Case study research in the social sciences

In this paper, we offer an introduction to case study research in the social sciences. We begin with a discussion of the definition of case study research. Next, we point to various purposes that case study research may serve in the social sciences and then turn to outline the main philosophical issues raised by case study research. Finally, we briefly present the papers in this special issue.     

The theory theory thrice over: the child as scientist, Superscientist or social institution?

Alison Gopnik and Andrew Meltzoff have argued for a view they call the ‘theory theory’: theory change in science and children are similar. While their version of the theory theory has been criticized for depending on a number of disputed claims, we argue that there is a fundamental problem which is much more basic: the theory theory is multiply ambiguous. We show that it might be claiming that a similarity holds between theory change in children and (i) individual scientists, (ii) a rational reconstruction of a Superscientist, or (iii) the scientific community. We argue that (i) is false, (ii) is non-empirical (which is problematic since the theory theory is supposed to be a bold empirical hypothesis), and (iii) is either false or doesn't make enough sense to have a truth-value. We conclude that the theory theory is an interesting failure. Its failure points the way to a full, empirical picture of scientific development, one that marries a concern with the social dynamics of science to a psychological theory of scientific cognition.     

Epigenetics: a link between addiction and social environment

The detrimental effects of drug abuse are apparently not limited to individuals but may also impact the vulnerability of their progenies to develop addictive behaviours. Epigenetic signatures, early life experience and environmental factors, converge to influence gene expression patterns in addiction phenotypes and consequently may serve as mediators of behavioural trait transmission between generations. The majority of studies investigating the role of epigenetics in addiction do not consider the influence of social interactions. This shortcoming in current experimental approaches necessitates developing social models that reflect the addictive behaviour in a free-living social environment. Furthermore, this review also reports on the advancement of interventions for drug addiction and takes into account the emerging roles of histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors in the etiology of drug addiction and that HDAC may be a potential therapeutic target at nucleosomal level to improve treatment outcomes.     

Function and use of technical artefacts: social conditions of function ascription

It is argued that we cannot understand the notion of proper functions of artefacts independently of social notions. Functions of artefacts are related to social facts via the use of artefacts. The arguments in this article can be used to improve existing function theories that look to the causal history of artefacts to determine the function. A view that takes the intentions of designers into account to determine the proper function is both natural and often correct, but it is shown that there are exceptions to this. Taking a social constitutive element into account may amend these backwards looking theories. An improved theory may either have a disjunctive form—either the history or collective intentions determine the proper function—or, as is suggested in the article, be in the form of an encompassing account that views the designers’ intentions as social, in so far as they are accepted by the users. Designers have authority, which is a social fact. The views argued for here are applied to two existing theories of artefact functions, a causal historic approach and an action theoretic approach.     

The role of psychology in behavioral economics: The case of social preferences

Behavioral economics is a field of study that is often thought of as interdisciplinary, insofar as it uses psychological insights to inform economic models. Yet the level of conceptual and methodological exchange between the two disciplines is disputed in the literature. On the one hand, behavioral economic models are often presented as psychologically informed models of individual decision-making (Camerer & Loewenstein, 2003). On the other hand, these models have often been criticized for being merely more elaborated “as if” economic models (Berg & Gigerenzer, 2010). The aim of this paper is to contribute to this debate by looking at a central topic in behavioral economics: the case of social preferences. Have findings or research methods been exchanged between psychology and economics in this research area? Have scientists with different backgrounds “travelled” across domains, thus transferring their expertise from one discipline to another? By addressing these and related questions, this paper will assess the level of knowledge transfer between psychology and economics in the study of social preferences.     

Constructing dystopian experience: A Neurath-Cartwrightian approach to the philosophy of social technology

Social situations, the object of the social sciences, are complex and unique: they contain so many variable aspects that they cannot be reproduced, and it is even difficult to experience two situations that are alike in many respects. The social scientists' past experiences that serve as their background knowledge to intervene in an existent situation is poor compared to what a traditional epistemologist would consider ideal. A way of dealing with the variable and insufficient background of social scientists is by means of models. But, then, how should we characterize social scientific models? This paper examines Otto Neurath's scientific utopianism as an attempt to deal with this problem. Neurath proposes that social scientists work with utopias: broad imaginative plans that coordinate a multitude of features of a social situation. This notion can be used in current debates in philosophy of science because we notice that utopias, in Neurath's sense, are comparable to models and nomological machines in Nancy Cartwright's conception. A model-based view of science lays emphasis on the fact that scientists learn from the repeated operation of such abstract entities, just as they learn from the repetition of experiments in a laboratory. Hence this approach suggests an approximation between the natural and the social sciences, as well as between science and utopian literature. This is exemplified by analyzing the literary dystopia We, written by Yevgeny Zamyatin, to show that reasoning from and debating about utopian writings, even if fictional and pessimistic, creates phenomena of valuation, which are fundamental for constituting a background of experiences in the social sciences.     

Models as interpreters (with a case study from pain science)

Most philosophical accounts of scientific models assume that models represent some aspect, or some theory, of reality. They also assume that interpretation plays only a supporting role. This paper challenges both assumptions. It proposes that models can be used in science to interpret reality. (a) I distinguish these interpretative models from representational ones. They find new meanings in a target system’s behaviour, rather than fit its parts together. They are built through idealisation, abstraction and recontextualisation. (b) To show how interpretative models work, I offer a case study on the scientific controversy over foetal pain. It highlights how pain scientists use conflicting models to interpret the human foetus and its behaviour, and thereby to support opposing claims about whether the foetus can feel pain. (c) I raise a sceptical worry and a methodological challenge for interpretative models. To address the latter, I use my case study to compare how interpretative and representational models ought to be evaluated.     

