How the Social Sciences Think about the World's Social

Interpreting the historical form of any social human practices as coinciding with their nature might be understandable from the practical point of view of a practitioner, who is too much caught by the practical necessities of what he is doing, to reflect upon such ontological issues. However, if scientific thinking about the social is identified with the way of thinking in the social sciences, it indicates an irritating ignorance of the very social sciences about their particular format of thinking. It does this the more, if one not only remembers that thinking about the social had historical predecessors theorizing about the social, among which a number of essentials, characterizing the particular nature of social sciences, were unknown, such as the plurality of social sciences.[7]

In the first place and on the first glance one could indeed notice that the historical predecessors of scientific thinking about the social, thinking divided in scientific disciplines did not exist and only occurred with the emergence of the social sciences.

One could, secondly, also easily notice that thinking about any social phenomenon was thinking about this phenomenon and that this thinking was not confined to any spatially constructed unit of analysis, mostly nation states[8], as this is the case in the way, social sciences think about any social phenomenon. None of the classical theoreticians such as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Smith or Hobbes constructed theories about an issue spatially confined to a particular country, such as confining a critique of rationalism to a critique about theorizing about rationalism in Germany, to mention only the example of Kant's work. And, needless to say, such theories contained reflections about modifications to the topic they reflected on, may they be historical, local or any conceptual diversities of the issue they discussed—just as Marx and Smith did it while working on theories about capitalism, distinguishing phenomena of capitalism in England, Germany and in India, to only mention the example of variations—not of theories about capitalism, but of capitalism.

Apart from such obvious historical differences between social thought in the classic philosophies and the social sciences, thinking about the social and, as this book does, discussing how the social sciences last but not least currently reflect on the—global—social, face a number of paradoxes, which could at least prompt the question of why theorizing in the social science creates such odd phenomena, odd phenomena that should raise the attention of social thought and motivate them to reflect on how social thought under the—global—regime of the social sciences works.

This book discusses, why all these oddities of social science theorizing encountering a world's social and why the dubious impact all the critical social science knowledge has are not a 200 years lasting accident, but the inevitable result of the particular way social sciences theorize about the social, a necessity of the particular nature of how social sciences think about the world.

It discusses this in five chapters:

A. The world's social in social science thinking

B. Categorical essentials of disciplinary thinking

C. The social science approach to scientific thinking—advancements of teleological theorizing

D. The discourse about and the progress of social science knowledge

E. Going beyond the social sciences

Chapter A

The world's social in

social science thinking

Social sciences detect the world's social

beyond the national biotopes…

Social sciences are seriously challenged if they are requested to think beyond their national biotopes, especially in those countries from where they originate. One hundred and fifty years of colonizing the world, exploiting the world to build the basis for their economic and political global reign over the world, and another half century after the post-colonial US model of imperialism, transforming the former colonial part of the world into players on the global battlefield, making the whole world into a world of nation states, all substantially constructed along the US nation state rationale, a world of nation states divided in—competing—imperial powers and rather more formal nation states, all bound under the supervision of the US empire to serve and to make their global power dependent on the benefit they gain from the growth of global capital they serve, it took social sciences thinking in the imperial countries another 50 years to realize that there is a world outside of their nation states, a world they feel they should no longer ignore. In particular, the social sciences in the imperial nation states call for an internationalization of social sciences—and to inter—nationalize (sic) theorizing about the world's social, performed by comparing nationally constructed social thought.

Strictly speaking, as said before, one should say that it was not the social sciences that detected that there was a world beyond the uniqueness of their nationally constructed societies. It was the national science policies in the imperial nation states, later followed by the dependent world that forced the social sciences to shift their thinking from their nationally confined unit of analysis towards other nationally constructed societies, at least to those, science policies detected and detect any political or economic interests in. In fact, the selection of the nation state socials attracting more attention by social sciences are those, in which the imperial world has any economic or political interest, may this be because they are under the exclusive grip of another competing imperial power. The newly detected interest of the Europeans in Latin America questioning the scientific monopoly of the US, or the interest of Japan in South East Asia, promoted by accordingly directive funding programs, may serve as examples.

