首页 | 本学科首页   官方微博 | 高级检索  
     检索      


Constructing dystopian experience: A Neurath-Cartwrightian approach to the philosophy of social technology
Authors:Ivan Ferreira da Cunha
Institution:1. Department of Pediatric Neurology, Marmara University Medical Faculty Istanbul, Turkey;2. Molecular Biology and Genetics, Private Practice, Istanbul, Turkey;3. Department of Pediatric Cardiology, Marmara University Medical Faculty Istanbul, Turkey;4. Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Biruni University, Istanbul, Turkey;5. Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Biruni University Medical Faculty, Istanbul, Turkey;1. Department of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Abstract: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.
Keywords:Utopias  Models  Values  Science fiction  Philosophy of science
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录!
设为首页 | 免责声明 | 关于勤云 | 加入收藏

Copyright©北京勤云科技发展有限公司  京ICP备09084417号