“Whether sociology can ever become a full-fledged "science" (a description of a class of events predictable on the basis of deductions from a constant rationale) depends on whether the terms which sociologists employ to describe events can be analyzed into quantifiable observables.”

—  Anatol Rapoport

Anatol Rapoport, "Outline of a probabilistic approach to animal sociology: I." The Bulletin of mathematical biophysics 11.3 (1949): p 183
1940s

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Anatol Rapoport photo
Anatol Rapoport45
Russian-born American mathematical psychologist 1911–2007

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“Many psychologists, sociologists and especially anthropologists and psychiatrists raise serious objections against routine attempts to "extend the methods of the of the physical sciences" to the study of man. These objections cannot be dismissed simply on the grounds that they are not constructive; for inherent in the objections may well be a conviction that there can never be a "behavioral science" as scientists understand science. Whether there can be such a science or not will be decided neither by citing successful applications of "scientific method" to carefully circumscribed sectors of human behavior nor by pointing out what has not yet been done. Therefore on the question of whether a behavioral science can in principle be constructed, we shall take no sides. That some kinds of human behavior can be described and even predicted in terms of objectively verifiable and quantifiable data seems to us to have been established.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Source: 1960s, Prisoner's dilemma: A study in conflict and cooperation (1965), p. v

Albert Einstein photo

“Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Objecting to the placing of observables at the heart of the new quantum mechanics, during Heisenberg's 1926 lecture at Berlin; related by Heisenberg, quoted in Unification of Fundamental Forces (1990) by Abdus Salam ISBN 0521371406
1920s

Howard S. Becker photo

“Good sociology is sociological work that produces meaningful descriptions of organizations and events, valid explanations of how they come about and persist, and realistic proposals for their improvement or removal.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Becker (1972) "'Radical politics and sociological research" cited in: John Peter Sugden, Alan Tomlinson (2002) Power Games: A Critical Sociology of Sport. p. 108.

“Our lives today are not conducted in linear terms. They are much more quantified; a stream of random events is taking place.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

Conversation http://www.jgballard.ca/interviews/macbeth_interview_1967.html with George MacBeth on Third Programme (BBC) (1 February 1967)], published in The New S.F. (1969), edited by Langdon Jones

“It is the event that is the immediate entity of perception; Nature is the sum-total of events, and every instrument of thought that our minds employ can be traced back to its ultimate origin in events.”

Herbert Dingle (1890–1978) British astronomer

pages 12–13 https://books.google.com/books?id=hwpKAAAAIAAJ&amp;pg=PA12 <br class="br">Relativity for All, London, 1922

“The problem of complexity is at the heart of mankind’s inability to predict future events with any accuracy. Complexity science has demonstrated that the more factors found within a complex system, the more chances of unpredictable behavior. And without predictability, any meaningful control is nearly impossible. Obviously, this means that you cannot control what you cannot predict. The ability ever to predict long-term events is a pipedream. Mankind has little to do with changing climate; complexity does.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

&quot;The Real Science Behind Changing Climate&quot;, LewRockwell.com, August 1, 2014. https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/08/lk-samuels/the-real-science-is-suppressed/

Siméon Denis Poisson photo

“In many different fields, empirical phenomena appear to obey a certain general law, which can be called the Law of Large Numbers. This law states that the ratios of numbers derived from the observation of a very large number of similar events remain practically constant, provided that these events are governed partly by constant factors and partly by variable factors whose variations are irregular and do not cause a systematic change in a definite direction.”

Siméon Denis Poisson (1781–1840) French mathematician, mechanician and physicist

Statement of Poisson's law also known as the Law of Large Numbers (1837), as quoted by [Richard Von Mises, Probability, Statistics and Truth, Allen and Unwin, 1957, 104-105]

Charles Darwin photo

“It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter VII: &quot;On the Races of Man&quot;, page 225 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=238&amp;itemID=F937.1&amp;viewtype=image <br class="br">The Descent of Man (1871)

“Historians are concerned with events which can be assigned to specific timespace locations, events which are (or were) in principle observable or perceivable, whereas imaginative writers – poets, novelists, playwrights – are concerned with both these kinds of events and imagined, hypothetical, or invented ones.”

Hayden White (1928–2018) American historian

"The fictions of factual representation"

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“By induction we gain no certain knowledge; but by observation, and the inverse use of deductive reasoning, we estimate the probability that an event which has occurred was preceded by conditions of specified character, or that such conditions will be followed by the event. …I have no objection to use the words cause and causation, provided they are never allowed to lead us to imagine that our knowledge of nature can attain to certainty. …We can never recur too often to the truth that our knowledge of the laws and future events of the external world are only probable.”

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) English economist and logician

Source: The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method (1874) Vol. 1, pp. 257, 260 & 271

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