And even this is not the full truth. Really strictly speaking, it was not even the science policies in the imperial world that detected the world beyond their territories as a topic for science. It was the globally acting capital which throughout its history found and finds the confined territories of their nation states as confining their business and pulled down any local barriers making the world into a means for the growth of capital. And, since the global capital discovered with the emergence of the new technologies science as a whole as a crucial means for their competitiveness, science as a whole, including the social sciences, raised the interests of the economy and, as a consequence, the interests of the nation state, getting science under their political control for these newly defined objectives of science policies. Science policies detected the new interests of capital in science and served these new needs, awakened science, at least the nation state driven parts, from its ivory tower and transformed nationally directed sciences into a global knowledge market, a global economic resource, once global capital detected science as a major means for their global business. It is since then that the global capital uses the world's knowledge as an economic resource, reorganized by policy reforms to serve the rationales of the global political and economic players.

To do this, national science policies transformed their sciences towards one of the major politically supervised economic resources of nation states, offered to the global capital and forced their national sciences to compete on an international knowledge market about the attractiveness of the national science markets, sociologists emphatically like to call "national science communities". Not only have the institutional settings of sciences therefore been adjusted to the needs of the world's business demands, forcing knowledge to obey the rules of a global commodity; the whole set of categories, in which in particular social sciences think about the social have accommodated themselves to think in categories, which reflect the transformation of the whole former world of science and education, until then insisting on their independence from politics and business, into an subsection of the national economic infrastructure.[9]

What all the newly emerging debates promoting the globalization, the internationalization or the cosmopolitanisation of social sciences do not want to know, is the reason why social sciences should shift social thought towards a global social, all implying the assumption that they are not global. Arguing that it is the current globalization of the world's social, that requires the globalization of the social sciences, presents the false ideas of the social sciences, that they so far were not global and became global due the new global nature of the global reality, which is just as false.

They are false, firstly, because they argue that the world's social reality was not a global social in the colonial world period and secondly, that the social sciences so far have not been global. And these two false statements about globalizing social sciences are already telling about the nature of social sciences: Firstly, monopolizing social sciences in the imperial world and excluding the colonized world, the world without nation states, from social science thinking in the classical social science disciplines was the very way of global social science theorizing. And, secondly, because the colonized socials were no nation state social, their social was, indeed, no topic for those social sciences, which reflect about the national biotopes, the classical social science disciplines, and which were reserved for thinking about nation state socials. Therefore, within the very nomenclature of the social sciences, the colonized world, the world without nation states, was a case for Anthropology and thus, in this very way, they were a very topic of the social sciences.[10]

The fact, that the de-colonized countries, once they gained the status of a nation state, concluded from the monopoly the imperial world held on classical social sciences disciplines, that it was an opposition to the ways the social sciences reflected on the de-colonized social to implement social sciences in their countries, was and is one of the tragic errors of an opposition, that wants to be part of what it opposes. A view on the unbroken reign of the racist theories from the imperial world about the new decolonized nation state socials, could signal this wrong conclusion as this tragic error.

The fact that the social sciences reflect in nationally constructed entities across the globe about the national socials, reserving a particular disciplines for the non-nation state social in the colonies, is and was their very way of a very inter-national reflexivity. And, indeed, the current practices which have shifted social science theorizing towards the rightly called—inter-nationalization of social sciences—, not abolishing or at least questioning the national outlook, but extending these very national views on the world's social towards other nationally constructed socials, confirm that the least they were and are interested in, is to think about the world's social, if at all, other than through an assemblage of nationally constructed theories. Social science thought continues thinking in secluded nation state social units and if they are requested to think beyond these social biotopes, they compile and compare these biotope-like, nationally constructed theories.

As if the world constructed from nation states was not a way to construct the world, a world's social consisting of a multiplicity of nation state socials and of the rationales of nation states, which all consider the territories, the people and the natural resources in these territories as means to combat other nation states of the very same kind over using each other across the world for their economic growth and their political power over each other, all nation states, striving to subordinate others of the same kind across the world under their political and economic command, social science thinking considers the individual national socials as secluded biotopes, exclude the "outside" that mainly crafts the "inside" across the world, just as if reflecting about any nation state social would allow one to understand this secluded social, not to mention, that the agglomeration of nationally constructed social thoughts was the same as theorizing about the global social.

