Download - Applying Popper to Social Realities by Tyrrell Burgess

APPLYING POPPER TOSOCIAL REALITIES:

Practical Solutions toTYRRELL BURGESS* Practical Problems

AMONG THE MOST OBVIOUS of intellectual developments in the last fewdecades has been the expansion of the social sciences. The numberof departments of economics, sociology, social and public administrationhave multipled in institutions of higher education. The number of stu-dents in degree courses in these fields has grown astonishingly. At the sametime governments and other public authorities, international agencies, andeven commercial enterprises, have taken to commissioning quantities ofsocial science research. The results of all this activity have been disappoint-ing. Students have been disillusioned by the courses, governments and otheragencies by the return on expenditure. The social sciences, which seemto ofTer the possibility of solutions to intractable social problems, appearinstead to be remote, academic, and inconsequential.

There are innumerable examples of the social sciences failure. Let us beginwith the desire to improve the outcomes of education. Many children donot learn to read at school and it is widely recognized that individual happi-ness and social peace may require a remedy for this deficiency. Unhappilythe instinct of most social scientists is to fmd out yet more about the chil-dren, their social circumstances, family background, standard of accom-modation, and so on. We thus know innumerable facts with which theinability to read can be said to be associated. There is an industry devotedto this sort of investigation: social class, family size, home circumstances,race, and much else are included in what I may be forgiven for callingmultiple digression analyses-all in order to extend what we know about

Tyrrell Burgess is Reader in the Philosophy of Social Institutions at Northeast LondonPolytechnic (London, England).

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300 Et cetera FALL 1985

children who cannot read. Very little of this is concerned with the questionof how children are to learn to read. The knowledge from these investi-gations may or may not help: if it does, it will be a lucky chance. Theseinvestigations are not specially designed to ofFer practical help.

I would suggest that the way to solve the practical problem of teachingchildren to read, whatever their circumstances, is to try a number of readingmethods until we fmd one that works. The kind of knowledge that is re-quired for this is quite different from the kind of knowledge which is soughtby those who use the problem as an occasion for research. The usual out-come ofthe kind of investigation that I have just described is the assertionby sociologists that improvement in reading is impossible until all the otherassociated factors are mitigated-that we cannot change anything unlesswe change everything.

Here is an example taken from David Donnison, then Director of theCentre for Environmental Studies, introducing the longitudinal study ofchild development undertaken by the National Children's Bureau. (1) Pro-fessor Donnison writes:

Living conditions for families with young children probably vary moregreatly-inequalities are sharper-than for any other type of household. Manychildren live in the newest and leafiest suburbs within easy reach of well paidjobs in expanding industries, new schools and shops, extensive parks, andall the advantages of urban and rural life. But many others live in overcrowdedquarters where people are constantly on the move, social organisation is weak,unemployment is rife, schools are old and under-staffed, and there is no openspace or legitimate playground.

Such patterns are the outcome of a long history of economic and socialdevelopment, reinforced or modified by the policies followed by central andlocal authorities for family allowances, employment, housing, transport, andland uses. Too often they are re-emphasised rather than corrected by thedeployment of educational resources. There is no time to be lost in settingabout the task of changing them.

Professor Donnison concludes:How much do children learn? How far behind the others do the weaker

performers fall? . . . What can we do to improve the situation?The patterns glimpsed in the National Child Development Study are so

deeply embedded in this country's economic and social structure that theycannot be greatly changed by anything short of equally far-reaching changesin that structure.

Professor Donnison is explicit that the performance ofthe weaker learnerscannot be greatly changed unless we change the country's economic andsocial structure. Professor Donnison is a well-meaning man, but his mistakenview of social science leads him to write absurdities and greatly demoralizesthose who might help children to learn.

APPLYING POPPER TO SOCIAL REALITIES 30t

To take a further example, I have been present at a meeting to discussthe improvement in the attractiveness of a school to local parents, to whichthe education officer's contribution was, "The school is unattractive becausethe pupils are mostly black and the buildings are old, and we cannot doanything about either of these." The knowledge here had all the fmalityof a solution when it should have been part of the formulation of a realproblem for which a solution was to be sought. Explanation has becomea substitute for action.

