Volume One: Contributed Papers || Sociology and Hacking's Trousers

Sociology and Hacking's TrousersAuthor(s): Warren SchmausSource: PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association,Vol. 1992, Volume One: Contributed Papers (1992), pp. 167-173Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/192752 .

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Sociology and Hacking's Trousers1

Warren Schmaus

Illinois Institute of Technology

For Hacking, the word "real" is one of J.L. Austin's trouser-words, taking its meaning from its negative uses in much the same way as the admittedly sexist expression "wear the trousers". In Representing and Intervening, Hacking proposes that at least some scientific realists can be interpreted as using the word "real" in this way. The word "real" is also substantive-hungry, he adds. Thus when a philosopher states that a type of entity is not real we need to know just what is being denied. The causal entity realist, for example, holds that the entities scientists postulate in their theories can be regarded as real if they have causal powers that can be manipulated to create observable and repeatable effects. Thus the causalist offers sociology a possible way to command respect: if social science entities could be manipulated, the social sciences would then be on a par with physics. By endorsing this causalist position, however, Hacking is not trying to be friendly to the social sciences. In fact, he believes that the social sciences have not yet yielded entities that we can use to create new phenomena (1983a, 248-9).

However, as I will argue in this essay, there is an alternative way to defend the equal status of the social sciences. In what follows, I will criticize Hacking's attempt to apply his causalist entity realism to the social sciences and argue that in the philosophy of the social sciences, the realism issue concerns systems for classifying people and not unobservable theoretical entities. I will then show that Hacking reaches a nominalist position regarding classes of people by considering them in abstraction from the social systems of which they form a part. Hacking, I will argue, gives us no reason to believe that the objects of study of the social sciences are any less real than the objects of study of the natural sciences.

1. Causalism and the Social Sciences

For Hacking, the issue of scientific realism in the natural sciences concerns unobservable entities not as particulars but as representatives of certain kinds (1989, 562). His argument for preferring his causalist brand of realism about entities over J. J. C. Smart's materialist entity realism is that causalism is more inclusive. For the materialist, an entity is not real unless it is one of the "building blocks" of the material world. In order for a type of entity to be a type of building block, it seems, one must

PSA 1992, Volume 1, pp. 167-173 Copyright ? 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association



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be able to individuate or at least to count representatives of this type. Thus Smart accepts the reality of electrons but not of lines of magnetic force (1963, 34). For the causalist, on the other hand, an entity is real if it has real effects. From this point of view, lines of magnetic force are just as real as electrons (Hacking 1983a, 37).

Causalism not only explains what it means to say that lines of magnetic force as well as electrons are real, however. Causalism also encompasses the social sciences and explains what it means for the entities that they postulate to be considered real, Hacking argues. Smart's materialism, on the other hand, Hacking contends, can in principle make no sense of the reality of entities in the social sciences (1983a, 35, 38- 40). Now I am not sure that I can accept what Hacking says against materialism in the social sciences. However, I will not try to defend materialism against causalism, as I think that the more fundamental question is whether the realism issue in the social sciences at all concerns unobservable entities.

According to Hacking, one distinguishes the real from the unreal among putative entities in the same way in both the social and the natural sciences: that is, the real ones have real effects due to their causal powers. Putative entities in the social sciences, he thinks, can be criticized on a case-by-case basis with regard to whether we understand the causal mechanism by which they produce their effects (1983a, 38). Thus, for example, Hacking claims that Max Weber criticizes Marxian forces and tendencies on the grounds that they lack causal powers, Stephen Gould rejects the reifi- cation of IQ, and we may accept Durkheim's collective consciousness while rejecting Jung's collective unconsciousness (1983a, 38-9). Presumably, for an entity like Durkheim's collective consciousness to be real for Hacking would be for there to exist a method for manipulating it in order to bring about changes in society.

Hacking, I am afraid, is less than fortunate in his choice of examples. According to Hacking, Weber's criticism of Marx reveals a negative use of a causalist attitude to- wards social scientific laws. That is, Hacking asserts, Weber rejects Marx's concepts of "forces" and "tendencies" on the grounds that these things have no causal powers. (1983a, 39.) This interpretation, however, overlooks the fact that for Weber, the goal of social science is not practical intervention through the manipulation of entities but making social and historical facts intelligible to a particular audience of a certain cul- ture.2 Weber criticizes Marx on the grounds that he fails to achieve these goals.

