Download Kaufmann`s Sociological review article

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A summary of: Kaufmann, F. (1936) ‘Remarks on the methodology of the social
sciences’, Sociological Review, 28, pp64-841
Felix Kaufmann defines the central task of philosophy as ‘thoroughgoing reflection’,
and he emphasises the importance of this for scientific progress. Indeed, he sees this
as necessary on the part of scientists themselves when new facts are discovered that
do not fit into the existing system of knowledge, citing the example of Einstein. He
argues that such reflection is equally, if not more, important in the social sciences.
Furthermore, he insists on their continuity with natural science in this respect, and in
others. For example, he rejects the idea that they deal with a realm in which causal
necessity does not operate. He argues that this conception of the difference between
the social and natural sciences is based on a fallacious conception of scientific laws,
one which conflates the logical necessity involved in logic and mathematics with
material causality. As part of this emphasis on continuity, he insists that ‘the contrast
between exact and inexact empirical propositions is not an absolute one’ (p66). He
also questions any link between inexactness and lack of conceptual clarity, thereby
insisting on the possibility of, and need for, the latter in social, just as much as in
natural, science. He writes that: ‘Because a general statement (a rule) exhibits an
inadequate degree of exactness, so that therefore no very reliable predictions as to
actual occurrences can be made from it, it does not follow that such a statement
cannot be clearly and unequivocally formulated’ (p66). He continues: ‘for a
statement is clear when the conditions of its truth, i.e. the criteria upon which its
truth or falseness are supposed to depend, are precisely stated; but the nature of
these conditions may vary indefinitely, and the question whether they are in fact
fulfilled in a given case is a quite separate one’. (p66).
Indeed, Kaufmann argues that there is a need for conceptual clarification in
the social sciences even more than in natural science, commenting that:
‘consideration of half a century of violent and interminable methodological
controversies, resulting mainly from the misunderstanding of the opponent’s thesis,
suffices to show the urgent necessity of such clarification’. (p66). Here he is referring
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This article was itself a summary of Kaufmann’s book, Theory and Method in the Social Sciences, which
was published in German in the same year (see Cohen and Helling 2014 for an English translation).
For a review of this, see Hammersley 2016. In 1944, having emigrated to the United States, Kaufmann
wrote a book in English, aimed at US philosophers and social scientists, with a similar title and
dealing with many of the same issues: see Kaufmann 1944. For discussions of Kaufmann’s work see
the Introduction to the Cohen and Helling volume, and: Helling 1984 and 1988, Reeder 1991 and 2009,
and Kawano 2009.
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to the Methodenstreit, which was initially prompted by the clash between Austrian
and German historical versions of economics, but whose reverberations spread out
across the other social sciences at the end of the nineteenth century and into the
twentieth century, particularly in the German-speaking world.
He then goes on to outline a series of misconceptions that have blighted the
social sciences. His central point is to challenge any claim that there can be
statements about reality that are valid a priori, on the model of logico-mathematical
propositions – which was a central element of Austrian economics. One of his
favourite quotations is Einstein’s dictum: ‘in so far as the propositions of
mathematics refer to reality, they are not secure, and in so far as they are secure, they
do not apply to reality’. Along the same lines he challenges those views of Verstehen
that treat it as providing apodictic knowledge of the meanings that generate
particular courses of social action. In both cases, he emphasises the need to check the
validity of any interpretation against the facts. At the same time, he does not treat
facts as simply given, and therefore as themselves automatically valid, in the manner
of some contemporary logical positivists, with whom he had contact. Following
Husserl, he emphasises the respects in which facts are actively constituted through
cognition, while at the same time denying that this implies that they are fictions, to
be treated simply as matters of ‘as if’.
Kaufmann applies a similar line of argument to the issue of methods, insisting
that ‘no method of research can be declared a priori to be the only adequate one’
(p69). Rather, a preference for one method over another in a particular investigation
always needs to be justified, and this must be by means of ‘scientific reasons’, in
other words those concerned with serving the goal of producing knowledge. He
argues that while the practice of science is itself part of the world – and therefore is
affected by psychological, historical, and other forces and motives – this does not
mean that scientific reasons cannot or should not prevail within it. Here he is
arguing against forms of scepticism and relativism such as those that had come to be
associated with extreme interpretations of the sociology of knowledge.
Against this background, he goes on to consider ‘the peculiarities which
distinguish research in the social sciences from that in other sciences’, ‘how far these
have an independent method of their own, and how far they are dependent on the
methods of other sciences, such as physics, biology, psychology, and ethics’ (p70).
Here he rejects both naturalism and anti-naturalism; both the idea that the methods
of natural science must be those of the social sciences, and the claim that those
methods are in principle inapplicable within social science. The task, instead, is to
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determine the extent to which the two kinds of science use the same methods,
because ‘they both deal with empirical reality’ (p71), and to what extent they
legitimately diverge. He notes that under the influence of anti-naturalism ‘we are
rather inclined to underestimate the predictability of social events, although in
ordinary social intercourse we continually and successfully direct our actions in
accordance with anticipations about the behaviour of other people – people who are,
moreover, often quite unknown to us’ (pp71-2). This echoes the earlier point about
the lack of any absolute difference in the character of empirical laws in the ‘exact’
and ‘inexact’ sciences.
