Explaining the Social World Historicism Versus Positivism

Explaining the Social World: Historicism versus PositivismAuthor(s): Jonathan H. TurnerSource: The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Summer, 2006), pp. 451-463Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Midwest Sociological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4120681 .Accessed: 09/09/2013 10:18

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The Sociological Quarterly ISSN 0038-0253

EXPLAINING THE SOCIAL WORLD: Historicism versus Positivism Jonathan H. Turner* University of California, Riverside

For quite some time, my best professional friends have encouraged me to drop the term positivism from my advocacy for a natural science of human society. They are, no doubt, correct in their advice because the label "positivism" is widely misunderstood by sociologists and, today, is often used pejoratively to condemn those committed to the epistemology of science. Indeed, positivism is now a kind of "straw man" (and woman, as well) for advocacy of alternative epistemologies to science. The fine essay by Richard York and Brett Clark makes many of the standard critiques of positivism, and like many previous commentators, their characterization of positivism does not reflect the nature of positivist theorizing in sociology. Still, York and Clark bring some new and important ideas to the table that need to be discussed and debated. Moreover, their essay adds many lines of substantive thinking to Marxism and historical analysis that, while quite engaging, I will not discuss in my comments; instead, I will stay focused on the respective merits of positivistic and historical approaches to sociological explanation, beginning with York and Clark's portrayal of positivism.

THE STANDARD CRITIQUE OF POSITIVISM AND WHY IT IS WRONG

Is Positivism Only Quantitative? One standard critique of positivism is its presumed advocacy for quantification of sociological inquiry, a charge repeated by York and Clark. The implication here is that positivists want to translate all concepts into variables and numbers, and in so doing, positivism strips the subtlety and complexity from key concepts while ignoring their place in historical context. There is often a further charge that positivists have physics envy (much like their Freudian counterparts), an envy that is not only pathological but also delusional. For antipositivists, the social world simply does not lend itself to quantification in many instances. York and Clark do not go quite this far, but they certainly push the buttons that start this tired critique rolling.

I have always found this criticism rather strange, especially because I have been one of the strongest critics of what I have called "quantamania" in sociology. In the early decades of the last century, Franklin Giddings (1920) did indeed want to quantify everything, but most positivists I know do not quantify the variables in their theories. The concepts in their theories are, to be sure, variables, and it is perhaps possible to quantify them, but this kind of exercise is secondary to the theory itself, which states the relationships among concepts that denote key properties and processes of the social universe. A few positivists

*Direct all correspondence to Jonathan H. Turner, Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521; e-mail [email protected]

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Explaining the Social World Jonathan H. Turner

use mathematics in their formulation of theoretical principles, but this is not the same as quantifying variables. The more important point is that, at times, quantification is possible, and if possible, it is probably desirable, but quantification for its own sake violates the basic tenets of positivism. The most important tenet for positivists is to denote universal and generic properties of the social world and to formulate laws about their dynamic properties; whether these laws are stated in words or mathematics makes much less difference than formulating abstract laws about the operative dynamics of some domain of the social universe. Many of the most important concepts in science have never been precisely quantified-natural selection, for example-and there is every reason to suppose that such will also be the case in sociology. Indeed, the worst thing that can happen- from this positivist's perspective-is to have premature quantification (again, much like positivism's Freudian counterpart) of key concepts.

Is Positivism Simply Statistical Analysis? When Auguste Comte (1830-1842) made his forceful advocacy for the scientific study of social organization, he wanted to call the new discipline social physics-as we all have been taught. What is often left out of this tale is the reason that he adopted the Latin- Greek hybrid: sociology. The Belgian, Adolphe Quetelet, had already applied the label "social physics" to his particular brand of statistical analysis, thus making it unavailable to Comte ([1830-1842] 1896) in his advocacy of positivism, a situation that troubled Comte greatly because he detested the label "sociology." There is a certain irony that positivism is now associated with descriptive statistics-an association that would make Comte turn over in his grave for, at the time that Comte was writing, the term "physics" had not been usurped by the current discipline of this name and, instead, meant "to study the nature of" things. Thus, Comte wanted sociology to be a science that studied the nature of the social. His ideal for sociology was Newton's law of gravity rather than Quete- let's and subsequent statisticians' works. For Comte, as for all positivists, the goal is not to describe empirical reality with statistics-although there is nothing wrong with such work-but to formulate laws about the underlying dynamics of, and fundamental relationships among, forces driving the social universe. Statistics is not likely to be very useful in formulating such laws.