Another set of misunderstandings which bedevil the contribution of thesocial sciences is that which surroimds quantitative work. A common mistakeis to confuse statistical significance with significance. A British exampleof this which has had far-reaching consequences is the formula for dis-tributing central government support to local authorities. Part of this hasbeen called a "needs" element, arrived at by running a multiple regressionanalysis on a number of factors held to represent need and weighting thedistribution according to the relative statistical significance of the factors.The object of this is to produce a satisfactory distribution based upon "ob-jective" criteria. Yet the consequence is to produce a distribution whichvaries unacceptably from year to year (calling for additional modifying for-mulae) and which bears little relation to the actual needs of any individuallocal authority. (2)

Finally, yet another ground for confusion derives from the uneasinesswith which the social sciences accommodate philosophical questions, inparticular questions of value. The place of value judgments is a matterfor debate in both sociology and economics. It takes the form, in economics,of a discussion about positive and normative statements. As Harry Johnsonput it, positive economics is concerned with how the economy works andnonnative with how it should be made to work to maximize social welfare. (3)In his widely used undergraduate textbook, Lipsey (4) argues that argumentsabout positive statements can be settled by an appeal to the facts whereasnormative statements depend upon value judgments and disagreementsabout them cannot be settled in this way. By way of example he suggeststhat the questions "What government policies will reduce unemployment?"and "What policies will prevent inflation?" are positive ones; whereas thequestion "Ought we to be more concerned about employment than aboutinflation?" is a normative one. Lipsey immediately recognizes that thedistinction may break down, and in a half-page footnote he suggests hownormative statements may depend upon or lead to positive ones-for exam-ple, "Unemployment is worse than inflation because the (measurable) ef-fects of unemployment on human beings are judged by the majority ofadult citizens to be . . . more serious than the (measurable) effects of infla-tion." This has now become such a mixture of positive and normativestatements as to be merely confusing.

There can be many other examples of ways in which the developing social


sciences bewilder and mislead professionals and public alike. I do not believe,however, that this is inevitable. The bewilderment stems from mistakentheory and practice, and both can be corrected.

IIThe best hope of corrertion lies through developing the work of Karl Popper.His epistemology, developed initially in relation to the physical sciences, (5)is equally promising in the social sciences. (6) In particular his advocacyof "piecemeal social engineering," his plea to "minimize misery," and hisunderstanding of the importance of institutions together offer a basis forthe harnessing of social science for social improvement. Unfortunately theseinsights have been largely neglected. This is partly because his ideas arescattered throughout what is now a very large volume of work.

Popper's most convenient short account of his view of the social sciencesis set out in a relatively recent symposium, (7) summarized as an appendixto the present paper (Popper's "twenty-seven theses" on the logic of thesocial sciences).

Popper's main thesis is one which he summarizes elsewhere in the schemaPi^TT->EE->P2: scientific discussions start with a problem (Pi) towhich we offer a tentative solution, or theory (TT); this theory is thencriticized to eliminate error (EE); the theory and its critical revision leadto new problems (P2). It seems to me a more fruitful explanation thanothers of how knowledge advances, and in particular it avoids the problemof the logical impossibility of induction. It is important to realize, however,that it is a logical explanation, not a psychological one. It does not implya belief that that is what all individual scientists consciously do. Indeedit accommodates the immense variety of practices of individual scientists,including the random, accidental, and creative insights which are indispens-able to human progress. Such strokes of genius can be readily dealt withand made more fruitful if they are regarded as solutions to problems (TT).

There is indeed an implied lesson to be learned from Popper's schema,though so far as I know he himself has not made this explicit. It is thatknowledge will be more quickly advanced if scientists are aware of the logicof the process and if their practice is in tune with it. In particular it suggeststhat as much care must be taken in formulating problems as in searchingfor solutions, and that solutions must be capable of being tested. All threesteps require creative insight.

