What can We Say about the Future of Social Science?
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-2013
Keywords
Expertise, Moynihan Report, neuroscience, policy science, social science
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499613496724
Abstract
Social science has for the most part lost its ambition to be ‘science’, as shown in the recent change in the American Anthropological Association statement of purpose. The new term is expertise. The change points to something fundamental: social science methods are now largely stable; they have well-developed uses for public and policy audiences; because they are user-friendly they are unlikely to radically change, and new problems arise for them to be applied to. New concepts are developed, but they do not develop into ‘theories’ in a scientific sense. So what is expertise? It is something other than fact generation: it is the result of aggregating and assessing research in an area. Experts engage with one another, so there is a community of expertise. Yet there is also another sense of ‘scientific’: using the tools of natural science and extending them to the social. The current means of doing this for social science is through neuroscience. These methods could serve to filter and validate social science concepts.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Anthropological Theory, v. 13, issue 3, p. 187-200
Scholar Commons Citation
Turner, Stephen, "What can We Say about the Future of Social Science?" (2013). Philosophy Faculty Publications. 296.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/phi_facpub/296