Unlike Weber's, Durkheim's conception of the goals of social science does include an explanatory role for theoretical entities with causal powers. However, the "social forces" that Durkheim invokes to explain such generalizations as the "law" that Protestants have higher rates of suicide than Catholics are not always taken seriously. In fact, these entities are sometimes considered an embarrassment: Robert Alun Jones, for example, dismisses Durkheim's use of terms like "social forces" and "suici- dogenic currents" as so much "obfuscatory language" (1986, 114). Even Hacking, although he recognizes the explanatory role of social forces in Durkheim's sociology (1990, ch. 18, 20), fails to appreciate that social forces for Durkheim arise from another kind of theoretical entities, which Durkheim calls "collective representations". Durkheim, educated as a philosopher, was steeped in the tradition of the way of ideas. Collective representations for Durkheim are a special type of mental entity that, because of the social conditions under which they are formed, are more "lively" than other kinds of mental representations and thus override them and affect behavior. According to Durkheim, this superior psychological energy of collective representations is thus responsible for social forces.3



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Even when social scientists continue to use Durkheim's theoretical terms, these terms no longer have the same referents. For example, although David Bloor contin- ues to use Durkheim's term "collective representation," it refers no longer to a type of mental entity as it did for Durkheim but to a node in a Quinean web of belief. Although Bloor accepts the Durkheim-Mauss hypothesis that classifications of things in nature reproduce classifications of people in society, he rejects Durkheim's attempt to explain this hypothesis in terms of the causal powers of collective representations. For Bloor, the Durkheim-Mauss thesis now means that in modem societies, scientists will defend a system of natural classification that somehow legitimizes a social ar- rangement that they would like either to maintain or to bring about (Bloor 1982).

The point of these examples is that sociological generalizations may take on a life independent of the theories that account for them in terms of postulated causal entities. Unlike physics, the social sciences today simply do not seem to be concerned with unobservable entities. In his most recent work, Hacking concedes that the realism issue is not necessarily about unobservable entities but in fact differs for each style of scientific reasoning, according as each style introduces its own class of objects. Thus, he says, there are realist disputes about abstract mathematical objects, biological taxa, languages and rates of unemployment as well as about unobservable theoretical entities (1992b, 1992c).

When explaining this notion of a style of scientific reasoning, Hacking usually cites A. C. Crombie's list of six distinguishable styles. These include: (a) the postula- tional method of mathematics, (b) "the experimental exploration and measurement of more complex observable relations", (c) "the hypothetical construction of analogical models," (d) methods of comparison and taxonomic classification, (e) statistical methods, and (f) "the historical derivation of genetic development" (1982, 50; 1983b, 455; 1985, 147; 1990, 6; 1992a, 132; 1992b; 1992c). Hacking does not actually subscribe to this list other than as a starting point for further discussion. He has recently added two additional styles: (a*) an Indo-Arabic algorithmic style of applied mathematics, and (bc) the laboratory style, combining the experimental and hypothetical styles, "characterized by the building of apparatus in order to produce phenomena to which hypothetical modeling may be true or false" (1992b; cf. 1992c). Disputes about unobservable entities appear to be a product of the laboratory style of reasoning. The reality of classes of people turns on styles of reasoning other than the laboratory style. To take an example from The Taming of Chance, claims that certain types of people are "normal" or "deviant" are tied to a statistical style of reasoning in the tradition of Adolphe Quetelet.

2. Dynamic Nominalism

It is not clear, however, that Hacking would accept Quetelet's statistical classes as real. In general, Hacking is not a realist about social classes but instead defends a position he calls "dynamic nominalism". Acknowledging a debt to Michel Foucault, Hacking characterizes dynamic nominalism as the belief that systems for classifying people created by society may affect what people do, which in turn may affect our knowledge of them (1984; 1986a; 1986b; 1988; 1990; 1991). As he explains in The Taming of Chance, the way that we classify people "has consequences for the ways in which we conceive of others and think of our own possibilities and potentialities" (1990, 6). For example, we not only classify people as either normal or abnormal, but "we try to make ourselves normal, which in turn affects what is normal" (1990, 2). In an article on the concept of child abuse, he claims that this "looping" or "feedback effect" drives a wedge between the social and the natural sciences that is "substantial" and not "methodological" (1988, 62). Facts are constructed in the social sciences in a



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sense "well worth calling social" but different than the sense in which facts are constructed in the natural sciences, he argues, because this looping effect does not occur with inanimate objects (1988, 57).

