THE EXPLANATION AND STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

The solution to the integration of various economics and social sciences lies in the manner how a person thinks, which, illuminated by computer principles, can be interpreted dualistically and transcendentally as “thinking = computation = (Instruction + information) × speed × time”. “Instructions” are assumed the innate and universal thinking tools that are defined definitely in computer science and numbered finitely. For example, “+”, “-“, “×”, “And”, “Or”, “Not”, “Copy”, “Compare”, “Move” are all Instructions. Different Instructions alternately and repetitively process different information or data from the spatiotemporal environment. One Instruction processes no more than two data, getting no more than one result (as “knowledge”), this is called “one operation”. Only one operation can be done in the brain at any moment, so operations have to be connected sequentially or “serially” to compute or think, and only finite number of operations can be carried out within a unit time (“limited speed”). This is called “Algorithm Framework Theory” (AFT). Social scientists can infer under this framework without knowing well of computer science or technological details. As the ability of an operation is so tiny, thinking or computation has to be undertaken “roundaboutly”, thereby endogenizing thinking stocks or knowledges, which both support and constrain operations, and evolve and develop qualitatively and quantitatively. Since the operations accomplished hitherto, and hence the knowledges acquired, must be limited, actors have to make decisions with the “bounded rationality”. Time and resources elapse, but the demands need to be satisfied in time, hence the decisive computations have to finish timely. This is why the tedious deductions are often “reasonably” forsaken and the actors “deductively” turn to various non-deductive methods (“Algorithms”), thereby subjectivities or “irrationalities” rationally and optimally happen. The world is pluralistic in actors’ eyes before computations, and the pluralities, via computations, diminish and converge toward consistency and equilibrium; meanwhile, with the establishment of some equilibria, human computational power is saved and therefore can be re-invest in new areas; thus, computations will return active and the world will still be pluralistic or “mixed”, where any order or regularity exists just partly. Accumulation of computational results leads to continuous knowledge expansion, innovation and development, and the mathematical principle of “Combinatorial Explosion” ensure the development would be explosive and endless, thus, the mainstream equilibrium paradigm is deconstructed, re-absorbed and broken through. Money arises from saving the costs of price conversion, so it is an Algorithmic consequence. Computing economy makes knowledge stocks quite rigid, which causes the endogeny of institutions as a kind of rigid knowledges. The pervasive conflicts incur waste and losses, where an organization can be built up, through buying the interpersonal obedience and concordance, to pursue the additional benefits. Governments as a kind of organization can be bred in various Algorithmic ways. Bounded rationality entails the distinction, symbiosis and overlap between intentions and consequences, which explains “Invisible Hand” as an externality. Bounded rationality also emanates that transactional opportunities are local, and then other non-transactional behaviors emerge, including the governmental and social ones.

I commence this lecture with an assumption that you came here with preconceived notions about the word science and the word explanation, hence you might understand the phrase scientific explanation differently from the way philosophers refer to it. In brief scientific explanation the way philosophers refer to it is the end result of scientific inquiry and to explain in the scientific terms means to explain the underlying cause of the observable effect. And this is where the main problem lies since scientists can observe physical, biological or social events as much as they wish to, but often struggle to find the underlying cause of these events. And what they find, might not be the ultimate cause. But if they are successful they are capable of making the events predictable and manageable. Millennia ago thunderbolts were thought be the act of gods, today, after the work of Michael Faraday we control it by a light switch.

Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, 2019

Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences will fill in the gap in the existing coverage of links between new theoretical advancements in the social and human sciences and their historical roots. Making that linkage is crucial for the interdisciplinary synthesis across the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, semiotics, and the political sciences. In contemporary human sciences of the 21st there exists increasing differentiation between neurosciences and all other sciences that are aimed at making sense of the complex social, psychological, and political processes. Thus new series has the purpose of (1) coordinating such efforts across the borders of existing human and social sciences, (2) providing an arena for possible inter-disciplinary theoretical syntheses, (3) bring into attention of our contemporary scientific community innovative ideas that have been lost in the dustbin of history for no good reasons, and (4) provide an arena for international communication between social and human scientists across the World.

Oeconomica, 2014

In the view of analyzing the differences and resemblances of the natural and social sciences (with the economics between them), some of their ontological and epistemological problems and solutions are presented. The options for the interactionist, evolutionist and probabilistic-determinist ontological solutions, for the union of explanation and understanding, of iterative analytic and synthetic methods, as for a humanist naturalism (or substantialist) philosophy, are sustained by using both the structural and historical approaches. All these options succeed to preserve the basic unity and autonomy of the natural and human ontological domains and, alike, of their corresponding sciences.

Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 2017

-- Citation information: Feldbacher-Escamilla, C. J., Gebharter, A., & Schurz, G. (2017). Philosophy of science between the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities [Introduction]. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 48(3), 317–326. doi:10.1007/s10838-017-9378-8

The Philosophical study of social research is an important dimension of social science which has been placed to analyze the problems of social science description and its relationship. It describes the social phenomena within natural science as well as is concerned with the intellectual authority of various aspects of social science knowledge of the social world. Social research boils down to a struggle over the legitimate study through philosophical approaches. Philosophy of social science deals with the generalized meaning of the thing and centred on the sharing of experience about the social world in which people's perspective differs from one another. Social science has always been multi-perspective and multi cultural in nature which facilitates in providing various claims about how best to understand the social world. The study aims at unraveling the issues related to the key methodologies of philosophical science in social research and depicting a brief sketch of the relationship between philosophy and social research and finally tries to find out how philosophical approaches change its pattern and take place in social research.

Metaphilosophy, 1972

In a nutshell, the present essay claims this : First, the classical problem of knowledge has recently shifted from, How do I know? to, How do we know?-from psychology to sociology.

The Education and science journal, 2018

Introduction. In today's globalising world, science acquires a crucial importance: integrating humanity within the framework of solving global problems, it becomes one of the leading factors in social development, facilitating work and diversifying leisure time, as well as serving as an instrument of transformations in the political sphere. Undoubtedly, the social aspects of contemporary science are capturing the attention of a huge number of researchers. However, it is not clear that all areas of the sociology of science treat the object of their study in the same way. Aim. A lack of reflection on the unity or otherwise in the understanding of the essence of science in the various fields of sociological research makes it difficult to compare different theories of the institutional, cultural, social and communicative contexts of scientific development. An urgent methodological task therefore consists in developing an understanding of the various definitions of the concept of "science" used in the framework of contemporary sociological analysis of this phenomenon. Results and scientific novelty. In this paper, two dominant sociological views on science-as an experimental-mathematical approach to cognising the world and as a system of representations in general-are compared. We conclude that while researchers studying institutional aspects of science tend to interpret it in terms of the "heritage" of post-Enlightenment European rationalism, constructionist and communicatively-oriented researchers tend to approach science as the system of knowledge and cognition that is formed in any human society, having its own specific sociocultural features in each respective case. While each of these two approaches undoubtedly has its own methodological potential, in order to