The subtlety of his position on this issue can be illustrated by the following
statement:
[...] the social sciences, in contrast to physics, lack universal laws and a
uniform basis of reference for interpretations, which would constitute first
principles in a hierarchy of laws governing the whole social sphere. It is
therefore necessary to apply different methods to different problems; and the
selection of the problems to be solved – itself influenced by practical
considerations – comes to play a far greater role in directing research in the
social sciences than in the natural sciences. [...] [Therefore] we can only hope
to find partial dominants, to discover firm islands of interconnection in the
sea of social events. Here the investigator is faced, more often than in the
natural sciences, with the task of reflecting on what phenomena to correlate
and what interdependences to bear in mind. Precisely for this reason it is
absolutely necessary to be clear in one’s mind about the aim of the enquiry,
and to distinguish it clearly from the ulterior practical aims which have led to
the establishment of the theoretical aim, and which are furthered by its
attainment. (pp72-3)
Here Kaufmann is adopting a very similar position to Weber’s doctrine that
social science must be value-relevant but must also seek to be value-neutral, in the
sense of being directed solely towards epistemic goals. And he also follows Weber in
insisting that values are relational not absolute, that ‘every judgment of value
presupposes a given reference-system of aims’ (p74). A further correspondence with
Weber’s position is Kaufmann’s insistence that causal analysis is central to social
science, but that the meanings objects have for actors must be taken into account in
such analysis. He draws a clear distinction between meaning relations and causal
relations, but one which does not imply the existence of a distinct ontological sphere
of ideal objects or an objective mind. In this his position also corresponds to that of
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Alfred Schutz, a close friend. He relies on Schutz’s work to distinguish how we set
about understanding the actions of people whom we know personally from how we
understand those we do not know. In the latter case we rely on anonymous
typifications; and, like Schutz, Kaufmann treats these typifications as providing the
model for social scientists’ ‘ideal types’. He also shares with both Weber and Schutz
a commitment to methodological individualism, but as with other standard
positions he takes great care in clarifying the different interpretations of this concept,
and the distinctions underlying these, with the result that his stance is a
sophisticated middle position in this debate, as in several others.
Having sought to clear away misconceptions that plague methodological
thinking about the social sciences, and to clarify the topography of the complex
intellectual ground that these obscure, Kaufmann identifies his task as to identify the
genuine methodological divergences that structure this territory. In order to pursue
this he develops a general scheme that can provide a framework for understanding
any process of scientific inquiry, distinguishing between the setting of research
problems, the presuppositions these involve, their investigation by various methods,
and the production of different types of knowledge. As already noted, he argues that
there is an obligation on researchers to outline reasons for treating one method as
preferable to others. Rather optimistically, he sees this kind of clarificatory work as
laying the basis for resolution of the methodological controversies that plague social
science, at least to the extent that the knowledge required to resolve them is
accessible. He concludes: ‘the time is now ripe for a radical clarification of
methodological questions in the social sciences, which may be expected to react very
favourably on the future development of sociological knowledge’; though he does
also note that this ‘requires the organized collaboration of a great number of
investigators’ (84). It might be commented that we still await the emergence of such
a collaborative effort to try to clarify and resolve the methodological problems that
face the social sciences. Indeed, the Babel-like cacophony of voices is now even more
deafening than it was in the 1930s.
References
Cohen, R. S. and Helling, I. K. (eds) (2014) Felix Kaufmann’s Theory and Method in the
Social Sciences, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, Cham
Switzerland, Springer. (First published in German in 1936.)
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Hammersley, M. (2016) ‘Review of Robert S. Cohen and Ingeborg K. Helling, eds.
Felix Kaufmann’s Theory and Method in the Social Sciences’, Philosophy of the Social
Sciences, forthcoming 2016.
Helling, I. (1984) ‘A. Schutz and F. Kaufmann: Sociology between science and
interpretation’, Human Studies, 7, pp141-61.
Helling, I. (1988) ‘Alfred Schutz, Felix Kaufmann, and the economists of the von
Mises Circle: Personal and methodological continuities’, in List, E. and Srubar, I.
(eds) Alfred Schütz: Neue Beiträge zur Rezeption seines Werkes, Amsterdam, Rodopi
(pp43-68).
Kawano, K. (2009) ‘On methodology of the social sciences: Schutz and Kaufmann’, in
Nasu, H. Embree, L., Psathas, G., and Srubar, I. (eds) (2009) Alfred Schutz and his
Intellectual Partners, Konstanz, UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH.
Reeder. H. (1991) The Work of Felix Kaufmann, New York, University Press of
America.
Reeder, H. (2009) ‘Alfred Schutz and Felix Kaufmann: The methodological brackets’,
in Nasu, H. Embree, L., Psathas, G., and Srubar, I. (eds) (2009) Alfred Schutz and his
Intellectual Partners, Konstanz, UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH.