“The basic point-of-view is that science is a social process.”
Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. xi
Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 141
“The basic point-of-view is that science is a social process.”
Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. xi
Source: World views. From Fragmentation to Integration (1994), p. 8
Introduction
The Complexity of Cooperation (1997)
Douglass North in "Orders of the Day" in Reason (November 1999) http://reason.com/archives/1999/11/01/orders-of-the-day, a review of The Great Disruption : Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order (1999) by Francis Fukuyama
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent, 1992
Context: There is a noticeable general difference between the sciences and mathematics on the one hand, and the humanities and social sciences on the other. It's a first approximation, but one that is real. In the former, the factors of integrity tend to dominate more over the factors of ideology. It's not that scientists are more honest people. It's just that nature is a harsh taskmaster. You can lie or distort the story of the French Revolution as long as you like, and nothing will happen. Propose a false theory in chemistry, and it'll be refuted tomorrow.
1950s, "General systems theory," 1956
Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 7 : Nature
Source: Models of Mental Illness (1984), p. 245
How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)
Context: The simplified notion of self-interest used by our political and social science cannot tolerate the tension between one’s own and the good, for that tension leaves human behavior unpredictable. One cannot penetrate into every individual’s private thoughts, and there is no clear way to judge among different conceptions of the good. So in order to overcome the tension, science tries to combine one’s own and the good in such a way as to preserve neither. It generalizes one’s own as the interest of an average or, better to say, predictable individual who lives his life quantifiably so as to make its study easier for the social scientist. And for the same purpose it vulgarizes the good by eliminating the high and the mighty in our souls (not to mention the low and vicious), transforming our aspiration to nobility and truth into personal preferences of whose value science is incognizant, to which it is indifferent.
"Our Natural Place", p. 243
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)