Differential neuronal radiosensitivity as a tool for the study of short connections

Résumé La radiolésion aigue du bulbe olfactif provoque des dommages sélectifs aux petits interneurons. L'examen au microscope électronique du tissu irradié a mis en évidence la présence de nombreuses terminales en dégénérescence, au niveau de la couche plexiforme. Elles ont été interprétées comme étant des dendrites appartenant aux granules radiolésées par leur position post-synaptique dans des synapses réciproques avec des dendrites mitrals. On propose d'utiliser cette méthode pour l'étude des connections interneuronales courtes dans certains endroits du SNC.

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This work was partially supported by grants from the Medica Research Council of Canada and Conseil Medical de la Recherche du Québec.     

Philosophy,history and sociology of science: Interdisciplinary relations and complex social identities

Sociology and philosophy of science have an uneasy relationship, while the marriage of history and philosophy of science has—on the surface at least—been more successful. I will take a sociological look at the history of the relationships between philosophy and history as well as philosophy and sociology of science. Interdisciplinary relations between these disciplines will be analysed through social identity complexity theory in order to draw out some conclusions on how the disciplines interact and how they might develop. I will use the relationships between the disciplines as a pointer for a more general social theory of interdisciplinarity which will then be used to sound a caution on how interdisciplinary relations between the three disciplines might be managed.     

Of volatiles and peptides: in search for MHC-dependent olfactory signals in social communication

Genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which play a critical role in immune recognition, are considered to influence social behaviors in mice, fish, humans, and other vertebrates via olfactory cues. As studied most extensively in mice, the polymorphism of MHC class I genes is considered to bring about a specific scent signature, which is decoded by the olfactory system resulting in an individual-specific reaction such as mating. On the assumption that this signature resides in volatiles, extensive attempts to identify these MHC-specific components in urine failed. Alternatively, it has been suggested that peptide ligands of MHC class I molecules are released into urine and can elicit an MHC-haplotype-specific behavioral response after uptake into the nose by sniffing. Analysis of the urinary peptide composition of mice shows that MHC-derived peptides are present, albeit in extremely low concentrations. In contrast, urine contains abundant peptides which differ between mouse strains due to genomic variations such as single-nucleotide variations or complex polymorphisms in multigene families as well as in their concentration. Thus, urinary peptides represent a real-time sampling of the expressed genome available for sensory evaluation. It is suggested that peptide variation caused by genomic differences contains sufficient information for individual recognition beyond or instead of an influence of the MHC in mice and other vertebrates.     

Boussingault versus ville: The social,political and scientific aspects of their disputes

A feature of mid-nineteenth century scientific debates in France on the subject of plant nutrition was the rivalry, at times acrimonious, between Jean Baptiste Boussingault and Georges Ville. It started in 1848 when Ville was demonstrator to Boussingault, who held one of the two chairs of agriculture at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. A study of their disputes serves to illustrate their mutual incompatibility, exacerbated by the patronage extended to Ville by his step-brother, Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, afterwards Napoléon III. Their disputes were not merely the result of personal differences but also accompanied the development of two concepts of plant nutrition, namely the rôle of atmospheric nitrogen. and its possible assimilation by plants, and the chemical nature of plant nutrients, especially nitrates and phosphates.     

Embedding semigroups in groups: not as simple as it might seem

We consider the investigation of the embedding of semigroups in groups, a problem which spans the early-twentieth-century development of abstract algebra. Although this is a simple problem to state, it has proved rather harder to solve, and its apparent simplicity caused some of its would-be solvers to go awry. We begin with the analogous problem for rings, as dealt with by Ernst Steinitz, B. L. van der Waerden and Øystein Ore. After disposing of A. K. Sushkevich’s erroneous contribution in this area, we present A. I. Maltsev’s example of a cancellative semigroup which may not be embedded in a group, which showed for the first time that such an embedding is not possible in general. We then look at the various conditions that were derived for such an embedding to take place: the sufficient conditions of Paul Dubreil and others, and the necessary and sufficient conditions obtained by A. I. Maltsev, Vlastimil Pták and Joachim Lambek. We conclude with some comments on the place of this problem within the theory of semigroups, and also within abstract algebra more generally.     

Nagel's analysis of reduction: Comments in defense as well as critique

Despite all the criticism showered on Nagel's classic account of reduction, it meets a fundamental desideratum in an analysis of reduction that is difficult to question, namely of providing for a proper identification of the reducing theory. This is not clearly accommodated in radically different accounts. However, the same feature leads me to question Nagel's claim that the reducing theory can be separated from the putative bridge laws, and thus to question his notion of heterogeneous reduction. A further corollary to the requirement that all the necessary conditions be incorporated in an adequate formulation of the putative reducing theory is that the standard example of gas temperature is not reducible to average molecular kinetic energy. As originally conceived, Nagel's conception of reduction takes no account of approximate reasoning and this failure has certainly restricted its applicability, perhaps to the point of making it unrealistic as a model of reduction in science. I suggest approximation can be accommodated by weakening the original requirement of deduction without jeopardizing the fundamental desideratum. Finally, I turn to briefly consider the idea sometimes raised of the ontological reducibility of chemistry.     

Autoradiography and differential hemoglobin staining as aids to the study of fish hematology

Summary The confused state of the existing knowledge regarding the cell types in peripheral blood and hematopoiesis of fishes has been highlighted. Inadequacies of techniques presently used have been pointed out and the advantages of using Graham-Knoll's method for haemoglobin staining when counter stained with Giemsa together with autoradiography using tritiated thymidine have been demonstrated.Thanks are due to the University of Rajasthan for working facilities. J.S.D. is grateful to University Grants Commission, New Delhi for grant of Research Fellowship during the tenure of which this work was done.