Social science thinking not coincidentally once named "Staatswissenschaft", presupposes an image of the world of nation states, in which their humans inhabit secluded islands that are not affected by what is going on beyond them. Thinking about the "beyond" is no topic for social sciences; they are the subject of a sub-department of political science, reflecting—if at all—on foreign affair policies and of Anthropology, today more and more replaced by "intercultural studies", acknowledging after more than 50 years of a de-colonized world other nation state socials as socials generalizing racist reflections about "others", so far reserved for the non-nation state socials, now to the whole world's nation state socials.

Social sciences seemingly derive from the fact that caring and thinking about other nation states is the business of a selected and limited number of humans, the political and economic elites, that humans' life within these biotopes is not mainly made by inter-national relations of nation states, that is their battles about political and economic power, an illusion created by the sovereignty of nation states over their people and territories, an illusion that can hardly occur in nation states where this sovereignty is only a formal sovereignty. Inhabitants of nation states in those parts of the world, in developing countries, that served and serve through the exploitation of the products of their work and with their natural resources for the growth of wealth in the imperial countries, do not only know that nation states are no secluded islands and can easily experience that their life is mainly defined by those who exploit their work and their resources. And they do not only not share the illusion that the sovereignty of nation states over their people makes people's life unaffected from other nation states. They also do not see the need for globalizing social thought, as the social sciences in the imperial countries, the beneficiaries of the world of nation states do since they detected that there is a world of nation states beyond their own nation state in which they detect their political and economic interest, they since then call an era of "globalization", just as if the whole world was a world only most recently ruled by the imperial nation states.

As if the history of nation states, more precisely the foundation of the imperial nation states, namely those in Europe, and their economic wealth, their genuine economic accumulation of capital, was not the result of expropriating the former colonized world, a wealth they use until today to dictate the terms of business and power in a post-colonial world, social science thinking discovers with the help of a hint from their political and economic elites, that there is a world beyond the biotopes of the imperial nation states, finding a world of nation states that was completed by the former colonized part of the world.

However, from the point of view of social sciences and their routine work, especially those in the imperial world, there was and, looking at how they detect the world beyond the imperial countries social, there is no need to pay much attention to the world other than theorizing about the individual nation state socials. Inter-national social science is still an exceptional adventure and the majority of the social science armies across the world's nation states still confine theorizing to the secluded nation socials, mainly those in the imperial world.

Just like the inhabitants of the national social entities do not need to know any much about the world beyond their national social to get on with their life as nation state citizens, with the exception of a few specialists dealing with the other biotopes, a few business people and politicians, the professional thinkers of these societies are not seriously interested or engaged in thinking about the social beyond their national social islands—not to mention if and how the global interaction of nation states craft the social life within them. Next to the debate about the need to internationalize social science theorizing the majority of social sciences can carry on with the illusion on which their theorizing is constructed, that is that any individually national social is what social science theorize about convinced to thus understand the nationally confined social.

Ignorance, exoticism and demonization are not bad attitudes of social scientists, namely "Western" social scientists, but apparently an epistemological presupposition of social science thinking, which considers the secluded nation state social as their topic of reflections and, if at all, the outside world as the complementary topic social sciences in other national biotopes they need to care about, to arrive at inter-national social sciences as the assemblage of nationally constructed knowledge bodies.

As a result, after 200 years of social science theorizing about the world's social and the more recent shift towards globalizing social sciences, social thought under the regime of social sciences still consists of thinking about secluded island of national socials, pre-supposing that the social within these national social islands could be understood by confining social thought to reflecting on nation state socials. Social sciences have more or less no clue about any social beyond the borders of their nation states, not to mention any insights about how the global battles about political and economic power craft the entire social life within all those seemingly secluded social entities as a means for these very battles. Accusing them that they are ignorant about other state social is not only downplaying that social science thinking does not care about socials beyond any nation states, it misunderstands that thinking about national social is the natural unit of analysis in which social sciences think, thanks to their illusion about nation state socials as a secluded entity, in which their national social could be understood.

