Research Methods
Allan Adler
(1) Research Methods for Social Work, by Allen Rubin an Earl Babbie, 2001,
and to report on whatever I learn that might be relevant to this group.
Recall that this promise arose in the ancient context of a posting of
David V. in which he drew our attention to some online paper claiming
to find a correlation between religious belief and some negative outcomes.
I really don't remember the details now and I don't think they matter
anymore. I consider the effort to acquire some appreciation of the standards
of research to be more important than the matter of the particular article,
even though I recall that my impressions of the article were somewhat negative.
The book (1) itself is not really appropriate material for soc.atheism; it
would not be right to simply read it and to quote from it. It might be
appropriate to do so when it actually impinged on the ways in which we draw
statistical inferences about groups of people, including religious groups and
political groups. So, I'll try to keep that important distinction in mind.
I personally like to have a focus when I read a book such as (1), especially
since I really know very little about sociology or the methods of social
scientists. I'm not quite sure how to proceed with this, but I will make
the effort. It turns out that I also got a few other sociology books at
library book sales. They include:
(2) The tools of social science, by John Madge, 1965,
(3) The Rules of sociological method and selected texts on sociology and
its method, by Emile Durkheim (in English translation, 1982 edition of
Durkheim's late 19th and early 20th century writings).
(4) The sociology of religion, by Max Weber (in English translation, 1993
edition of Weber's 1922 work),
(5) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber
(in English translation, 1958 edition of Weber's 1904-5 publication).
So, I'm going to start browsing in all of them, trying to give special
emphasis to the last two, which are more relevant to this newsgroup.
I expect that when something in one of them seems particularly interesting,
it will naturally prompt the question, "How does this fit with the more
contemporary methods of (1) and (2)?", which will provide an excuse to
look more closely at those books.
At the moment, this is pure fantasy, since I haven't don't any more reading
in these books than roughly 50 pages of (1). Also, sociology is a subject I
don't particularly like and am not good at. So, I will be glad for whatever
help I can get from people here who are better at it.
Just to get the ball rolling, however slowly, I just looked through the
index of (4) and found no listing either for "atheism" or for "agnosticism".
There are a few entries for "Humanism" and "Humanists", a few for
"agrarian communism" and a few for "socialism". There are lots of entries
for "capitalism", lots for an assortment of ancient and modern religions,
but nothing for Mormons.
There are about 70 roman numbered pages of prefaces by Ann Swidler, Talcott
Parsons and the translator before one gets to read even a page of Weber.
I will read them, but let's skip ahead to the opening paragraph of (4):
"To define 'religion', to say what it is, is not possible at the start of
a presentation such as this. Definition can be attempted, if at all, only
at the conclusion of the study. The essence of religion is not even our
concern, as we make it our task to study the conditions and effects of
a certain kind of social behavior."
Since we frequently complain, on this group, about the effects of that mode
of social behavior, and since we often speculate about its etiology, as
though it were a disease, this opening paragraph seems to be right up
our alley.
More when I have read more...
--
Ignorantly,
Allan Adler <a...@zurich.csail.mit.edu>
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.
Earle Jones
Allan Adler <a...@nestle.csail.mit.edu> wrote:
*
"Sociology is a subject I don't particularly like..."
I suspect that all science-trained people (including me) would tend to
agree.
Have you read E. O. Wilson's "Consilience"? In this book, he attempts
to show the internal consistency of all science, beginning with particle
physics, general physics, chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and all
their applications (engineering, medicine, etc.) Even the recent
advances in economics follow the applications of mathematics and science.
According to Wilson, where all this breaks down is in social science,
which is out of touch with real science. Social scientists take great
pride in their own jargon, avoiding the standard terms of science. They
talk to each other only, avoiding interaction with outside scientists.
The net effect is that social science has made zero progress in the last
100 years, as compared to the staggering advances of real science.
Societies still conflict and killing each other only gets more efficient.
My message is this: Don't expect much from reading contemporary social
science.
***
Separate subject:
As an AI guy, are you somewhat disappointed by the results of AI
research? Do you think (as I do) that AI should have produced more
real-world applications by now -- it's been around for what? 40 years?
