scholarly journals The Cop21 Process from the Point of View of the Social Sciences

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Jan-Erik Lane
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Policy Implementation ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Anthropogenic Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Energy Emissions ◽  
The Universe

<em>Thus far, all the debate about climate change in the myriad of UN conferences and special meetings has been about the application of the theories of the natural sciences to the global warming phenomena. Now, that there is a decision by the governments of the world countries to go ahead with a radical decarbonisation policy in the 21st century, the lessons from the social science theories must be taken into account. The COP21 project is a case of policy implementation, but implementation is difficult. Greenhouse Gases (GHG) like CO2:s stem from the anthropogenic sources of carbon emissions from the factors that drives not only the universe but also all social systems, viz. energy. This article spells out the energy-emissions conundrum of mankind.</em>

Defending the Difference

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Difference ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.

Assessing Contemporary Crises: Aligning Safety Science and Security Studies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bibi van den Berg ◽  
Ruth Prins ◽  
Sanneke Kuipers
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Safety Science ◽  
Key Topics

Security and safety are key topics of concern in the globalized and interconnected world. While the terms “safety” and “security” are often used interchangeably in everyday life, in academia, security is mostly studied in the social sciences, while safety is predominantly studied in the natural sciences, engineering, and medicine. However, developments and incidents that negatively affect society increasingly contain both safety and security aspects. Therefore, an integrated perspective on security and safety is beneficial. Such a perspective studies hazardous and harmful events and phenomena in the full breadth of their complexity—including the cause of the event, the target that is harmed, and whether the harm is direct or indirect. This leads to a richer understanding of the nature of incidents and the effects they may have on individuals, collectives, societies, nation-states, and the world at large.

New Outlines of Structural Sociology, 1945–70

2019 ◽  
pp. 63-85
Author(s):  
J.P.S. Uberoi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
World View ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Indian Point

This chapter presents a discussion of international intellectual trends in the social sciences, theoretical and empirical studies in India, the question of independence of mind or home rule in intellectual institutions. Following the swarajist project outlined earlier of viewing Europe and its systems of knowledge and practices from an independent Indian point of view, this chapter is in effect a research outline for a new structural sociology in India. We are introduced to structuralism as it exists in the world, its scope and definition and as a methodology for the social sciences. This is followed by the approach to structuralism as scientific theory, method and as philosophical world view. Finally discusses are the principles of structural analysis, structuralism in language, literature and culture, in social structure, with regard to society and the individual, religion, philosophy, politics, sociology and social-anthropology.

Discussion: A Sociologist's Point of View

1950 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-149
Author(s):  
W. Rex Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Full Development ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Reverence For Life ◽  
The Individual

The only words in the title of this symposium which do not cause difficulty are “of” and “in,” since even Latin America is a “nomer” that many protest is a “misnomer,” for some parts of the region southeast of the U.S.A., and “pathology” and “democracy” can get into water as hot and deep as any that lies under the thin ice over which the social sciences skate. The very lumping together in our discussion of twenty republics varying as they do in Latin America is a procedure of doubtful accuracy, and one which at first encounter arouses the ire of any good nationalist in these countries. The term “pathological” suggests too strongly a complacent superior attitude on our own part that may befit the propagandist or the naive and uninformed man on the street, but not the social scientist. The world does not fall so neatly into the patterns of perfect democracy and the outer darkness as Mr. Churchill has supposed. Can we not accept a certain relativity in these matters and remember the large-sized mote in our own eye?With the struggle of almost innumerable thinkers to define the direction and goal, we are surely familiar. The writer has no intention of assembling all the definitions available, for if they were all assembled, sociologists might lay the emphasis not upon forms and constitutions so much as upon something broader that earlier theologians would have called men's will and men's love. Since the development of “Mr. Tylor's science,” cultural anthropology, we would be more likely to say that the legal arrangements grow out of and express the culture; that back of them lies a slow secular growth of the idea that personality, the freedom and full development of the individual are ultimate values, not to be sacrificed to the state; that power may be necessary for survival, and that unity or consensus or conformity may be necessary to power, but that something like Albert Schweitzer's “reverence for life” is a deeper principle. These things are no sooner said than we realize that we often sin against the ideals we cherish and fear the freedom to which we give lip-service. The practice falls far short of the preaching.