York and Clark very briefly review some of the history of how positivism, when worked over within the Vienna Circle, emerged as something very different than Comte ([1830-1842] 1896) originally envisioned. However, York and Clark do not adequately explain how positivisms became associated with "raw empiricism,""compulsive quantification," or "mindless statistical analysis" for their own sake. Indeed, I have argued that many in the Vienna Circle, such as Ernst Mach, "turned Comte on his head" with a characterization that has little resemblance to Comte's positivism. In addition, the notion of "logical positivism" that also emerged from the Vienna Circle was, from a Comtean perspective, redundant, since positivism means to formulate abstract laws and then make deductions to empirical cases. And so, nothing could be farther from the interests of a positivist than empirical descriptions of social processes that are not guided by highly abstract theoretical principles.

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Jonathan H. Turner Explaining the Social World

Is Positivism Inductive? A related critique-repeated by York and Clark-asserts that positivism is essentially inductive, seeking to make generalizations from descriptions (mostly statistical) of empirical regularities. Nothing could be farther from what positivists actually advocate and, more important, what they do. For example, take these words from Comte's ( [ 1830-1842, vol. 2:242] 1986) Positive Philosophy: "No real observation of any kind of phenomena is possible, except in so far as it is first connected, and finally interpreted, by some theory:" On the next page, Comte goes on to assert: "Hence, it is clear that, scientifically speaking, all isolated, empirical observation is idle, and even radically uncertain; that science can use only those observations which are connected, at least hypothetically, with some law."

York and Clark introduce Mills' (1961) critique of "abstracted empiricism" and then paint positivists with this brush. There is a legitimate concern that when laws are derived from empirical regularities at particular points in time and place, they do not address generic and universe processes but, instead, make time-bound events sound more universal and generic than they actually are. Again, positivists would agree with Mills that abstracted empiricism is not the way to develop theory, because the goal of positivism is to formulate and then to test laws that apply to all societies in all places and at all times. In fact, I would argue that York and Clark's advocacy for a historically informed theory- that is, generalizations about processes in particular epochs-is far more guilty of abstracted empiricism than positivism, which seeks to do just the opposite: to move away from particular cases in particular times and places, and, in so doing, to develop laws for all times and places.

Theories are often developed from a process of "abduction" (induction combined with deduction) in which the theorist moves between the abstract and generic, on the one side, and the empirical and historical, on the other. And, from this interplay of data with abstract concepts and principles, testable theories emerge. Some theories, such as Charles Darwin's formulation of the law of natural selection, emerge from an inductive process of assessing the data (whereas Alfred Wallace's similar formulation was mostly deductive, coming as a blinding insight during a nighttime fever attack from malaria); other theories are more purely deductive (as in physics, where the calculus of mathematics often points to key properties of the physical universe), and still others move back and forth, using empirical knowledge to assess abstract concepts, and vice versa. In most sciences, theories are developed by scholars who have a considerable store of knowledge of relevant empirical regularities but who, at the same time, are also willing to develop abstract concepts and laws that can explain these regularities. Theorizing is, therefore, never a lock-step process of induction. It always involves a creative leap from empirical cases to the more general, analytical, and abstract.

Is Positivism Reductionist? One of the frequent assaults aimed at scientists in sociology is the charge of reductionism. Sociologists appear to live in great fear that some sociological laws can be reduced to those of psychology or (gasp!) biology. These fears only underscore sociology's collective inse- curity, because all science is reductionist in this sense: the properties of the universe

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studied by one science are typically built from more elemental properties studied by another science. Chemists do not become collectively paranoid that some of the elements of their universe can be explained by physics; biologists are not worried about what bio- chemistry does to their explanations (indeed, they embrace chemistry); and even psy- chologists do not fall apart when biology is introduced. For most scientists, there is a clear recognition that phenomena emerge as a result of the relations among more elemental units (whether chemical elements, biological beings, or quarks) and that, for practical purposes, it is not all devastating to have a few laws that are deducible from laws about the elements that make up these emergent phenomena. Some phenomena lend themselves to reduction; in other cases, phenomena are not so easily explained by the forces operating on their constituent elements. Thus, sociologists should not become hysterical and pre- judge the issue. Instead, the laws governing the operation of the parts of society and those explaining its emergent properties should be compared and assessed in terms of what more they add to an explanation of both parts and the wholes built from these parts. This is all that a positivist would argue, and sociologists often stake out an extreme position about the sanctity of emergent phenomena that goes against practices in other sciences. Even if a certain amount of reduction was possible, the laws on emergent properties would be the ones that most sociologists would use because reduction is often simply a process demonstrating the unity of phenomena rather than an effort to destroy a discipline-as sociologists often seem to assume. If sociologists were more secure, they would not panic every time ideas from other disciplines are used to supplement or expand sociological explanations. And the charge that positivists are reductionists would not be the equivalent to shouting "fire" in a movie theater.

In sum, then, I see these four critiques leveled by York and Clark as "straw men" that deflect our energies away from more important issues that need to be discussed. York and Clark's critiques are overstated, and they do not help us understand the real epistemolog- ical differences between positivists and what I will label, for lack of a better term, historicists. There is, I believe, a real difference between those who seek to develop laws that explain universal forces in all times and places, and those who attempt to explain social events in their empirical and historical contexts. I am not claiming that one approach is superior to the other, only that they are different enterprises. And we should recognize this difference and avoid mudslinging contests over the differences.

TOWARD A MORE CONSTRUCTIVE DEBATE OVER EPISTEMOLOGY

The strong points of York and Clark's essay revolve around several related arguments. One important argument is that many of the forces that drive empirical and historical processes are, for long periods of time, essentially constants-like gravity on earth-with the result that they will be ignored by those engaging in statistical analysis, for whom things must vary if they are ever to get on the radar screen. The conclusion is that, since positivism is about statistical analysis, it cannot explain "social gravity"-a contention that is simply wrong. Another important argument is that empirical or historical events at any given time are typically outcomes of the unique confluence and intersection of




many forces at a particular point in time. This contention is obviously true, just as the weather each day is an intersection of forces. However, this does not make positivism or science irrelevant to understanding the flow of empirical events. Another significant contention, one that others have made in a somewhat different manner (e.g., Giddens 1984), is that the constitution of reality at one point in time transforms the very nature of reality at a later point in time, thus invalidating laws that were presumed to be about the universal and timeless properties of the social universe. In making this observation and then using it to mount a critique of positivism, York and Clark confuse empirical descriptions with theoretical explanations-one is time bound, whereas the other is not. Finally, the authors make the point that phenomena can suddenly shift to a new set of values or valences, often creating entirely new types of phenomena. These sudden changes may be the result of a unique confluence of events or perhaps a consequence of slowly accumu- lating (and unrecognized) changes to some tipping point. Like the biotic universe (e.g., punctuated equilibrium, mass extinctions) or the physical world (e.g., volcanic erup- tions), the social is filled with sudden and transformative events (e.g., revolution, indus- trialization). Since other sciences seem to do just fine in explaining other realms of the universe where changes are sudden and transformative, why is this critique supposedly devastating for positivists? Now, let me backtrack and address each of these useful points of debate in more detail.

Does "Social Gravity" Obviate Science? It is true that some of the most powerful forces driving human behavior, interaction, and organization are not easily measured in short time frames, nor are they amenable to statistical analyses. They simply are too embedded in the background or do not vary signif- icantly over long historical periods. I think that this is probably the most important point in York and Clark's article, and it represents a real challenge to short-term or cross- sectional empirical analyses of social processes. However, York and Clark take an extra step by, first, portraying positivists as overly inductive, descriptive, quantitative, and statistical; then, using this inaccurate portrayal of positivism, they assert that-look here!- positivism is not capable of discovering these really important social forces that do not vary for long periods of time. This conclusion is only possible with gross misrepresenta- tions of positivism.

There are subsidiary points to this general critique. Any empirical analysis of events at a particular time and place will often miss the effects of forces that constitute "social gravity." Therefore, it is necessary to do the equivalent of what astrophysics did-get out into space and explore the gravitational pull of bodies that vary by size and distance from each other and that, as a result, exert varying degrees of gravitational pull. Indeed, concern with gravity led to Newton's famous law and, later, to more general sets of laws formulated by Einstein. What strikes me as strange is that York and Clark appear to conclude that sociology cannot do the same thing: get out of our immediate universe-that is, societies of the present-and look at diverse societies at different times and places where the social equivalent of forces like gravity vary. Well, to be fair, they do suggest that sociology must be more historical and must examine events over longer periods of time to ferret out the




effects of social gravity. Their portrayal of positivism, however, as not being able to do this is clearly wrong, since this is exactly what positivist theory seeks to do.

In fact, by examining the structure of societies in other times and places, early positivists reasoned that it would be possible to observe the forces of the social universe and to track variations in these forces and their effects on patterns of social organization. This is why early positivists like Comte ([1830-1842] 1896), Spencer ([1874-1896] 2002), and Durkheim ([ 1893] 1947) were evolutionists; they wanted to see the full range of variation in human societies so that they could do just the thing that York and Clark think important: discover variations in social forces that, like gravity, drive the formation of patterns in social organizations. If, however, you portray positivists as number-crunching, inductive grunts, it is easy to argue that positivism is not up to the task of analyzing social gravity. The best example of what early positivists sought to do can be found in the work of Herbert Spencer-an often ridiculed and generally ignored founding figure of sociology. Spencer is regularly considered an "armchair" theorist, which, apparently, makes him a suspicious figure. The corpus of Spencer's work, however, suggests just the opposite. Spencer assembled the largest collection of data on human societies of any sociologist who ever lived. The 16 volumes of his Descriptive Sociology, assembled between the late 1860s and mid-1930s (long after his death), were commissioned (from his royalties and inheritance) for one purpose: to record wide variations in the structures of diverse societies. Descriptive Sociology compares the simplest and most complex societies of Spencer's time, and many volumes trace the long-term historical transformations of societies that had a written history to draw upon. Spencer's Descriptive Sociology served as the inspira- tion for George P. Murdock's Human Area Relations Files (via his mentors William Graham Sumner and Albert Galloway Keller at Yale [1927]). Spencer's The Principles of Sociology ([1874-1896] 2002) is so long (over 2,000 pages) because it is filled with data from very diverse societies; the reason that Spencer commissioned professionals to assemble the known data on societies past and present is because he wanted to see variations in social forces. In fact, the title of this work tells us Spencer's goal: to articulate, like any physicist, the principles of the social forces driving the formation of societies in all times and places.

Emile Durkheim ([1893] 1947) did much the same, but without the large data set developed by Spencer. With some notable exceptions (e.g., Sanderson 1999; Lenski 2005), it is contemporary sociologists, including most Marxists, who have lost sight of the sociological equivalent of "gravitational forces" that drive the formation of societies in all times and places. In contrast, positivists are mostly interested in isolating those forces that are always present when humans behave, interact, and organize. It is Marxists, in my view, who are more parochial with their analysis of historical epochs. In fact, I think that Marx- ists and others make a fundamental mistake in assuming that the laws of social organization are time bound, such that the laws governing the operation of feudalism are somehow different than those directing capitalism. Descriptions of feudalism and capitalism will certainly vary and, perhaps through abstracted empiricism, will come to be seen as "laws" of a historical epoch. However, if we assume that the forces driving the formation of feudalism and capitalism are the same (only the valences and interactions

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among the forces vary), then we will discover the sociological equivalent of gravity-as positivists are more likely to do than historicists and Marxists. Indeed, positivists will find variations in social gravity because they always seek to discover universal forces that are not time bound. Thus, we do not have laws of feudal, capitalist, or socialist production, but laws of production in general that drive the formation of patterns of social organization in all times and places. The laws themselves do not change, but the values for the variables in these laws change historically, and this is how the same law can explain a wide variety of empirical manifestations of the forces specified in the law. Similarly, we do not have laws about particular modes of power (e.g., totalitarianism, democracy), but rather, we have laws about the dynamics of power, per se, that can be used to explain all political formations in all times and places. And the same could be said for any empirical element of a particular historical formation: there are forces driving this formation, and the job of science is to discover the operative dynamics of these forces and to express these dynamics in abstract laws.

It is true, I am sure, that those who are interested in history will find the explanations of social physicists wanting. For historicists, positivistic explanations will not tease out the details that are of most interest to historians, nor will the explanation offer a robust description of historical events or causes of particular empirical outcomes. This dissatis- faction is what leads historicists to reject positivistic explanations. For a positivist, the goal is to generate nomothetic explanations in which general laws are used to explain particular empirical and historical events, whereas for a historicist, the intent is to describe the sets and sequences of events causing a particular outcome. As to which explanation is more satisfying, this is really a matter of preferences and purposes. As a positivist, I find more satisfying to see a particular revolution, for example, as one empirical manifestation of conflict processes in general that can be explained by a few general laws on the dynamics of conflict as a social force. In contrast, historicists would be more satisfied with the scenario of historical events and would see the nomothetic explanation as taking the life- blood out of these events.

One type of explanation is not superior to the other; they are simply two different ways to understand the social universe. There are, however, ways in which the two modes of thinking can supplement each other. In almost all of my macrolevel theorizing, I use historical accounts, anthropological ethnographies, and other sources of data to deter- mine the range of potential variation in concepts of my laws (see, for example, Turner 1995, 2002). Moreover, my theories are designed to explain, with a few covering laws, events described by historians. Thus, I take a great deal from historians, and when I move to the meso and micro level, I do the same thing with ethnographic accounts of smaller- scale social forms and interactions, as well as more statistically analyzed sets of data. These data give me a sense for the range of variation in the forces, and again, the whole point of nomothetic theory is to explain the data in these studies with a small number of abstract principles. Conversely, historians can gain something from looking at positivistic theory: a sense for the generic forces-that is, the "social gravity"-that is or was operating in a particular empirical or historical case. Positivistic theory thus provides clues about what classes of empirical events are the best candidates for an explanatory description of the




causes of some historical outcome. A historian or ethnographer will, of course, add all the interesting empirical details that a nomothetic explanation takes out or ignores.

Thus, my big point here is that we need to recognize the difference between historical and nomothetic explanations. They are different enterprises, and it does no good to crit- icize one from the perspective of the other. I could complicate this distinction by empha- sizing that there are also modeling practices among positivists that emphasize causality and historical sequences, but only among generic forces (not actual empirical cases). I call these analytical models because they are highly abstract, but they trace sequences of causal effects (including direct, indirect, and reverse causal effects) among forces that are operative in all times and places. What I have previously said about abstract laws also applies to these analytical models; these models are not historical but abstract representations of causal connections among generic and universal social processes in visual space. Still, they rely upon data to get a sense of the key forces and their range of variation, and they can perhaps be useful to historians trying to sort out potential causal connections among empirical events.

Do Intersections of Historical and Empirical Events Obviate Science? Any time a scientist enters a naturally occurring empirical system, the buzz and flow of empirical (historical) events appears complex, and for a good reason: events intersect each other, generating many potential outcomes. Moreover, it is often difficult to measure the values of the variables in play, and particularly so when these values are conflated by interaction effects among them. For example, the weather is a complex intersection each day of many forces that often cannot be measured accurately, and indeed, the intersections are so complex sometimes that it is difficult to model them. Geologists cannot easily predict earthquakes because, although they know the forces involved, they are not able to accurately measure or model their intersections in specific empirical cases. Ecolo- gists in biology have the same problem; it is often difficult to map an ecosystem because there are so many forces in play that interact with each other in complex ways. Yet, none of these disciplines throws up its hands and proclaims that it cannot be a science. It is only sociologists who seem to do so.

Since sociologists cannot perform controls (for moral and practical reasons) on many phenomena of interest, we will have to live with the fact that we seek to understand empirical/historical events in their most robust and embedded form: naturally occurring social systems. The respective goals of historical/causal analysis and nomothetic theorizing are to explain this complexity, but in different ways. The historicist will trace certain causal sequences to explain a particular outcome; the positivists will try to explain this outcome with a more general law. What York and Clark seem to conflate is that laws are not about interaction effects; rather, they are about generic forces, per se. Of course, when examining a particular case, it becomes necessary to see how the interaction among two or more forces loads the values of the variables in the laws being used to explain some event. For example, if I want to explain why capitalist economies are more dynamic than state- managed economies, I will need to pay attention to the intersection of variables used to explain power and production, as two of the most generic forces involved. I might, for

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instance, note that centralization of power (one variable in a law of power) in state- managed systems has effects on capital formation and technological development (two variables in the law of production). I do not try to develop a law for each and every potential intersection of forces in the empirical world; such efforts would generate so many laws as to render nomothetic theory useless or, in reality, convert laws into empirical descriptions of events. In contrast, a historicist would attempt to describe the confluence of events and why this confluence occurred, producing a complex scenario of causal sequences.

Despite differences in their respective approaches, however, positivists and historicists use each other's explanations for their respective purposes. A positivist would find the empirical descriptions of the intersections among empirical events most interesting because these data would allow the positivist to load the values for the variables in abstract laws or analytical models. Reciprocally, a historicist might use the laws and analytical models of positivists as guidelines for isolating the important from less important empirical events causing a historical outcome.

Every set of empirical or historical events in naturally occurring systems outside the laboratory is unique in some way. If one wants to explain what is unique, then empirical descriptions are the way to go. If one desires to explain what is unique by what is generic and universal, then nomothetic theory and analytical modeling are more appropriate. But the fact of historical uniqueness, per se, does not make positivistic theorizing less via- ble, any more than it does for meteorologists, geologists, or ecologists working with naturally occurring systems. To proclaim that all empirical events are historical is to state the obvious, but such statements do not suddenly make a science seeking the laws governing the operation of the social universe irrelevant.

Does Indigenous Transformation Obviate Science? York and Clark present some interesting examples of how forces operating at one point in time set events into motion than transform the very nature of the universe. There is, as they correctly point out, a kind of dialectic in the biotic world whereby a given distribution of elements and life forms is, over the long term, inherently transforming. Indeed, higher concentrations of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere evolved in this way and, in turn, set into motion the proliferation of larger life forms. Marxists are naturally versed in and sensitive to dialectical arguments, but York and Clark go somewhat astray in imply- ing that the fundamental nature of the forces at work is altered by these indigenous transformations. Let me illustrate this fallacy with a sociological example (grossly simplified): The centralization of coercive and administrative power in a society leads to increased inequality (through use of power to usurp resources and wealth), but as inequality increases, those who have lost resources become mobilized to initiate conflicts that, if suc- cessful, destroy the existing system of centralized power (thus,"power elites sow the seeds of their own destruction"). This is a dialectical argument, and it is stated in very abstract terms (much as Spencer, Vilfredo Pareto, and, to a lesser extent, Marx did). Obviously, this is a very simplified lawlike statement, but it is sufficient for my purposes. When stated in this very abstract manner, the forces are not eliminated by the transformations that




they generate; rather, the values of the forces as they affect each other lead to empirical transformations in how power and inequality manifest themselves after their dialectical effects have established a new empirical system. The laws of power and inequality (not fully specified but specifiable; see Turner 1985, 1995, 2003) are not changed, only the valences of the variables in the laws. The same is true of the forces in York and Clark's examples on the biosphere; the laws of chemistry, physics, and biology are not changed. Just the opposite, it is by the forces specified in laws that one can explain the transformative effects of the biosphere. The same is true for social systems; the forces involved in transformations remain the same, although their values and intersections may change, to produce new kinds of social systems. Thus, self-transformation does not obviate nomothetic explanation; rather, such transformations give positivists phenomena to explain.

Does Nonlinearity Obviate Science? The social world is nonlinear. Forces can have curvilinear and logarithmic relations; they can reveal threshold effects; they can work as S-functions, and they can evidence step functions. The point made by York and Clark on sudden changes in social gravity is, therefore, only one of a number of nonlinear relationships among properties of the social universe. Indeed, it is rather rare for any real linear relationships to exist in the social world-despite the bias of or statistical techniques to overemphasize linearity.

The point that social gravity remains, or seems to remain, constant for long periods of time and then suddenly shifts to a new level is well taken, but I do not see how this insight obviates scientific sociology. As long as positivism is equated with empirical descriptions with cross-sectional data analyzed statistically, the criticism has some merit. However, this is a criticism of research methodologies more than it is a fatal blow to positivistic theorizing. True, if positivistic social science is characterized as "raw empiricism," then the criticism appears fatal, but in light of York and Clark's (and many others') incor- rect portrayal of positivism, I do not see that their argument is damaging to positivistic sociological theory.

In virtually all the theoretical principles that I have developed over the years-and the same can be said for others who have traveled this positivistic path-the universe is nonlinear. Mathematics can help state nonlinear relations more precisely, but most positivists state theories in words and recognize that the variables in their theories reveal nonlinear relationships. There is nothing inherent in nonlinearity, per se, that thwarts efforts to develop general laws; indeed, the hard sciences have developed wonderful tools-from mathematics to simulations-that social scientists can borrow and adopt to our domain of inquiry. Thus, rather than use the fact of nonlinearity as a rhetorical tool to bash one approach and proclaim the superiority of another, it is better to take nonlinearity as a challenge and develop better theories.

Does Ideology Obviate Science? I cannot let go a small matter, despite the fact that I am over my page limit. This is an assertion that York and Clark slip into their text: the implication that Marxists are not driven by ideology. I do not think that I have ever met a Marxist who was not committed




to the view that capitalism generates inequalities that need to be eliminated, and prefera- bly by the destruction of capitalism itself. Some are more rabid than others, but this ideological commitment often blinds Marxists to other social forces and to alternative data sets that might call into question their ideological beliefs. I am not immune to ideology; this would be absurd. For indeed, many positivists are as bad as Marxists, committed to eliminating certain features of contemporary societies or systems of societies and imposing a new form of social organization (whether realistic or not). However, positivists are less likely to be ideologues, and they are more likely to try to put their ideologies on the back burner. More fundamentally, most positivists are committed to testing their theories with data, even if it means that elements of their theories will be rejected. Such is not always the case with most Marxists. There is a reflexive, self-sustaining quality to Marxist theory, because it conflates ideology, science, history, and selective empirical description in the name of a political end.

I argue that Comte ([1830-1842] 1896), for all his oddities, probably had this issue right. The laws of sociology should be developed, tested, and then used in the positive reconstruction of society. The tricky issue is whose vision of the "good society" is to be used in this reconstruction. For Marxists, the answer is clear; for most positivists, the issue is essentially political, one to be decided in the give and take of politics. However, the key argument is that, like all knowledge in the natural sciences, the principles of sociology can be used in engineering applications in the real world (Turner 1998, 2001). If this was not the case, there would not be much point in seeking these laws beyond intellectual sat- isfaction. Of course, like the laws of physics or biology, sociological laws can be used for both "good" and "bad" ends.

CONCLUSION

My role in this essay is to respond to the challenge posed in York and Clark's provocative essay. Their analysis of Marxism, positivism, and scientific sociology forces us all to come to terms with how we go about trying to understand the social universe. Although many potential epistemologies can be employed by sociologists, I think that two will generate the most intellectual payoff in sociological explanations: the positivism and historicism. Positivistic explanations seek to isolate the fundamental properties of the social universe and develop abstract laws and models that explain the operative dynamics of these properties. The logic of explanation revolves around making deductions from abstract laws about generic and universal social forces to explain specific sets of empirical events that are driven by these forces. Historicist analysis examines sets and sequences of empirical events to explain particular historical outcomes. Whether a path model using correlation coefficients or a detailed teasing out of past events culled from accessing data in archives, the logic of historicist explanations is the same: to explicate complexes of causal effects among empirical variables producing certain outcomes.

If we keep this fundamental difference in mind, other issues-quantitative versus qualitative research, use of statistics versus words, induction versus deduction, linearity versus nonlinearity--are smoke and mirrors that obfuscate the real issue: How do we go




about explaining the operative dynamics of the social universe: scientifically or historically?

Marxists and many others have often found themselves caught between these two approaches. Indeed, my view has always been that Marx's analysis of the relationship among power, production, ideology, inequality, and conflict describes elements of universal processes that are always potentially present when humans organize, thus making Marx a closet positivist. The Marxist who seeks to explain the dynamics of capitalism represents a hybrid: The laws of capitalism outlined by Marx are time-bound empirical generalizations seeking a more general theory of production, distribution, and power to explain them. They are an explicandum seeking an explanas. The historical descriptions of societies before the capitalist epoch are so flawed that they are not particularly useful, because they are just window dressing for the assumed march of history through capitalism to communism. My point here is that when historical and nomothetic analyses are conflated, neither is done particularly well. Marx wanted to be historical and at least par- tially nomothetic by formulating laws of historical periods. I think his most enduring contribution is the one that he did not explicitly formulate, but the one that many positivists use (Turner 1975a,b): the implicit laws about the relationships among certain fundamental properties of the social universe-namely, power, production, distribution, inequality, ideology, and conflict. There is a general theory here that transcends any historical epoch, but it gets lost in historicism and, of course, the ideological agenda that Marx pursued. On the other side of historicism is Max Weber ( [ 1922] 1968), a historicist who sought to sort out the causes of important events within the rationalization of society, but he also wanted to be "value free" and to address more universal and generic ques- tions. This desire led to his ideal types that are, in essence, classification schemes of generic phenomena, such as his portrayal of types of action. The result was that Weber's work stayed within a liminal realm between science and history, and despite the monu- mental contribution that Weber made to sociology, he could have made an even larger contribution if he had decided which way to go.

Thus, there is no easy middle ground between positivism and historicism. There can be cross fertilization, but in the end, we each must choose how we want to go about explaining the social world. I am not sure that York and Clark have fully decided. They are like Marx or Weber: caught between the desire to say something generic and universal, but bowed by the contingency of history. It is better to simply choose which way one wants to go, and to act accordingly. Marx's and Weber's explanations would be the better for it, just as those of contemporary fence-sitting scholars will. As this commentary bears witness, far too much time is spent debating philosophical issues that will never be resolved. It is better to commit to an epistemology and let the power of the explanations generated do our talking for each of us, whether as positivist or historicist.

REFERENCES

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Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution Of Society. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Giddings, Franklin H. 1920. The Principles of Sociology. New York: Macmillan. Durkheim, Emile. [1893] 1947. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press. Lenski, Gerhard. 2005. Ecological-Evolutionary Theory: Principles and Applications. Boulder, CO:

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Issue Table of ContentsThe Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Summer, 2006), pp. 375-520Front Matter [pp. ]Latino Identity and Segmented AssimilationThe Implications of Choosing "No Race" on the Salience of Hispanic Identity: How Racial and Ethnic Backgrounds Intersect among Hispanic Adolescents [pp. 375-396]Segmented Assimilation among Mexicans in the Southwest [pp. 397-424]

Marxism, Positivism, and Historicism: An ExchangeMarxism, Positivism, and Scientific Sociology: Social Gravity and Historicity [pp. 425-450]Explaining the Social World: Historicism versus Positivism [pp. 451-463]Science and History: A Reply to Turner [pp. 465-470]

Class and GenderSocial Class Sentiments in Formation: Influence of Class Socialization, College Socialization, and Class Aspirations [pp. 471-495]Gender, Class, and the Art and Craft of Social Capital [pp. 497-520]

Back Matter [pp. ]

Explaining the Social World Historicism Versus Positivism

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