Peter Emmerson

 1.4 The Development of Social Science, its Bond with Theometaphysics and the Resistance to a Focus on Dynamics and Process

The complex changes of which the civilizing process is a component, feature the rise to power of business-oriented, democratizing groups who were more interested in exploring reality, if only to make money. The Renaissance indicated certain trends in the experience of influential groups: a growth in self-reliance and a decline in fatalism, a rise in humanism and a decrease in religiosity: see John Carroll’s Humanism. Rather than simply accepting God’s prescription and the agents who purveyed it, many more people saw the rewards involved in managing the world as something that could be understood. The natural philosophers (scientists) were part of this change, chaperoned by the exponents of idealism in the form of numerical logic, the pure mathematicians. Even so, this was an important step away from idealism per se, in that it involved a more rigorous dialogue with the relative uncertainty that is reality. The balance of influence had moved slightly away from the guild of theometaphysicians, involving a significant change in emphasis as the theologists and philosophers were distanced from influence in favour of the mathematical idealists. The process was accelerated as applied scientists such as engineers, medics, economists and sociologists emerged bringing people closer to a reality-oriented approach.

The arrival of sociologists in the 19^th century such as Auguste Comte indicates the growth in influence of historical perspectives on what can be known, which were important in the development of scientific models that move us further down the continuum towards greater reality-orientation. In sociology this took the form of a variety of models, the most prominent being those associated with Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Parsons. Nevertheless, from my perspective they all suffer from one major fault: they were all too heavily involved with theometaphysics. It is not until the model developed by Norbert Elias that we see a type of analysis that employs a sufficient level of detachment from the idealism of theometaphysics to allow sociologists the opportunity to become more autonomous and more scientific: the same may well be the case for economists, psychologists and anthropologists. As far as I can see the main force of Elias’ argument is that sociologists need to become process-oriented in order to engage more closely with the dynamism of their subject matter. This is difficult because of the influence of the theometaphysical discourses that still pattern our thinking and activity, with their emphasis on stability. However, if we take Elias’ lead we can make sociological tools more dynamic and fit for purpose; otherwise sociology will remain ostensibly a branch of theometaphysics, or at best, as Popper observes – history. With this in mind Elias takes us some way down the road in developing more scientific sociological concepts that emphasise fluidity such as ‘figuration’, ‘relative detachment’, the ‘established and the outsiders’. There is an emphasis on the verb rather than the noun; there is no attempt to establish absolutes or causes; there is a focus on answering questions, on the problem not the solution. Sadly, too few have caught on so far.