I believe that it is in the first step-the initial formulation of problems-that the social sciences are at their weakest, and that this weakness is respon-sible for the social sciences' continuing ineffectiveness. Although Popper'stwenty-seven theses represent the strongest statement about what the socialsciences could be, the theses themselves contain echoes of this weaknesswhich diminish the force of Popper's concluding suggestion for the theses'

APPLYING POPPER TO SOCIAL REALITIES 303

further development (see Popper's "suggestion" at the end of the appendixto the present paper).

From the fourth thesis it is clear that in discussing the social sciencesPopper is concerned with knowledge and with the theory of knowledge.He argues that so far as one can say that knowledge starts from something,one can say that it starts, not from observations, perceptions, or the collec-tion of data or facts, but from problems. It starts from the tension betweenknowledge and ignorance and thus meets the demand built up in the firstthree theses: no problems without knowledge; no knowledge without prob-lems; no problems without ignorance. Each problem arises from the dis-covery that something is not in order with our supposed knowledge: thatthere is an apparent contradiciton between our supposed knowledge andthe supposed facts. The problems from which knowledge starts are thosewhich arise when what we think we know does not fit with what we under-ftand to be the facts.

This is made explicit in the fifth thesis, in which Popper asserts thatin the social sciences, as in all sciences, success, interest, and fruitfulnessdepend on the significance of the problems and the honesty and simpli-city with which we tackle them. In this, he continues, we are not confinedto theoretical problems: "Serious practical problems, such as the problemsof poverty, of illiteracy, of political suppression, or of uncertain legal rightswere important starting points for research in the social sciences."

This thesis thus allows that the problems of social science may be practicalones: it cites some practical problems that are indeed "serious." Yet in thisformulation, these serious practical problems serve simply as the startingpoint for research and thus presumably to the extension of knowledge. AsPopper says, they "led to speculation, to theorizing, and thus to theoreticalproblems." Practical problems are viewed, in other words, as a spur to thesearch for truth rather than to practical improvement.

inI find this unsatisfactory. This is partly because serious practical prob-

lems demand better of us, and partly because the formulation glosses overa crucial problem for the social sciences, that is the relationship betweenknowledge and pratice. I do not think that Popper himself has ever expli-citly worked out quite what this relationship should be. He is not, of course,uninterested in practical matters. On the contrary, his plea to minimizemisery is as passionate as "ecrase rinfame"-and his concept of piecemealsocial engineering is the world's best hope of achieving it. But he himselfhas confessed that he has not followed this through.

In the hands of most social scientists, however, the flaw in Popper's fifththesis becomes extremely damaging. It leads to the relegation of seriousproblems to the status of mere occasions for research. It relieves the researchitself from the discipline of relevance. It encourages the endless elabora-


tion of detail and the "replication" of research findings. It also leaas to"Utopian solutions" of the worst kind, like the one suggested by DavidDonnison quoted earlier.

I fear that an unintended consequence of the fifth thesis will be tostrengthen these tendencies in the social sciences. What we need insteadis a way of seeking social knowledge explicitly as part of a solution to socialproblems. The knowledge that we seek in these circumstances will be quitedifferent from that which is sought in pure research.

This distinction is obscured in the fifth thesis. And it is not clear whatis the status of the problems which are described as practical. It is surelynot the same as that of the problems mentioned in the fourth thesis-which arise from an apparent contradiction between our supposedknowledge and the supposed facts. The problem of poverty is not a prob-lem of knowledge or a problem of fact. Of course, we need to know howmuch poverty there is-and there may be more or less than we think. Weno doubt need to know the incidence of poverty and the nature of its con-sequences. But this is not what we mean by the problem of poverty. Povertyitself is not a problem. It becomes a problem only if we accept or decidethat something must be done about it: the problem of how to get frommore poverty to less.