Nils Nilsson (ex-Director of the AI Center at SRI and ex-Chair of
Computer Science at Stanford) is my friend and neighbor (I was his boss
at SRI.) We sometimes talk about this. What do you think?
earle
*
Allan Adler
> In article <y93skzg...@nestle.csail.mit.edu>,
> Allan Adler <a...@nestle.csail.mit.edu> wrote:
> > At the moment, this is pure fantasy, since I haven't don't any more reading
> > in these books than roughly 50 pages of (1). Also, sociology is a subject I
> > don't particularly like and am not good at. So, I will be glad for whatever
> > help I can get from people here who are better at it.
>
> *
> "Sociology is a subject I don't particularly like..."
>
> I suspect that all science-trained people (including me) would tend to
> agree. Have you read E. O. Wilson's "Consilience"?
No, I haven't read it, but I recall that you mentioned it in the thread,
"generalizations". You seem to be impressed with this book. I made a few
speculative comments without having read it at that time, but there is
no substitute for actually reading it. Since I'm bogged down with the
5 books I mentioned and several others I didn't mention, would you maybe
consider sharing with us what you think are particularly important passages
in E.O.Wilson's book?
> In this book, he attempts
> to show the internal consistency of all science, beginning with particle
> physics, general physics, chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and all
> their applications (engineering, medicine, etc.) Even the recent
> advances in economics follow the applications of mathematics and science.
One certainly hopes that all of our scientific knowledge is consistent.
But this is a very delicate question. For one thing, I think it is known
that the two most significant and successful developments in physics in the
20th century, general relativity and quantum mechanics, contradict each other.
That doesn't mean that the basic insights involved in relativity and quantum
mechanics are not valid, but the formalisms that have grown up around those
insights are not entirely compatible with each other.
That being the case, I would think that E.O.Wilson would have to be very
careful about what he means when he says that all science is internally
consistent. Do you think you could find the part of his book where he
articulates what he means by this?
Economics is not a science in the same way that physics is a science. So
it is also necessary to ask what it means to say that "advances in economics
follow the applications of mathematics and science". Mathematics is, among
other things, a collection of models waiting to be used for some application.
These are particularly successful in physical sciences. Even in less
fortunate settings, mathematics still provides something like a collection
of mug shots and people who use mathematics often try to see which mug shots
look like the perpetrator. Everyone would like to be able to make use of
mathematical models. As more become available, more get used. That's not
the same as saying that there is any genuine connection between economics
and science. Economics belongs with the other social sciences, not with the
physical sciences.
Even if a mathematical model can be used to make accurate predictions,
there can be two flatly contradictory models that do so. Do we regard
the models as consistent by virtue of the consistent predictions or do
we regard them as contradictory because of the contradictory premises?
> According to Wilson, where all this breaks down is in social science,
> which is out of touch with real science. Social scientists take great
> pride in their own jargon, avoiding the standard terms of science. They
> talk to each other only, avoiding interaction with outside scientists.
This is the "fallacy of special pleading": every specialty has its own
specialized jargon. It has been remarked, in jest, that Americans and
Britons are separated by a common language. It is equally true of
mathematicians and physicists or mathematicians and chemists. When
gauge field theory was being developed, Atiyah lectured an audience of
mathematicians and physicists and, among other things, presented a dictionary
translating between the terminology that physicists use and the terminology
that mathematicians use for the same objects. For example, what physicists
called a "gauge group" is called by mathematicians a "structure group".
Also, in my experience, physicists don't always distinguish between a Lie
group and its Lie algebra. Likewise, chemists tend to mean by a "group"
what mathematicians mean by a representation of a group. Likewise, what
a mathematician means by "compact" is not what compact means in common
parlance.
People in any specialty tend to socialize in that specialty. It is part
of the socialization process that is part of advanced education in
any subject. People also tend to socialize in their workplaces, whatever
the work. Unless E.O.Wilson means more than that, this sounds spurious.
> The net effect is that social science has made zero progress in the last
> 100 years, as compared to the staggering advances of real science.
> Societies still conflict and killing each other only gets more efficient.
Even though I don't like social science, I do think it is a valid and
difficult area of study. Unlike physical sciences, it is a lot harder to know
whether one is asking the right questions or whether the answers one gets
are really valid.
