis should make sense to you.  Does it?  And, if not, what would yours look like?  And, if you say you do not need one, how are you going to deal with your inevitable critics and opponents?  Or, are you content to go on supporting present conventions (whichever ones you choose)?  That doesn't sound like science to me.

A speculation on the nature of a Neoclassical Synthesis.

A Postscript on "the scientific method":
The following true story concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen:

The question was:  "Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."
One student replied:
"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."

This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics.

To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity the basic principles of physics.

For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use.

On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:
"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer."

"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."

"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi sqroot (l / g)."

"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."

"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."

"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."

The student was Niels Bohr, the only person from Denmark to win the Nobel prize for Physics.  The last of these answers is, of course, the economic answer, in virtually all senses of the word!

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