Monday, September 17, 2007
First Post
This is my first post. After doing my reaction paper this week, and reading Kuhn's book, the comparison between our Senior Seminar readings and Social Theory readings was very clear to me. I found a lot of similarities between some of the pieces, but the overlay helped me in analyzing Kuhn's piece. Did anyone else find these similarities?
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One of the similar themes I have found throughout our readings is the concept of progress in social development. Kuhn consideres science as a paradigmatic process in which each scientific revolution represents an advancement and progression of knowledge. In a similar way, Comte views human development as a system of progressive stages, going from the theologcal up to the scientific. Spencer seems to view progress in terms of evolution, arguing that those who survive are the fittest and provide proof that society is progressing.
After reading this week it has allowed me to see the very similar and different views of the progress in social development. Defining Theory as a way to organize one's attention or a system of ideas intended to explain something, allows us to look at these different theorist and agree with some ideas more than others. Knowing theories are historical and a reflection of the time, which of these readings today did you find to be the most valid or even the most unconvincing?
Thanks Danielle, for getting us started!
I found this following statement by Wolfe to be very interesting:
“There is a long-standing debate in the social sciences, one that parallels the division between science and the humanities, dividing those who claim that human behavior is so constant that it can be predicted and those who argue that because humans are so unpredictable, their affairs can never achieve the regularity needed by science. Both positions miss the point. Humans live in both nature and culture. They possess qualities of the mind but do not always use those qualities…There can be no fixed methodology for the social sciences because there can be no fixed assumptions about human nature.”
What do you guys think about what Wolfe has to say here? Does anyone think that human behavior can be studied as being constant? Or the opposite? I agree with Wolfe’s sentence stating that, “They possess the qualities of the mind but do not always use those qualities.” We talked about this subject in my Mass Media class and when you look at our society, Wolfe’s outlook on human beings is valid. Most of us do not realize or do not choose to realize our place within our culture. A large percentage of us simply go through their daily lives, doing what is necessary to survive.
Erikson, Kai, ed. Sociological Visions. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997. 38
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