Synergetic scientism and social picture of the world

10.12737/3395 ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Карпин ◽  
Vladimir Karpin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Nonequilibrium Systems ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanisms ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Special Scientific

The paper discusses possible ways of solving the fundamental problem of the community of scientific knowledge – the integration of natural and social sciences and humanities. Attempts to find common patterns of special scientific pictures of the world, in particular, biological and social, have led to a discussion of an interdisciplinary science as sociobiology which attempts to explain the social behavior of living beings by set of certain advantage generated in the course of evolution. Research field of sociobiology intersects with the study of evolutionary theory, zoology, genetics and other disciplines. In the field of social sciences it is close to evolutionary psychology exploring the behavior theory. Attempts to explain such behaviors as altruism, aggression are made using evolutionary mechanisms. Today we are witnessing the birth of the third, synergetic paradigm based on emerging, formation, development and change (evolution) of complex open nonlinear nonequilibrium systems. The theory of self-organization claims to interdisciplinarity and universality, including in the field of creation of the modern social picture of the world. The central problem under the consideration is the fact that synergy deals with the collective, mass processes, with complex social systems and is the most rational key to this problem solving.

scholarly journals Islamization of Knowledge

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-415
Author(s):  
Masudul Alam Choudhury
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Civil Engineering ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Universe

This well-written book comprehensively outlines the basic precepts onwhich a concept and a program of Islamization of knowledge must, accordingto the author, rest. In his attempt to outline these directions, the author firstdefines the concept of Islamization as " ... practising (i.e., discovering, compiling,piecing together, communicating and publishing) intellectual activitybased on the Islamic concept of the universe" (p. 5). He further states that"'Islamization' covers everything within the realm of the true belief in theexistence of Allah (SWT)" (p. 5). This definition is enhanced by Khalil's unequivocalreference to the Shari'ah and fiqh, the derivative of the Qur'an andthe Sunnah, as being the principal background for the Islamization process.Another important aspect of Islamization, according to the author, is theabsence of dualism in this framework. He says that in the quest for establishingthe Islamic dimensions of belief in the diversity of human acquisitions,all "that might lead to dualism between the Divine orientation and its absoluteknowledge and the conflicting relativism of human efforts" (p. 6) must beavoided.The author correctly points out that Islamization must be carried out onboth the theoretical (normative) and the practical (positive) aspects of the sciences.It is here, however, that a series of questions arise and which, in turn,lead to a critical analysis that seemingly does not support the author's thesison the modus operandi and worldview of Islamization. Internal inconsistencieswithin the arguments presented also lead to several difficulties. In my analysisof some of these problematic points, I will use the tawhidi precept that tentersthe Islamization process.Islamizing the Natural and the Social SciencesKhalil says that the natutal and the social sciences are not amenable tothe same degtee of Islamization. In his view, the social sciences will be Islamizedbefore the natural sciences: "... sciences such as civil engineering, algebra,trigonometry or mathematics in general, as well as other disciplineslike statistics, chemistry and possibly geology, may not be related to the process"(p. 7) ...