(This is somewhat clarified in the fourteenth thesis. Here Popper dis-tinguishes between the question of the truth of an assertion-of its relevance,interest, and significance to the problems of knowledge which we investi-gate-and the question of an assertion's relevance, interest, and significancefor extra-scientific problems. Examples of these latter problems are thoseof human welfare or national defense, of an aggressive nationalist policy,industrial expansion, or the acquisition of personal wealth. Popper saysthat such extra-scientific interests cannot be eliminated or prevented fromaffecting the course of scientific research-in the natural as in the socialsciences. But he believes that it is possible, important, and peculiar to scienceto differentiate between these interests "which do not belong to the searchfor truth" and the "purely scientific interest in the truth." The problemof poverty is of extra-scientific interest. Popper himself gives the problemof human welfare as an example of such an interest, so I think we maybe justified in assuming that Popper would regard the problem of povertyin the same light-when we want to do something about it and it becomesan issue of public policy [just like Popper's other examples of nationaldefense and industrial expansion].)

IVIn the light of this discussion, I propose an addition to Popper's twenty-seven theses which will help to clarify the relationship between questionsof truth and issues of public policy. My suggestion emphasizes the impor-tance of care in the formulation of problems and of restraint in proposed


solutions. My addition to Popper's theses might perhaps be numbered 14aand it would go something like this:14a. There are different kinds of problems which demand different kinds

of solutions and different kinds of tests. One can distinguish, for exam-ple, scientific, engineering, formal and philosophical problems. Thelogic of the process (Popper's Pi->TS->EE-*P2 spelled out in thesixth thesis) remains the same whatever the kind of problem.

Let me elaborate. In Popper's formulation of the logic of discovery heuses, interchangeably and often all together, a number of words for thesecond term of his schema (above): theory, solution, hypothesis, conjec-ture. I presume that this practice derives from his impatience with discus-sions of meaning which he regards as trivial. He does not wish under-standing to be limited by definitions. What is more, a part of what he isarguing is that theories are solutions to problems, and solutions, even topractical problems, are theories. But I find that it is useful to carry thesedifferent ideas into the first term of the schema and distinguish differentkinds of problems.

The first consists of problems of what is the case, and why: we may callthese scientific problems. Their nature is well illustrated in the twenty-seven theses. Problems arise when facts contradict our expectations. Tenta-tive theories enlarge our understanding of what is the case. As Popper says,this applies in the social sciences as in all sciences.

The problems which I call engineering problems are different. They arisenot from difficulties about what is the case, but from the need to get fromone state of affairs to another-to use the illustrations of one engineer, toget from one side of a river to another, from bread to toast. Examples from"social engineering" include the need (desire, policy) to change people'scircumstances from poverty to a modest competence or to make illiteratechildren literate. As I said earlier, the "problem of poverty" arises whenwe propose to do something about it.

Formal problems are different again: they arise in closed systems, likemathematics or chess, and do not necessarily relate to reality at all.

The fourth group of problems, which I have called philosophical, arenot so clearly described as the other three. One is tempted to assert thatthey include all these problems which cannot be elsewhere classified, andthese include problems of method, policy, value, ethics which may ariseout of the other problems which we tackle or, in their turn, give rise tothem. This present discussion of different kinds of problems is itself anattempted solution to a problem in the philosophy of social science.

The examples given at the beginning of this paper, of confusion andstultification in the social sciences, arise from a failure to be clear aboutthe kind of problems being tackled, in particular a confusion of scientificand engineering problems. It is a confusion of two traditions of learning.


which I have elsewhere characterized as the "autonomous" and the "ser-vice" traditions. (8)Those who work in the autonomous tradition speak ofthe "preservation," "extension," and "dissemination" of knowledge, often"for its own sake." They speak of pursuing the truth wherever it may lead,regardless of the consequences. In its extreme version, as advanced for exam-ple by George Steiner, (9) it would place the pursuit of truth above theexistence of the human race. The service tradition starts from a differentplace. Its activity is not self-justifying but explained and defended in termsoutside the pursuit of knowledge, usually in terms of a change that mightbe accomplished in an individual or in society. Both these traditions areof enormous value, and both ought to be protected. It is of paramountimportance, too, that they be distinguished, and that we should always beclear, in any particular enquiry, which of them forms the basis for our work.Teaching children to read is not a matter of pursuing the truth aboutchildren, it is a matter of trying a number of reading methods. It is anengineering, not a scientific problem.

