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UNI seminar on modernity takes a critical look at social sciences

By Brian Fitzgerald

"Social scientists are considered society's public intellectuals," said University Professor Liah Greenfeld in a recent class. "They take the responsibility of telling us how to run our lives. They're used as advisors by those whom we elect in our government. They pronounce on issues of importance in the media. They claim and enjoy extraordinary authority -- for no good reason."

	Liah Greenfeld. Photo by Tsar Fedorsky

Quite a radical statement for someone who is a professor of political science and sociology. Indeed, her two-semester Seminar on Modernity this year has produced more than a few lively debates among her students. Expect even more controversy when their research papers are presented on Friday, April 27, and Saturday, April 28, in a conference entitled Looking for Science in Social Science. The event will include responses from Greenfeld, CAS Anthropology Associate Professor Peter Wood, CAS Economics Professor Glenn Loury, also a UNI professor and director of the GRS Institute on Race and Social Division, CAS History Professor Dietrich Orlow, and CAS Physics Professor and Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow, also a UNI professor and BU's Metcalf Professor of Science. (See sidebar on page 9.)

The conference is the kind of meeting of minds that one has come to expect from The University Professors program, a degree program that is geared to exceptional students whose interests transcend the boundaries of orthodox academic departments. The University Professors also provides other academic departments with opportunities for advanced cross-disciplinary studies.

"The seminar provides a critical look at the social sciences," says Kristen Congedo (CAS'03). "I'm a sociology major, and I'm taking it through the CAS honors program. I didn't know what to expect, but it's been interesting. We've had a guest lecturer from each of the social sciences, and discussion does get heated once in a while."

The conference will address such questions as the nature of the scientific project, and the reasons for what Greenfeld says is the failure of social sciences -- sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, political science, and history -- to advance in a manner comparable to life sciences and physical sciences. "The social sciences are supposed to contribute to the understanding of humanity in the same way that life sciences and physical sciences are contributing to the understanding of nature," says Greenfeld, "but they have not produced objective knowledge in their entire period of institutionalized existence."

Those taking part in the seminar are attempting to develop a new discipline with a focus on the distinctive element of human society -- culture -- and capable of accounting for the central issues in modern social experience. They are examining issues such as economic growth, competitiveness and globalization, liberal and authoritarian politics, social stratification, identity and anomie, gender relations, multiculturalism, moral relativism, ethnic conflict and violence, and nationalism.

Greenfeld is the author of Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (1992). The seminar's reading list includes Karl Popper's Objective Knowledge, Ernst Mayr's This Is Biology, Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Eric Kandel's Memory, Joseph Ben-David's Scientific Growth, Emile Durkheim's The Rules of Sociological Method, and Max Weber's Methodology of Social Sciences.

"We're trying to create a revolution in the social sciences," says Sean Wright (UNI'03). "Since social science was created, by people such as Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim, it hasn't changed much. Fads have come and gone, but there has been no real progress. Economists, for example, get their authority because they claim to be doing good science, but many of their predictions have consistently proven to be false."

Greenfeld says that one of the most valuable aspects of the seminar is its cross-disciplinary approach. "We live in an age of specialization today, and courses that really transcend disciplinary boundaries are rare," she says. "I think that it is very important to bring together students from various disciplines to consider common problems that they approach from different perspectives. The seminar brings to students a general picture of social reality that they will not get elsewhere."

Read the sidebar "Conference to look fo science in social science"

27 April 2001
Boston University
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