jueves, mayo 20, 2004

Objectivity in Social Science according to Max Weber

I just read the 1904 "Objectivity of Social Science and Social Policy". I get from the reading a set of interesting ideas.

There is no such a thing as objectivity. The best that we can get is a frame that give us values to understand reality. There is a kind of objective order of basic concepts. This order is objective. With this order, and the subjectivity of our values, we make social science.

This idea has a conflict. If my interpretation is right, Weber is saying that an ontology in social science is objective. Although useful for comunicating, an ontology doesn't seem to be the most objective concept that we can produce.

However, after a second read, I have a new idea and let me cite Weber,
"The conclusion which follows from the above is that an "objective" analysis of cultural events, which proceeds according to the thesis that the ideal of science is the reduction of empirical reality of "laws," is meaningless. It is not meaningless, as is often maintained, because cultural or psychic events for instance are "objectively" less governed by laws. It is meaningless for a number of other reasons. Firstly, because the knowledge of social laws is not knowledge of social reality but is rather one of the various aids used by our minds for attaining this end; secondly, because knowledge of cultural events is inconceivable except on a basis of the significance which the concrete constellations of reality have for us in certain individual concrete situations"

Things are now more clear!