Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• BARTMAŃSKI, DOMINIK
• BINDER, WERNER

Titel

Being and Knowledge: On Some Liabilities of Reed's Interpretivism

Ist Teil von

• Sociologický časopis, 2015-01, Vol.51 (3), p.499-511

Ort / Verlag

Prague: Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Isaac Reed begins his book with the claim that 'understanding of social knowledge is due for a massive transformation'. Sociologicky Casopis recognizes Interpretation and Social Knowledge as a genuine and highly readable contribution to such a transformation. The book is ambitious, yet concise, complex but not overwhelming. However, the pertinent discussion closely resembles the Methodenstreit, the foundational debate about the epistemic footing of the then emerging social sciences, which revolved around the pivotal binary of nomothetic science (Naturwissenschaften) and idiographic humanities (Geisteswissenschaften). Reed indicates a 'dialectical' way out of the seemingly inescapable either/or dilemma of causal explanation vs hermeneutic interpretation. He clarifies how interpretation may count. as explanation in a post-positivist era. It is this basic and in their view legitimate intention that directly evokes Weber's definition of sociology as 'a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences'.