On Fri, 5 Dec 2003 kelley at pulpculture.org wrote:
> Well, to be fair to The C, some sociologists also say that no one has
> produced "real" social theory, either. You've heard that sociologists have
> physics-envy, right? :) According to these folks, we haven't produced the
> sort of Covering Law or hypotehtico-deductive theory that is supposed to
> dominate the nat. sciences: to explain something is to provide a
> justifiable account of necessary causes and essential determinants based on
> universal laws that operate under specific conditions. (that's where
> probability comes into play; see end of post) Now, of course, that's pretty
> much what Chomsky was saying in that one quote CG pointed to. It is
> amusing, though, that because he used "plain language" it wasn't at all
> clear exactly what he meant. :)
I think this distinction is overhyped. As Gould notes, natural selection is not a "covering law" in biology (I assume NC would consider this a real science). There are many factors that lead to species change that cannot be anticipated by Darwin's idea of natural selection (as D. himself emphasized). "Necessary causes" and "essential determinants" are textbook caricatures that have nothing to do with actual scientific practice. Just as a physicist cannot use her "universal laws" to perfectly predict the trajectory of a single snowflake, a social scientist cannot perfectly predict the behavior of a single person at a restaurant. --And just as a physicist can use her theories to make good estimates of how snowflakes typically fall, a social scientist can make surprisingly good predictions about typical behavior by accounting for social structure (e.g., what kind of restaurant? Is the person a chef, customer, or waiter?).
Again, I submit that NC hasn't studied the fields he's criticizing very closely. (And note that my comments here have nothing to do with "literary" theory. I don't know why everybody associates "theory" with English profs.)
Miles