“The social scientist is in a difficult, if not impossible position. On the one hand there is the temptation to see all of society as one's autobiography writ large, surely not the path to general truth. On the other, there is the attempt to be general and objective by pretending that one knows nothing about the experience of being human, forcing the investigator to pretend that people usually know and tell the truth about important issues, when we all know from our lives how impossible that is. How, then, can there be a "social science"? The answer, surely, is to be less ambitious and stop trying to make sociology into a natural science although it is, indeed, the study of natural objects. There are some things in the world that we will never know and many that we will never know exactly. Each domain of phenomena has its characteristic grain of knowability. Biology is not physics, because organisms are such complex physical objects, and sociology is not biology because human societies are made by self-conscious organisms. By pretending to a kind of knowledge that it cannot achieve, social science can only engender the scorn of natural scientists and the cynicism of the humanists.”
Sex, Lies, and Social Science (1995)
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Richard C. Lewontin 14
American evolutionary biologist 1929Related quotes
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Book I, Ch. IX, pp. 73-76.
Physics
As quoted in An Apple for the Teacher: Fundamentals for Instructional Computing (1983) by George H. Culp and Herbert N. Nickles, p. 190; also in Youth Quake: A Manifesto (2002) by Cousin Sam, p. 31
“Autobiography—that unrivalled vehicle for telling the truth about other people.”
"Biographers and Their Victims," http://books.google.com/books?id=yCgoAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Autobiography+that+unrivalled+vehicle+for+telling+the+truth+about+other+people%22&pg=PA136#v=onepage Debate with A. G. Gardiner at The London School of Economics (June 1923) http://archive.org/stream/yeaandnay00anonuoft#page/136/mode/2up
Something Like an Autobiography (1981)
Context: Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.
“Western Civ,” p. 18.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)
