Introducing The Virtue of Uncertainty in the Science of Social Cognition by Morteza Mardiha

Behind the millennia in which myth, ritual, imagination, and delusion stirred everyone in a foggy atmosphere into endless disputes over dubious findings, empirical science emerged in such a way as to open eyes to truth with objectivity and certainty and to end the strife in darkness. With the aid of systematic observations and calculations, the touchstone of experience swept away many doubts and misgivings from the realm of thought, but this did not prevent scientific theories and experiments from clashing with one another, and thus it became clear that contention is not the exclusive property of ignorance and taste. It has often been supposed that nature is a book written in the language of mathematics, and that this is a guarantee against idle speculation, and that science is defined as the definitive discovery of universal laws. But mathematics is one of the possible readings of the book of nature, which may not always be the best choice. Moreover, neither mathematics nor any other tool saves science from the conflict of hypotheses. Science is the most useful and wondrous achievement in the history of civilization. Nevertheless, it gradually appears that, contrary to what was thought at the time of the emergence of modern science, science is neither discovery, nor does its glory lie in its certainty. And this, of course, has more pervasive manifestations in the science of social cognition. The book The Virtue of Uncertainty in the Science of Social Cognition seeks, inspired by the three waves of the philosophy of natural sciences, to conduct a study of the extent and value of certainty within competing educational frameworks in the social sciences.

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Foreword

Part One: The Conflict of Method

Chapter One: The Philosophy of Qualitative Method The Idea of Qualitativism The Scope and Nature of the Subject Types of Qualitative Explanation The Validity of Qualitative Explanation

Chapter Two: Quantitative Method The Idea of Quantitativism Mathematical Formulation Conditions of Statistical Causal Explanation Problems of Statistical Causal Explanation

Chapter Three: The Fruit of Disagreement Objectivity Precision Certainty

Part Two: The Conflict of Perspective and Measurement

Chapter Four: Depth and Breadth Generalizing Causality and Deepening Causality Empirical and Experimental Reasoning Natural Reasoning Differences Among Sciences Science and Non-Science

Chapter Five: Truth and Meaning Falsificationism Criterialism Conventionalism The Logic of Science and the Sociology of the Scientist The Dual Criterion of Scientific Evaluation

Part Three: The Conflict of Research

Chapter Six: Durkheim and Suicide Identifying a Statistical Correlation Refuting the Previous Explanation Proposing a New Hypothesis Justifying the Exceptions The Form of Reasoning The Reasoning from the Critics' Perspective

Chapter Seven: Bachelard and the Suicidal Refuting the Previous Explanation Proposing a New Hypothesis Justifying the Exceptions The Form of Reasoning The Reasoning from the Critics' Perspective

Chapter Eight: Comparative Evaluation

References Index

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