A new form of ‘interdisciplinarity’ may be emerging but has so far failed to devote equal demands on the natural sciences, as well as on the social sciences. Will Davies responds to the calls for a social science shake-up by questioning the status of the social sciences in 2014 as something other than mere understudies to the natural sciences. The shared terrain of the two, he argues, seems to rest on various acts of forgetting on the part of the social sciences, but no acts of learning on the part of the natural sciences

Davies, Will

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10/14/2014Call to arms for shaking up social sciences relies on falsepremise that science alone can solve all social problems.blogs.lse.ac.uk /impactofsocialsciences/2014/10/14/shaking-up-social-sciences-false-premise-davies/A new form of ‘interdisciplinarity’ may be emerging but has so far failed to devote equal demands on thenatural sciences, as well as on the social sciences. Will Davies responds to the calls for a socialscience shake-up by questioning the status of the social sciences in 2014 as something other thanmere understudies to the natural sciences. The shared terrain of the two, he argues, seems to reston various acts of forgetting on the part of the social sciences, but no acts of learning on the part ofthe natural sciences.This is part of a series of posts ahead of the event on Tuesday 21st October, Do We Need to ShakeUp the Social Sciences #LSESocialSciences. You can find our interview with Nicholas Christakiswhich kicked off the debate here.Imagine someone establishes a new think tank within the UK government, perhaps like the Strategy Unit whichexisted in the Cabinet Office for a few years. It finds its feet, develops a reputation, struggles for fundingoccasionally, but gradually develops a sense of identity and purpose. Part of this is to reflect on the nature of policy,to provide a space in which the instruments of the state can be questioned. After a few years, the Ministry of Defensecomes knocking on its door, accusing it of being too conservative and not sufficiently ‘inter-departmental’. “So whatshould we be doing instead?”, the small think tank pleads. “Well you could help us with these nuclear submarines forstarters,” comes the reply.The charge that the social sciences have become too ‘conservative’ and insufficiently ‘interdisciplinary’ is apersuasive one. But one has to pay careful attention to what is being proposed as a solution. For Amanda Goodalland Andrew Oswald, applauding a recent polemic by Nicholas Christakis (interview here), it appears to mean onething only: the social sciences must become not only cognizant of the natural sciences, but actively supportive oftheir research agendas. Only this way can the social sciences connect with major policy problems such as climatechange, and overcome their stultifying resistance to change.According to Goodall and Oswald, the subject matters which should be imported into the curricula of the socialsciences include:modern brain science, the geophysics of climate change, the hormone cortisol, the biology of skinresistance, the genetic polymorphism 5-HTTLPR, the life-cycle happiness of great apes, thephysiological effects of oxytocin or the nature of herd behaviour in zebrafish.Meanwhile, Christakis seems to have grown bored of the traditional subject matter of social science:I’m not suggesting that social scientists stop teaching and investigating classic topics like monopolypower, racial profiling and health inequality. But everyone knows that monopoly power is bad formarkets, that people are racially biased and that illness is unequally distributed by social class.Progress, apparently, would lie in looking to new forms of ‘interdisciplinarity’ with the natural sciences.Most social scientists probably share some of the anxieties expressed in these articles. The sense that the journal1/3system has become a self-perpetuating oligarchy; the sense that career incentives mitigate against transgression ofboundaries (though these include managerial and political boundaries as much as ‘disciplinary’ ones); the sense thattoo few social scientists are driven by the most urgent needs of the present.Yet social scientists are already developing ‘digital methods’ and trying to engage with ‘big data’, albeit with asometimes skeptical eye. Many of them lack the job security, confidence or the freedom to disappear into theirpejorative ‘ivory towers’ any longer.  