Hacking's way of distinguishing the social and the natural sciences, however, is not convincing (cf. Bogen, 1988). In both the natural and the social sciences, I would argue, our classifications make new kinds of actions possible. Explaining the notion of "dynamic nominalism" in an essay on split personalities, he says: "if the classification is not made, then people will not adopt that as a possible way to be" (1986a, 79). Similarly, I would suggest, when we classify entities in the natural sciences in a certain way, we make possible the creation of new experimental effects. The analogy can be brought to light first by interpreting the slogan of Representation and Intervening as stating "If you can spray them, then they form a real kind" and then by arguing that "if the classification is not made, then people will not find a way to spray them". The truth of this latter statement may be made easier to see by considering not electrons, the philosopher's favorite kind of entity, but Hacking's other example con- cerning muons and mesons. According to Hacking, this classification grew up togeth- er with ways of manipulating these entities (1983a, 87-91). One could even argue that the way that we classify entities has consequences for the ways in which we think of our own possibilities and potentialities-that is, the possibilities opened us to us through new technologies made possible by techniques for manipulating entities.

So far, kinds of people seem to be created in the same way and thus just as real as kinds of entities. I do not consider it a serious objection to my analogy that, whereas in the natural sciences we are classifying unobservable entities, in the social sciences we are classifying people. Much as the social sciences may consider people as existing independently of our classifications of them, the natural sciences may regard entities as existing independently of our systems of classification. The issue then becomes one of realism about people or entities as representatives of categories or classes.

A more serious objection may be that the constraints on systems of classification are different in the natural than in the social sciences. Now Hacking is careful to distinguish his dynamic nominalism from what he calls "wishful-thinking nominalism" in the social sciences (1986a, 79). He studiously avoids providing a general account of categories of people in terms of nominalism and realism, suggesting that some categories may be more real than others. The class of homosexuals, he supposes, is more real than the class of split personalities, yet the class of waiters is even more real than the class of homosexuals (1986b, 233-4). However, he also says that classifications in the social sciences are "constituted by an historical process," whereas classifications in the natural sciences are constrained by the "world" (1984, 115). Explaining this distinction further, he says that although types of physical phenomena are "created" by us, they are nevertheless "timeless" in the sense that whenever the relevant conditions are brought into being, the effects will result. Social and political categories, on the other hand, he believes are "constituted in an essentially historical set- ting" (1984, 124).

I doubt, however, that Hacking's distinction between social and natural classifications matters or even holds up. His distinction looks plausible only when we consider a category of people such as split personalities or child abusers in isolation from the entire social system. A Durkheimian could say that such systems of social classification are both timeless in Hacking's sense and constituted historically. Durkheim's primitive classification hypothesis, for instance, could be interpreted either way.



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The primitive classification hypothesis held at least two distinct meanings for Durkheim. According to one meaning, it is simply the historical claim that the prac- tice of subsuming species under genera is rooted in primitive social classifications in which clans are subsumed under phratries. This interpretation arises from Durkheim's argument that we could not have arrived at the concept of subsuming species under genera simply by observing nature. Instead, he believes, we borrowed this idea of subsuming one category under another from our social organization (1912, 210-11). A survival of this primitive form of social classification can be found in universities, in which the faculty is classified by departments and colleges.

A second interpretation of the primitive classification thesis, however, is more spe- cific. It says that primitive tribes use the same system of clans and phratries for classifying both people and things in nature. Under this second interpretation, one can distinguish a "timeless" and a "historical" sense. Under its historical interpretation, which is based upon Durkheim's discussion of the ethnographic record, the precise names and numbers of clans in each phratry will be emphasized. That is, it says that for any given tribe, the names of the different species and genera in a system of natural classification and the numbers of species in each genus are the same as the names and numbers of the various clans and phratries. Bloor's relativist interpretation of Durkheim is grounded in such an historical reading of the primitive classification hypothesis. Understanding this hypothesis in its timeless sense, however, we can say that wherever we meet with a society that satisfies Durkheim's definition of "primitive," whether it be the Northwest Amerindians or the natives of Australia, we will discover the use of a system of clans and phratries for classifying people in society and things in nature. For Durkheim, this appears to be an empirical fact about the way that people do things.