Despite of the fact that the very whole post world war II world shares essentially the same society system, the capitalist economy and the—US—concept of nation states all using their individual state social for their global business and policy affairs, global social thought under the regime of social science thinking does not want to think about the social as a world's nation state social, but is—still caught be the sovereignty of nation states—committed to the idea of the reign of parochial thought created in and about secluded islands of knowledge, all creating their island-like theories. And, if they do deal with any other island-like social, mainly comparing nationally constructed theories, they are seriously challenged if social science thinking crosses the borders of any nation state social.

…by assembling theories about

nation state social biotopes….

Global social thought in the social sciences that detects the world's social and that crosses the borders of the national social is the assemblage of the secluded knowledge about nation state socials.

If social science thinking crosses the borders of its national social biotopes—it continues to look at the world's social as an agglomeration of nation state social theories and becomes "inter-national" by comparing their nationally constructed thought, theories created from the very state science thinking view on the social within their state biotopes.

What elsewhere would be considered as violating the most fundamental rules of social sciences theorizing and rejected also within the social sciences as nationally "biased" thought, thinking in national "perspectives" is ordinary practice in international social science activities. The national social is not only the unit of analysis but an explanatory framework through which social science thinking theorizes about the national social. Presenting social thought under headlines like "…..from a Chinese perspective", are not rejected as obviously biased knowledge, but very welcome as enriching the assemblage of theories, not only constructed about nationally confined knowledge, but knowledge constructed through the pre-supposed thinking of a nationally biased view about any topics.

Assembling knowledge by preferably carrying out and comparing country studies, inter-national theorizing in the social sciences, consists of additive knowledge about multiple nation state socials that is lacking any commensurability. Since such knowledge assemblage compares nation state social without knowing any tertium comparation is the nation state socials share and against which they could be compared, the result of these studies is to detect a never ending round-about of non-understood divergences. How could they? Since social sciences only know how to think about the individual nation states social, they have no concepts of what a nation state essentially is, and are thus unable to identify and distinguish what nation states and national societies across the world share and what not.

As a result, thinking in nation state "perspectives" introduces any national, mostly historical peculiarities of nation states, as an imperative theoretical means needed to theorize about the nation state socials—and discloses the extent to which international social science theorizing drowns theorizing in the monstrous cognitive circle, that provides to share the nationally peculiar constructs and categories, the national "perspectives" as a pre-conditional means to understand them. To give just one example of this dead end road thinking in such international comparative country studies:

"These difficulties are not only due to the difference between English and French. They probably also reflect the French conception of knowledge, which puts an emphasis on explicit and scientific knowledge, and the French conception of learning, which traditionally puts the emphasis on formal education and training."[11]

Since social science have no clue about what the essentials of a nation state social is and, hence, have no categories theorizing about a nation state social, they cannot distinguish between any essential of a nation state social as such and their historic peculiarities. Hence, social science thinking considers any social phenomenon in any individual nation state social as a unique phenomenon of any individual nation state social.

Thus, any general features of the nature of humans, essentials of the construct of nation states or historical peculiarities of a particular nation state are undistinguishable for social science thinking. Hence, social science thinking not only knows things like a "French conception of knowledge". Nation states undoubtedly craft the living conditions and the life of humans and do this to an extend that made Marx talk about his notion of a "Charaktermaske", critiquing that the most liberate inhabitants of the nation state societies without having a clue about this only execute what they are forced to do by law and consider this as only executing their most individual peculiar views and life agendas Thus, do the social sciences, when they assemble knowledge about nation state socials and when they compare them, identifying the historical peculiarities of their nation state social with what their nation state social is: Unlike China, France is the French "manifestation" of the French nation state

Undoubtedly, humans have created different concepts of what they consider as knowledge. However, imagining a concept of knowledge, that defines a nationally peculiar mode to construct thinking, a national concept of what is human's nature, can only be imagined by thinkers for whom the nation state is the almighty power even able to implant a nation state view on humans, here on how humans think, as a second, quasi national human nature.

Once any national peculiarities are identified as the particular nature of a nation state social, for social science theorizing looking beyond the borders of their national social requires to share these nationally unique concepts as a precondition to understand them in the comparative view on the world's national socials. Not surprisingly these studies ever end up in the complaints among all the inter-nationally thinking social scientists, that the others are never understood by the others.