The assertion, "social science has made zero progress in the last 100
years, as compared to the staggering advances of real science", is an
interesting sleight of hand. It does NOT say that social science has
made no progress in the last 100 years. Even if it is true that its progress
has been less spectacular than progress in the physical sciences, it would
be more honest and more informative to say what the progress actually has
been in social sciences. Instead, the comparison is being used as a
get-out-of-jail-free card to avoid actually knowing anything about the
subject.
If I can draw an analogy, your annual income and total life savings are
practically zero in comparison with the Gross Domestic Product, but they
are not in fact zero and you would be pretty upset if anyone tried to take
any of what you had genuinely acquired just because it was tiny compared
with the GDP.
Whatever the state of social sciences is, it is not valid to judge it by
the state of societies. It is like comparing Pasteur's fundamental discoveries
in biology with the health care system, the former being part of a subject
and the latter being in effect a vast administrative structure.
> My message is this: Don't expect much from reading contemporary social
> science.
Let me ask you: to determine the health of social science, is it better to
read E.O.Wilson and no social science, or is it better to read some social
science, particularly from sources used to train social scientists, and then
read E.O.Wilson afterwards, when one has some background for evaluating his
remarks?
I should also mention that I have a friend who is a comparative historical
sociologist, a brilliant person in my opinion. I learned a lot by talking
to him, but I haven't actually read much in sociology until now. He wrote
a book entitled, "Beyond Revolution", which I read a couple of decades ago.
I was browsing in JSTOR today and, for the hell of it, typed in his name
and obtained the following article, which I then printed out and which might
also be reasonable to talk about here:
"Worshiping the absurd: the negation of social causality among the followers
of Guru Maharaj Ji", by Daniel A. Foss and Ralph W. Larkin, Sociological
Analysis vol.39 no.2 (Summer, 1978) pp.157-164.
Here is the abstract: "This paper is the result of a two-and-a-half year
participant-observation study in which the authors analyze the basis of
Guru Maharaj Ji's appeal to ex-movement participants in the early 1970s.
The youth movement of the 1960s had generated a reinterpretation of reality
that called into question conventional reality. When the movement declined,
the movement reinterpretation had no possibility for implementation. Left
between a reality they rejected and one that could not be implemented,
ex-movement participants experienced life as arbitrary and senseless. Guru
Maharaj Ji was deified as the mirror of an incomprehensible, meaningless
universe. The Divine Light Mission stripped its followers of all notions
of causality while simultaneously subsuming and repudiating both conventional
and movement interpretations of reality."
I haven't read the article yet. There might be nothing more to it than the
fact that Rennie Davis, one of the Chicago 7, was converted to Guru Maharaj
Ji's movement on an airplane.
> ***
> Separate subject:
> As an AI guy, are you somewhat disappointed by the results of AI
> research? Do you think (as I do) that AI should have produced more
> real-world applications by now -- it's been around for what? 40 years?
>
> Nils Nilsson (ex-Director of the AI Center at SRI and ex-Chair of
> Computer Science at Stanford) is my friend and neighbor (I was his boss
> at SRI.) We sometimes talk about this. What do you think?
I am not an AI guy. I am just a computer program trying to pass the Turing
test, like everyone else.
Earle Jones
Allan Adler <a...@nestle.csail.mit.edu> wrote:
*
Allan: Sorry -- give me some time to get back to you on EO Wilson, etc.
My wife is sick and I'm a bit tied up. Perhaps we should go to email.
Cheers,
earle
*
Allan Adler
> That doesn't mean that the basic insights involved in relativity and quantum
> mechanics are not valid, but the formalisms that have grown up around those
> insights are not entirely compatible with each other.
There is a little bit about this at the wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics
They say that general relativity and quantum mechanics don't directly
contradict each other but that all attempts to encompass them both in
a single theory have resulted in inconsistencies.
> I should also mention that I have a friend who is a comparative historical
> sociologist, a brilliant person in my opinion. I learned a lot by talking
> to him, but I haven't actually read much in sociology until now. He wrote
> a book entitled, "Beyond Revolution", which I read a couple of decades ago.
I forgot to mention I also read, less carefully, his other book, "Freak
Culture", around the same time.
> I was browsing in JSTOR today and, for the hell of it, typed in his name
> and obtained the following article, which I then printed out and which might
> also be reasonable to talk about here:
> "Worshiping the absurd: the negation of social causality among the followers
> of Guru Maharaj Ji", by Daniel A. Foss and Ralph W. Larkin, Sociological
> Analysis vol.39 no.2 (Summer, 1978) pp.157-164.
