Peter Emmerson

5.4 Let’s get up closer: an exploration of conceptual proximity as perceptual interdependence – a better fit?

5.4.1 What sociologists can do for natural scientists.

 In his attempt to dynamicize the raw material of sociology by reducing what I see as the the level of influence of the old truth-finders and paving the way for the development of new more reality congruent concepts, Elias breathes life into the arid, petrified analysis typical of notions such as ‘class‘. In testing his replacement (‘the established and the outsiders‘) by studying people in a district of Leicester, he demonstrated how this type of approach can provide new insight into the complex dynamics of the conflicts experienced by different groups of residents, who for all intents and purposes were of the same social class. The research revealed the interdependencies of an intricate pattern of more realistic variables such as violence, length of residence, levels of social connectivity, stigmatization.

It seems to me that one explanation for this improvement is that in emphasizing the process approach we remove damaging amounts of idealism and at the same time, decrease the perceptual distance between social scientists and the problems they study. I want to suggest that this also has the benefit of clarifying what is observed, rather as a good quality lens allows microscopes to offer up more detail. The long process of the development of knowledge with all its ups and downs, advances and reversals, formations and destructions; has produced in science, a formal, less egocentric, less ideal method of analysis, that demands a high level of relative detachment and examines the world and human experience in terms of interdependencies.

This is particularly true of the natural sciences and their associated disciplines where the level of idealism is comparatively low anyway: natural scientists find restraining the level of over-indulgence in human values easier, as their models and observations are more reality congruent right from the start. Another way of putting this is to argue that the success of science is a function of relatively close conceptual proximity with the problem being addressed because it is low in idealism. Interrelatedly, there is a sufficiently high level of perceptual interdependence between models and the reality they attempt to mimic and explain. However, as scientists get closer to studying human beings the problems of over-involvement rise (increased interference of values): thus human biology has much more difficulty in having its findings validated than botany, evidenced by the angry battle between the evolutionists and the creationist theometaphysicians. The other area of difficulty with over-involvement mentioned earlier is pure science: see Hawking & Mlodinow and 3.2/3.3 above.

Probably the most influential model of science is still that of Karl Popper. Popper’s view is founded on the efficacy of rationality, whether verbal or mathematical, as the tool to assist the trial and error analysis of what we know. Social science has been much less successful than natural science for all the reasons so meticulously documented in Popper’s Poverty of Historicism. Nonetheless, Professor Popper does not consider Elias’ critique of historicism. Consequently, he does not see that the problem may well be a function of lack of conceptual development related to the excessive influence of theometaphysics. My point is that too high a level of theometaphysics in sociological concepts produces poor conceptual fit between sociological models and the material being studied which distances sociologists (and social scientists generally for that matter) from the subject matter to which they are intending to understand: they suffer from low perceptual interdependence in relation to their low conceptual proximity. It is not surprising therefore that Popper arrives at such a conclusion as regards historicism, as his model contains too much theometaphysics in analyzing fluid historical material using tools designed by ancient Greeks to explain stability!

Whilst natural scientists employ mathematics to guide their analysis as Popper says, the key feature of their approach, as far as I’m concerned, is the use of ‘reality congruent’ models, not the maths that sanctions it. From my point of view, these models use concepts that are low in idealism, and are more interdependent with the reality being studied, allowing a more precise view: without wanting to labour the issue to much, natural scientific concepts allow the observer to get much closer to reality because it is less mediated by idealism or values. In theoretical physics there are two models that try and explain the physical world: wave theory and particle theory. Both of these theories are useful but neither explains everything. Consequently, there has been a protracted struggle to rationalize the dilemma using a series of ingenious mathematical analyses, the latest of which is M-theory. Could however the problem be nearer home? Is it possible that the difficulty lies in the inability of physicists to find the conceptual means of getting close enough to their prey because they are too bound-up in knowledge conventions such as dichotomies (positive and negative being a very influential example) defined by philosophers long ago? – so much for philosophy being ‘dead’ Messrs Hawking & Mlodinow! The use of theometaphysical concepts such as dichotomy introduces a limit to the degree of engagement scientists can have with the problem under scrutiny, leaving them potentially too low in perceptual interdependency to gain a more adequate understanding.

The difficulty for physicists studying the sub-atomic universe is extreme. Could it be that at such enormous perceptual distances the conceptual apparatus available at present is never going to be viable? It occurs to me that concepts developed to understand planets such as wave or particle theory have insufficient proximity, and perceptual interdependence with the atomic world to allow the level of correspondence necessary for better explanation. By comparison, the experience of light is less distant in that we can see directly its effects. Correspondingly, we have higher levels conceptual proximity and perceptual interdependency: the adjectives used at present to measure it, such as speed or velocity seem useful in coming up with answers (not truths by the way) to important problems and have contributed to the development of incredible models such as those of Newton and Einstein. However, to get to an understanding of the noun – ‘what is light?’ – we must journey to a far more distant horizon which may need a totally different conceptual framework to bridge the gap. Unless we take the damaging effects of idealism more seriously we may never find out: one wonders whether dichotomic concepts such as ‘matter’ and ‘anti-matter’ which encourage us to ignore the detail that really exists are really helpful. Till then we stumble around re-jigging our models using wave and particle to understand alien places, nobly assisted by our committed figurations of truth-finders the mathematicians and philosophers.

Of course we must be prepared to accept that the development of the conceptual technology to provide good access to such distant areas of understanding could well be beyond the capacity of our remarkable brains. Only work will tell. It is my argument that we need to be high in relative detachment, high in conceptual proximity, high in perceptual interdependence if we are to stand a chance. From my perspective this implies a state of mind that is low in idealism, as distant as possible from the thoughts of Homo clausus and the theometaphysicians.