WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE?

Invariably, the way in which the problem; what is scientific

knowledge? is approached reflects the conception of science within which

the writer is operating, e.g., questions about causation, verification

and explanation tend to be located within a positivistic conception of

science while questions of scientific practice which refer to the

production of knowledge by means of the application of concepts to the

'raw material' indicate a materialist conception. We may specify what we

regard as the main propositions of positivism as follows:

1. The phenomena dealt with by the social sciences are qualitatively no different from those of the natural sciences. This being the case, the methodology of the latter is appropriate for the

former.

2. The principal aim of sociology is to formulate a system of empirically grounded theories that will ultimately be used for accurate prediction of social phenomena.

3. An empiricist epistemology, in which knowledge of an object consists in apprehending its essence by a process of abstraction

(generalising) from the concrete object, is appropriate for scientific sociology.

4. The sociologist, qua sociologist, seeks to be neutral with respect to values (Lally, 1978a:5).

These propositions are similar to the four aspects of positivism specified

by Fay. Fay uses the term 'positivist social science' to 'refer to that

metatheory of social science which is based on a modern empiricist

philosophy of science referred to as the hypothetico-deductive model of

science' (Fay, 1975:13). The four 'essential features' of this metatheory

are:

First, drawing on the distinction between discovery and validation, its dcductive-nomological account of explanation and concomitant modified Humean interpretation of the notion of 'cause'; second,

its belief in a neutral observation language as the proper foundation of knowledge; third, its value-free ideal of scientific knowledge; and fourth, its belief in the methodological unity of the sciences

The notion of a 'materialist conception of scientific practice' is taken

from the writings of Louis Althusser. Pickvance (1976:4) has contrasted

this position with empiricism:

Whereas in the conventional ('empiricist') conception of knowledge, theoretical objects, or concepts, are produced as a result of

abstraction from reality (real objects), Althusser dismisses abstraction as an 'empiricist' process which has no place in his

'materialist' epistemology. Since the precise relation between

theoretical object and real object is the matter of some debate, let us simply say that the real object refers to some aspect of reality, ready-wrapped in preconceptions which are usually 'ideological' which the science seeks knowledge of in the form of a theoretical object.

(Theoretical knowledge is seem as arising not from the action of a subject [thinker] on the real object, but by the action of theoretical concepts on the real object).

The nature of this materialist process in terms of the ap£:>lication of

concept to a raw material to produce knowledge will be elaborated on

later. Writers who have adopted this materialist approach include

Tribe (1973) and Castells and de Ipola (1976).

A prevailing concern within the philosophy of science is the

examination of the question of whether or not there is only one

universalistic practice which produces legitimate knowledge and thus only

one form of product that can be regarded as knowledge (Keat and Urry,

1975:7). This issue is apparent, for instance, in the distinction between

natural scientific knowledge and all other forms of knowledge. As Giddens

says:

There has been the attempt to sustain the claim that natural

scientific knowledge, or a particular characterization of it, should be regarded as the exemplar of everything which can be regarded legitimately as 'knowledge' (1976:13).

Knowledge, in the social sciences, by the very nature of the components

involved (i.e., the subject-subject relationship as opposed to the subject-

object relationship in the natural sciences) and the characteristics of

these components, suggests that social science knowledge is likely to be

different than knowledge in the natural sciences. The exclusive

specification of knowledge in the form of 'natural scientific knowledge'

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which is the only true method for the production of scientific knowledge.

No such method exists. There exists only specific practices which provide

their own internal standards to evaluate the status of the knowledge

produced (Althusser, 1969).

The methods of the natural sciences, which, by and large have been

whole-heartedly employed in the social sciences, are logical positivism

and empiricism. It is these methods which have at best produced empirical

generalisations in the social sciences: an extremely limited system of

knowledge (Willers, 1973).1 To quote from Giddens again on this topic:

But any approach to the social sciences which seeks to express their epistemology and ambitions as directly similar to those of the

sciences of nature is condemned to failure in its own terms, and can only result in a limited understanding of the condition of man in society (Giddens, 1976:14).

A considerable problem in critiquing the literature on scientific

method is the difficulty of distinguishing the various terms which do more

to confuse analysis than to enlighten it, e.g., positivism, inductivism,

falsificationism, conventionalism, realism to name just a few. These

terminological difficulties are compounded by the various meanings different

authors apply to the same terms. However, a considerable number of these

epistemological positions can be reduced to a few assumptions upon which

they are based and which some of them share, e.g., that knowledge resides

in the 'real world' and all observations precede theory; that in the final

analysis, what constitutes scientific knowledge is a function of what

scientists say or do. By refuting these assumptions, the approaches

themselves can be said to be refuted. Another problem is that the

conceptualisation of the problem in terms of the discovery of an 'adequate'

or 'satisfactory' philosophy of science is usually in the form of

dichotomies, e.g., objective/subjective; realism/idealism; naturalist/

anti-naturalist, which tends to set boundaries and categories within which

the debate proceeds. In other words these 'opposites' tend to put blinders

Urry that the application of these dichotomies has been such that the

'natural' combinations between dichotomies to classify approaches has

generally been naturalist positivist or anti-naturalist idealist. The

authors go on to argue that this is incorrect as it is possible to hold a

naturalist position which is not x^ositivist (Keat and Urry 1975:1-2).

What then distinguishes a naturalist from a positivist conception of

science?