>
> Here is the abstract: "This paper is the result of a two-and-a-half year
> participant-observation study in which the authors analyze the basis of
> Guru Maharaj Ji's appeal to ex-movement participants in the early 1970s.
> The youth movement of the 1960s had generated a reinterpretation of reality
> that called into question conventional reality. When the movement declined,
> the movement reinterpretation had no possibility for implementation. Left
> between a reality they rejected and one that could not be implemented,
> ex-movement participants experienced life as arbitrary and senseless. Guru
> Maharaj Ji was deified as the mirror of an incomprehensible, meaningless
> universe. The Divine Light Mission stripped its followers of all notions
> of causality while simultaneously subsuming and repudiating both conventional
> and movement interpretations of reality."
>
> I haven't read the article yet. There might be nothing more to it than the
> fact that Rennie Davis, one of the Chicago 7, was converted to Guru Maharaj
> Ji's movement on an airplane.
I read the article over breakfast this morning and, actually, there is
no mention of Rennie Davis. There are a few citations at the beginning
of articles with statistics of a general nature, but these are in the
context of introductory remarks. Actually, Foss and Larkin hung out with
the DLM for 2.5 years, washing dishes, doing chores, etc., and then wrote
this article describing the "scene".
This is a different kind of sociology from the analysis of data and the
design of questionnaires. I don't think there is anyone on this group who
has not asked someone to describe what some social setting is like or who
has not tried to answer such a question. One aspect of sociology is the
development of modes of expression and habits of observation that make it
possible to give very detailed and insightful descriptions. On this newsgroup,
that very skill is something I think we all strive towards when we try to
articulate what goes on in various religious groups and "where their heads
are at". So, one of the things we can learn from sociology is how to get
better at doing that. People who can do that must be awfully sophisticated,
but maybe some of what they do can be learned.
Regarding the "negation of social causality", that refers to the tendency
of premies (the followers) to attribute events to the workings of Guru
Maharaj Ji, without regard to anything they might actually know about
cause and effect. In some ways, it is reminiscent of people giving Jesus
credit for their touchdowns, but there the resemblance ends.
Anyway, the article is on JSTOR in case anyone else wants to look at it.
> I am just a computer program trying to pass the Turing test, like
> everyone else.
Just in case anyone can't tell the difference, that was a joke.
Returning to Max Weber's Sociology of Religion, he writes: "religiously
or magically motived behavior is relatively rational behavior". He emphasizes
that "the most elementary forms of behavior motivated by religious or magical
factors are oriented towards *this* world". In other words, it is rational
behavior whose underlying premises just happen to be fundamentally flawed.
Ann Swidler's Foreword mentions several of Weber's works and their influence
but insists that it is his Sociology of Religion that "is the key work that
unlocks Weber's larger theoretical achievement". So, starting with Weber's
Sociology of Religion seems to have been a fortuitous choice, as it also
provides an entry to the rest of his work.
More when I've read more...
Allan Adler
> Allan: Sorry -- give me some time to get back to you on EO Wilson, etc.
> My wife is sick and I'm a bit tied up. Perhaps we should go to email.
Hi, Earle. By all means, take your time and, especially, take good care of
your wife. I don't think email is a good idea though because I already get
a ton of spam every day and it is very easy for legitimate mail to get lost
in the crowd. The signal to noise ratio is currently about 0.001.
Allan Adler
> Earle Jones <earle...@comcast.net> writes:
>
> > Allan: Sorry -- give me some time to get back to you on EO Wilson, etc.
> > My wife is sick and I'm a bit tied up. Perhaps we should go to email.
>
> Hi, Earle. By all means, take your time and, especially, take good care of
> your wife. I don't think email is a good idea though because I already get
> a ton of spam every day and it is very easy for legitimate mail to get lost
> in the crowd. The signal to noise ratio is currently about 0.001.
By the way, The Feb.2, 2008 issue of Science News (Vol.173), has an article
entitled, "Biological Moon Shot. Realizing the dream of a Web page for every
living thing", by Susan Milius. It's about an online data base with data
on all known species. The article describes E.O.Wilson as the project's
godfather. So, he seems to be a biologist, like Aristotle.