We can similarly understand the nature of the difficulty about statisticalsignificance by recognizing that it is a matter of imagining that the solu-tion to a formal problem is apt for a practical problem. The Greeks illu-strated the confusion very well with their famous problem of Achilles andthe tortoise. Achilles ran twice as fast as the tortoise, so the tortoise hada mile start; when Achilles had covered the mile, the tortoise had gone halfa mile; when Achilles had done that half mile, the tortoise had done a quarterof a mile. . ., and so on, Achilles never passed the tortoise. There is nothingwrong with the mathematics; it just has nothing to do with reality. A similarmisunderstanding lies at the heart of much of the quantitative work in thesocial sciences.

Similarly, in the economic example given earlier, the distinction betweenpositive and normative statements in the social sciences is unhelpful. Whatwe have instead are different kinds of problems. There are scientific prob-lems like "What is the incidence of unemployment and how does it arise?"and there are problems of social engineering like "How do we get frommore imemployment to less?" There is nothing "normative" about the secondquestion: it is a matter of choosing a solution and testing whether or notit is effective, in other words by an appeal to the facts. Similarly the ques-tion of whether unemployment is worse than inflation is clarified by identi-fying what problem (of social engineering) one is concerned to solve. Ifour problem is to get from more human misery to less, we should test (byreference to the facts) which of a number of policies (including reducingunemployment or curbing inflation) are most apt. The determination toreduce human misery itself may rest upon a value judgment. It may bethat a value judgment determines which of our infinity of possible prob-lems we determine to tackle. But in this respect problems of (social) engineer-ing are no different from problems of (social) science. What is more, our


determination may not depend upon a value judgment at all but upon thetestable theory that a reduction in human misery will lead to the Govern-ment's re-election.

It is in this context-in the recognition that we have different kinds ofproblems-that Popper's statements about values are of such importance.Whether our problems are those of science or of engineering we must dis-tinguish between scientific and extra-scientific values. In this there is nodistinction between "what is" and "what is to be done." The question ofwhether we ought to do this or that remains for scientists as well as forengineers. Both are under an equal obligation to be clear about such valuequestions and about their answers to them. But in each case it is possibleto bring one's values into the realm of rational discussion by recasting themin the form of problems which are amenable to testable solutions. It is inthis way that social science and social engineering can be advanced.

This brings us to Popper's "suggestion" that the fundamental problemsof a purely theoretical social science are the situational logic of and theoryof institutions and traditions. The task of this theoretical social science,as Popper puts it elsewhere, (10) is "to try to anticipate the unintendedconsequences of our actions."

The task of social engineering is different. It is to devise solutions tosocial problems and to test these solutions. Indeed it may have to reformu-late social problems so that solutions are possible. And the solutions willalways be institutions which are testable for their aptness and success.

The relationship between the two is like that between physical scienceand engineering. Engineering problems may be solved with or withoutthe aid of theory. The engineer cannot fly in the face of the physical facts,though he may propose ways of overcoming them. A developed social sciencemay not only improve understanding but also give grounds for a socialengineering that in tackling our urgent problems may be fruitful, apt, andfree from harm.

NOTES AND REFERENCESL Ronald Davie, Neville Butler, and Harvey Goldstein, Prom Birth to Seven, a report

of the National Child Development Study (Longman in association with the Na-tional Children's Bureau, 1972).

2. See Tyrrell Burgess and Tony Travers, Ten Billion Pounds: Whitehall's Takeover of theTown Halls (Grant Mclntyre, 1980).

3. Harry Johnson, The Economic Approach to Social Questions, an inaugural lecturedelivered October 12, 1967 at the London School of Economics (Weiderfeld andNicolson, 1968).

4. Richard G. Lipsey, Positive Economics, founh edition (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975).5. See especially K.R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Hutchinson, 1959).6. See especially K.R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, fifth edition (Routledge

and Kegan Paul, 1966).


7. K.R. Popper, "The Logic of the Social Sciences," in Theodor W. Adorno et al,The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, Glyn Adey and David Frisby, eds.(Heinemann, 1976).

8. Tyrrell Burgess, Education After School (Gollancz and Penguin, 1977).9. George Steiner, "Has Truth a Future?," The Listener, January 12, 1978.

10. K.R. Popper, "Reason or Revolution," in Adorno, op.cit.

AppendixPopper's "The Logic of the Social Sciences"

The "twenty seven theses" in which Popper sets out the logic ofthe socialsciences can be baldly summarized as follows (thesis numbers in brackets).

We know a great deal, yet our ignorance is boundless: with each problemwe solve we discover new problems and undermine previous certainties [1,2].The logic of knowledge must accommodate this tension between knowledgeand ignorance [3]. Knowledge starts from problems, and our achievementin advancing knowledge is proportionate to the significance ofthe problemswe tackle [4,5].

The main thesis is that the method of social science consists in trying ten-tative solutions to problems: these solutions are proposed and criticized, andcriticism consists of attempts at refutation. If the solution is refuted wetry again; if it survives we accept it temporarily, as worthy of being criti-cized. This is a consciously critical development of the process of "trialand error." The objectivity of science lies in the objectivity of criticalmethod. [6]

The tension between knowledge and ignorance leads to problems andtentative solutions, a thesis which contrasts strongly with the "misguidednaturalism" of induction [7]. The recent preeminence of anthropology, analleged descriptive, objective science, over theoretical sociology is a vic-tory for misguided naturalism. Even though a "subject" is simply an arti-ficially demarcated conglomerate of problems and solutions, the continuingvictory of anthropology, of misguided naturalism, woiild be a disaster. Thereis no such thing as a purely observational science: there are only sciencesin which we theorize [8-10,21].

The objectivity of a science does not depend on the objectivity of thescientist, but upon a critical tradition: not on individuals but on the socialresults of mutual criticism. Objectivity is to be expressed in terms of socialideas, like competition between individuals and "schools," tradition (espe-cially the critical tradition), social institutions like publishers, and the powerofthe state in tolerating debate [11-13].

In critical discussion we can distinguish the question ofthe truth of anassertion, its relevance, interest, and significance to problems of interest;and the question of its relevance, interest, and significance for various extra-scientific problems [14].


The most important function of purely deductive logic is that of an in-strument of criticism. Deductive logic is the theory of the transmissionof truth from the premises to the conclusion, and it is also the theory ofthe retransmission of falsity from the conclusion to at least one of thepremises. It is the theory of rational criticism, and deductive systems-that is, what we work with in the sciences. The concept of truth is in-dispensable for this approach [15-20].

Sociology is autonomous in that it can and must make itself indepen-dent of psychology (which itself is a socal science) and in that we cannotreduce the sociology of understanding to psychology [22-24].

There is a purely objective method in the social sciences, the methodof objective understanding or situational logic. The explanations of situa-tional logic are rational, theoretical constructions and, in their over-simplification, are false-but with considerable truth content. Situationallogic assumed a physical world in which we act, including a social worldand social institutions [25-27].

These theses lead to a "suggestion" for the social sciences. This is:We may, perhaps, accept provisionally, as the fundamental problems of a

purely theoretical sociology, the general situational logic of and the theory ofinstitutions and traditions. This would include such problems as the following:1. Institutions do not act; rather, only individuals act, in or for or through

institutions. The general situations logic of these actions will be the theoryof the quasi-actions of institutions.

2. We might construct a theory of intended or unintended institutional con-sequences of purposive action. This could also lead to a theory ofthe crea-tion and development of institutions.

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