Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The subject of this chapter will be the history of the problem of cause and teleology in the social sciences up to the early years of the twentieth century, especially as it appears in the thinking of several of the major founding figures of disciplinary social science. The topic is muddled. But the later history of social science is unintelligible without an understanding of the issues, which have never been fully resolved. The history of the problem is driven by the fact that overtly teleological forms of explanation have often been replaced by problematic or ambiguous forms. Older terminology was sometimes replaced with new (e.g., “function” or “meaning” for “purpose” and “self-organizing systems” for “organisms”), turning the issues into terminological disputes, and sometimes making the different positions difficult to distinguish. Whether the new forms are free of the problems of the old forms is a matter of continued controversy. I will begin with a brief introduction to this history, told largely from the point of view of problems that arose for those who made the history, and conclude with a discussion of the present status of the technical issues for the project of eliminating teleology and the (perhaps insurmountable) difficulties in carrying it through.The social sciences emerged over a long period, against the background of, and in opposition to, an inheritance from ... log in or subscribe to read full text