In sum, a system of social classification may be regarded either as a historical particular or as a representative of a type. Hacking's failure to consider social groups as parts of systems of classification, I think, has led him to drive a wedge between the social and the natural sciences. The kangaroo clan, say, and the class of people with split personalities may both be only historical entities. It is less clear that the kinds of social systems to which these categories belong are merely historical entities. In any event, I do not think that the goal of sociology is to find laws governing members either of the class of split personalities or the kangaroo clan, any more than the goal of biology is to find laws governing members of biological taxa. To push the analogy with biology a little further, the existence of timeless laws governing the evolution of social systems would not be affected by the fact that particular social groups may come and go.

3. Conclusion

I have tried to show that the social sciences are not inferior to the natural sciences due to the nature of their objects of study. Having removed Hacking's reasons for distinguishing the social from the natural sciences, we can conclude, if I may be permit- ted to use Austin's and Hacking's sexist expression, that social scientists have the same right to wear trousers as physical scientists.

Notes

11 would like to thank Ian Hacking for his comments on an earlier draft of this essay and for sending me offprints of some of his articles. Of course, I accept full re- sponsibility for any remaining errors of interpretation.



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2Stephen P. Turner, personal communication. Ironically, Turner explains, Weber denies causal reality to social entities as part of his rejection of the classical mores tradition in social theory. The causal powers of mores were defined in such a way that their existence made intervention in the course of social events impossible.

31 defend this interpretation of Durkheim at greater length in my forthcoming monograph, Creating a Niche: Durkheim and the Sociology of Knowledge.

References

Bloor, D. (1982), "Durkheim and Mauss Revisited: Classification and the Sociology of Knowledge", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 13: 267-97.

Bogen, J. (1988), "Comments on 'The Sociology of Knowledge About Child Abuse,"' Nous 22: 65-6.

Durkheim, E. (1912), Les Formes elementaires de la vie religieuse. Paris, France: Presses Universitaire de France, 1960.

Hacking, I. (1982), "Language, Truth and Reason", in Rationality and Relativism, M. Hollis and S. Lukes (eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 48-66.

?______. (1983a), Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

_ _ ?____. (1983b), "The Accumulation of Styles of Scientific Reasoning", in Kant oder Hegel, D. Henrich (ed.). Stuttgart, Germany: Klett-Cotta, pp. 453-65.

_ _ _ _ _ _ (1984), "Five Parables", in Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy, R. Rorty et al. (eds.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 103-124.

_ _ ?__ _ _. (1985), "Styles of Scientific Reasoning", in Post-Analytic Philosophy, J. Rajchman and C. West (eds.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press, pp. 145-165.

- -_______. (1986a), "The Invention of Split Personalities", in Human Nature and Natural Knowledge: Essays presented to Marjorie Grene on the Occasion of Her Seventy-Fifth Birthday, A. Donagan et al. (eds.). Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, volume 89. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 63-85.

__ _ _ _ _. (1986b), "Making Up People", in Reconstructing Individualism, T. Heller et al. (eds.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 222-36.

?____-_. (1988), "The Sociology of Knowledge About Child Abuse", Nous 22: 53-63.

_ _ _ __ _. (1989), "Extragalactic Reality: the Case of Gravitational Lensing", Philosophy of Science 56: 555-81.



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_ _ ____. (1990), The Taming of Chance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

?_-_------. (1991), "The Making and Molding of Child Abuse", Critical Inquiry 17: 253-288.

_ _ _ _ - - (1992a), "Statistical Language, Statistical Truth and Statistical Reason: The Self-Authentication of a Style of Scientific Reasoning", in Social Dimensions of Science, Ernan McMullen (ed.). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming, pp. 130-57.

-___--- . (1992b), "'Style' for Historians and Philosophers", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23 (forthcoming).

_ _ _ _ - . (1992c), "The Disunities of the Sciences", in Disunity and Contextualism, Peter Galison (ed.), (forthcoming).

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Smart, JJ.C. (1963), Philosophy and Scientific Realism. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul.



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Volume One: Contributed Papers || Sociology and Hacking's Trousers