Cunha Ivan Ferreira da
Department of Philosophy, Federal University of Santa Catarina, UFSC, Florianópolis, Brazil.
Stud Hist Philos Sci. 2018 Dec;72:41-48. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2018.05.012. Epub 2018 Jun 4.
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.
社会状况作为社会科学的研究对象，是复杂且独特的：它们包含如此多的可变因素，以至于无法被复制，甚至很难体验到在许多方面相似的两种情况。与传统认识论者所认为的理想情况相比，社会科学家作为其干预现有情况的背景知识的过往经历是匮乏的。应对社会科学家可变且不足的背景知识的一种方法是借助模型。但是，那么我们应该如何描述社会科学模型呢？本文考察奥托·纽拉特的科学乌托邦主义，将其作为解决这一问题的一种尝试。纽拉特提议社会科学家运用乌托邦：即协调社会状况诸多特征的宽泛的想象性规划。这一概念可用于当前科学哲学的辩论中，因为我们注意到，纽拉特意义上的乌托邦类似于南希·卡特赖特概念中的模型和律则机器。基于模型的科学观强调这样一个事实，即科学家从这些抽象实体的反复运作中学习，就如同他们从实验室中实验的重复中学习一样。因此，这种方法表明自然科学与社会科学之间，以及科学与乌托邦文学之间存在一种近似性。通过分析叶夫根尼·扎米亚京所著的反乌托邦小说《我们》可以例证这一点，以表明从乌托邦作品进行推理和辩论，即便这些作品是虚构且悲观的，也会产生评价现象，而这些现象对于构成社会科学中的经验背景至关重要。