Cowboy Economics versus Spaceship Ecology

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garrett Hardin
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
New World ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Henry George ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Beginning Students

Europe-focused histories present the world as it appeared to Europeans and to the cultures derived from that continent. It is said that the New World was discovered in 1492—a statement that would have surprised the Aztecs had they heard it. Adopting for the moment the Eurocentric point of view, we note that whereas before 1492 there were about 24 acres of Europe per European, afterward there were some 120 acres of land per European. The fivefold increase presumes the legitimacy of property gained by conquest. This sudden wealth led to what W. P. Webb called an "age of exuberance." No wonder, as Catton and Riley remarked, "Opportunities thereafter seemed limitless. . . [and] it is not surprising that an optimistic belief in 'progress' developed." The age of exuberance has lasted for over four centuries, but seems to be drawing to a close as the sixth century looms on the horizon. Epicurus proclaimed two important default positions: (1) nothing can be created out of nothing, and (2) no existing thing can be converted into nothingness. These are universally accepted by natural scientists, who view them as conservative statements since they refer to the conservation of things. Are economists conservative, in this sense? The record is mixed. Economists demand that their helpers, the accountants, balance their books exactly; and an economist is likely to tell his beginning students that "There's no such thing as a free lunch." But before the course is far advanced the conservative sense of this incantation seems often to be forgotten. The manmade complexities of the world of finance make it difficult to recognize the underlying conservation of true wealth. Scientists have had an easier time dealing with matter and energy. By 1879 the conservation of these entities had been well established in the natural sciences, but in that year the "single taxer" Henry George (1839-1897) defiantly proclaimed non-conservation in the social sciences (see Box 7-1). Real estate developers and commercial promoters in general still sing George's song.

scholarly journals Recent Developments in Political Geography, I

1935 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 785-804 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hartshorne
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Economic Geography ◽  
New World ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Cultural Features

The border position of geography between the natural and the social sciences is fairly generally recognized. Concerned primarily with differences in the different areas of the world, geography studies both natural and cultural features. In some universities, it is included among the natural sciences, in others among the social sciences. In England and America, geographers have particularly cultivated that portion of their field which leads naturally into economics, i.e., economic geography. Much less attention has been paid to the relations with history, although various geographers and historians have studied what has variously been called historical geography or geographic history. Even less have geographers in the English-speaking countries concerned themselves with that portion of their subject which bears upon the political areas of the world. The territorial problems of the war and postwar period, however, stimulated activity in this field both in England and America, the most notable product of which is Bowman's The New World, consisting in large part of the materials gathered for the American Commission to the Peace Conference.

International Relations in a Relational Universe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milja Kurki
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Do So

It is time for International Relations (IR) to join the relational revolution afoot in the natural and social sciences. To do so, more careful reflection is needed on cosmological assumptions in the sciences and also in the study and practice of international relations. In particular it is argued here that we need to pay careful attention to whether and how we think ‘relationally’. Building a conversation between relational cosmology, developed in the natural sciences, and critical social theory, this book seeks to develop a new perspective on how to think relationally in and around the study of IR. This book asks: What kind of cosmological background assumptions do we make as we tackle international relations today and where do our assumptions (about states, individuals or the international) come from? And can we reorient our cosmological imaginations towards more relational understandings of the universe and what would this mean for the study and practice of international politics? The book argues that we live in a world without ‘things’, a world of processes and relations. It also suggests that we live in relations which exceed the boundaries of the human and the social, in planetary relations with plants and animals. Rethinking conceptual premises of IR, Kurki points towards a ‘planetary politics’ perspective within which we can reimagine IR as a field of study and also political practices, including the future of democracy.

scholarly journals Emphaty as the foundation of the social sciences and of social life: a reading of Husserl's phenomenology of transcendental intersubjectivity

2002 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 563-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédéric Vandenberghe
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Communicative Action ◽  
Transcendental Phenomenology ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

Starting with an overview of possible solutions to the problem of social order, the author presents a non-acritical reconstruction of Edmund Husserl's transcendental phenomenology of intersubjectivity as a sympathetic alternative to Habermas's theory of communicative action. By means of a detailed analysis of the concept of empathy (Einfühlung), he shows that Husserl's phenomenology of intersubjectivity offers a triple foundation of the sciences. As a warrant of the objectivity of the world, it grounds the natural sciences; as a presupposition of sociality, it founds the social sciences; as mediated by culture, it grounds the social sciences as human sciences.

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