And the case against knee-jerk hostility towards the life sciences has beenarticulated compellingly by the British sociologist, Nikolas Rose (interview here).WEIZAC, the first modern computer in the Middle East – Image credit: Wikimedia, PublicDomainHowever, there are a number of grave problems with Goodall and Oswald’s call to arms. Firstly, it is entirelyahistorical. Being ahistorical may not matter if you are a dealing with the ‘life-cycle happiness of great apes’, but itdoes matter if you’re dealing with ‘racial profiling’. There is a simple reason for this: if great apes do historythemselves, then we are not able to understand it, whereas races and racial profilers have histories, which they canarticulate and which influence how they act. To overlook this is to deny oneself the possibility of simple interpretationof other people’s lives.Goodall, Oswald and Christakis demonstrate scant curiosity about what the social sciences are, or where they camefrom. The unspoken implication is that they are simply a junior off-shoot of a naturalist project which began aroundthe time of Francis Bacon. Is it not significant that they emerged in late 19th century Europe, in the context of thecollapse of Victorian liberalism? Would it not be useful for one of their neuro-economists to know that the aspiration toground decision-making in the physical body has been a repeated obsession of behaviorists over the past century,which has run into a pattern of familiar failures and crises during that time? Viewed this way, it might be possible toask about the status of the social sciences in 2014, as something other than mere understudies to the naturalsciences. A new form of ‘interdisciplinarity’, possibly a new vision of experimentation , may be the welcome result.The difficulty is that this would involve placing demands on the natural sciences, as well as on the social sciences.And this seems to be the one thing that Goodall, Oswald and Christakis cannot countenance. The shared terrainrests on various acts of forgetting on the part of the social sciences (a forgetting of history, a forgetting of the reflexivenature of human beings), but no acts of learning on the part of the natural sciences.  It involves no searching2/3questions regarding the natural sciences – such as their status within the American military-industrial complex – butmerely encouragement to the social sciences that they should become equally co-operative. Is this really what wemean by interdisciplinarity?Much of what gets tagged as the ‘conservatism’ of social science might otherwise be understood as ‘sympathy’ forthe concepts and language which research subjects (or research users, such as policy-makers and business)employ and understand. It is important to understand the ways in which behaviorism and manipulative experimentsblow up, both ethically and scientifically. There are critiques of neuroscience, such as Bennett and Hacker’s, whichhelp to understand precisely when and why this discipline occasionally seems to veer into the nonsensical use oflanguage.In an age of unnerving Facebook emotional contagion experiments, and an economics discipline still largelymodelled upon 19th century physics, the idea that the social sciences can best serve society by closing their eyesand straining even harder to produce knowledge resembling biology or chemistry, seems almost perverse. Goodalland Oswald take it for granted that the way for social scientists to do “their job of helping humans to understand theworld and improve life” involves reaching out to the natural sciences, with no offer of reciprocity. Christakis takes it forgranted that social science means spotting patterns in behavior. These assumptions aren’t even acknowledged letalone justified. We should count ourselves fortunate that Thomas Piketty does not share their premises, or we’dhave been robbed of one of the most exciting and ambitious pieces of interdisciplinary social science of the last thirtyyears.There is scope for change, and the stakes are high. On that, most people are agreed. Goodall and Oswald’sexample of global warming as a challenge to the social sciences is a compelling one. But it is surely an even greaterchallenge to our political institutions. Political scientists and anthropologists could therefore collaborate to understandhow effective policies run into the ground. Economists and sociologists should work together, to understand how theneeds of finance have come to trump all other notions of the global public good. All of this would needcommunicating better, outside of journals. But it also requires firm resistance to the idea that ‘science’ can solveproblems which are outcomes of institutional, cultural and political history, and not simply matters of nature andtechnology.This is part of a series of posts ahead of the event on Tuesday 21st October, Do We Need to Shake Up the SocialSciences #LSESocialSciences. You can find our interview with Nicholas Christakis which kicked off thedebate here.Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Impact of Social Science blog, nor of theLondon School of Economics. Please review our Comments Policy if you have any concerns on posting a commentbelow.About the AuthorWill Davies is a Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is convener of a new BA Degree in Politics,Philosophy and Economics, and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Centre. Copyright © The Author (or The Authors) - Unless otherwise stated, this work is licensed under a CreativeCommons Attribution Unported 3.0 License.3/3

Call to arms for shaking up social sciences relies on false premise that science alone can solve all social problems.

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