Gday Chris,

Your work deals with individual humans, and hence with the relatively short time periods of their life histories.

Don't use that to excuse the fools who claim a larger purview.

When you do clinical, organisational and to a lesser extent, forensic applied psychology, you'd be correct to say that dealing with individual humans is common place.

However, only a fool would ignore the patterns in the research as well as the clinic and try not to understand these in the process of attempting to help that individual human.

Likewise, in a related field - social work - in some ways the context of the human is probably dealt with more than the individual human. Navigating various institutions for one thing, is an environmental variable.

It doesn't take much imagination to add that when behavioral researchers talk about things like noise levels, lighting, and so on as impacting attention, mood, performance to see that environment is considered in the equation..

It is a very small leap from there to include ecological variables: the effect of climate change on heat levels and the effect of heat on behavior. The effect of potted plants in the workplace on social cohesion. The impact of living near a national park versus a brick factory on the sleep wake cycle. And so on.

It's all there....and it's social science.

Besides...if the authors of this article bothered to look, they'd recognise that primatologists are in practice social scientists working with monkeys etc. ie a non Human species. and that social scientists have recognised for some time that there is blurriness between what is exclusively human sociality and what belongs to elephants and whales and baboons.

We are most certainly NOT the only social beings and people who view social science as strictly taking that point of view are living in a pre-Darwinian fantasy land...whether they're anti-social science, or Victorian era snobs in ivory towers. Either way, it's shoddy.

Anyway, social science - why social beings (usually but not always humans) DO things is more relevant than ever, should we wish to avert this crisis. We need to change our behavior. Who do you think is trained in that? A chemist?

"We need to change our behavior. Who do you think is trained in that? A chemist?"

That'd be the police, Ms A. Professional behaviour changers defined. Nothing changes behaviour quicker than a well-placed taser.

Depending on the circumstances - the army I guess... less personalised treatment though.

Advertisers and marketers might reckon they'd get a gong. But that's about as gentle as it gets I reckon.

A behavioral scientist (ie a social scientist) would point out that punishment has already been demonstrated empiricially to be the least effective means to lasting, meaningful behavioral change, as well as the one most likely to cause harm.

A criminologist (i.e. a social scientist) would point out recidivication rates, and the reasons for these, as proof of that argument in complex social systems.

Advertisers and marketers are sell outs. Their purpose isn't to actually change the social system in a meaningful way, but rather to target a subset (the market) to perform a specific behavior, that is to purchase whatever crap they're peddling. It may be sophisticated and even based on behavioral science principles, but like pop psychology, it's effectively a form of quackery.

Meaningful behavioral change in complex systems involves addressing both responsiveness and agency as it applies to various quarters within the system. That includes numerous variables, from simple reflexiveness, to human fallacy and political matters such as variation (or inequity) in access to alternative behaviors.

Just tasering Big Oil or making pamphlets about how nasty they are, won't change shit.

Thanks Emma.

The Good News is, work on the effect of living in an ugly/highly modified/polluted environment vs living in beautiful/relatively undisturbed/clean environment is proceeding.

My recollection is first seeing a news release about such research on Science Daily perhaps 4 years ago or so; I've seen more since then.

Escaping the ugliness of my surrounds was certainly my personal motivation in moving from Sydney two decades ago. I've relocated three more times since then, each time to a smaller city, and my aspiration is to live long enough to become a hermit.

Aha Ms A ... the truth is out - the cat is out of the bag!

These social scientists are out to change the world no less!

Indeed this is how they are to be distinguished from pollsters and those pundits of the popular purse - advertisers - who make no less assertion to some sort of science if not subversion.

Let us hope your candid revelation does not prompt calls for their "expungement" from public life.

I was, of course, being obtuse about the virtues of tasers in social progress. Their applicability obviously depends entirely what side of the taser you're on.

Perhaps for scientific purposes, a larger sample size and replication is necessary to generalise a finding.

But, it seems plainly obvious to me that lots of green stuff and fresh air trumps the concrete jungle.

Enjoy not living in Sydney.

Thanks Emma.

For public policy and planning purposes, scientifically rigorous study are required. In principle, the Opposition will jump down the throats of any policy pronouncements based on personal prejudice.

(In practice, the Opposition have abandoned scientifically rogorous study for the personal prejudices of News Corp's commentariat).

Well, yes.

But. Politicians, not generally being scientists, and operating under constraints, are likely to pick out the bits they like or can actually do, and misinterpret other parts. Whether they're Opposition or Government.

Perhaps, based on a rigorous, broad read of both ecological and social research (in it's rigorous non prejudicial forms) could lead to a system of living that also takes these variables into account.

Emma, all this talk about "behaviourists" and social science changing people's behaviour will give Clive and his postmodernist Communist pals a pink fit. Behaviourism is one of their satans - Skinner, EO Wilson, Malthus. Though it's all coming back; sometimes rebadged as "nudge theory", "behavioural ecology", "biodemography", "Neuroeconomics", "bioanthropology", "population genetics", "evolutionary game theory", and so on.

Social scientists will have to do start doing the hard yakka of being trained in biology, psychology, maths, physics, and stats, and using that training to study social dynamics. No longer will just words, and their discourses be enough.

Peter, I think you've nailed it there. Right now - especially with all the effort that has gone into understanding climate change, but also molecular biology, statistics, and exponential growth in computing power - social scientists have access to an incredible range of data sets, technological instruments, mathematical expressions, and empirically-informed natural science knowledge that simply did not exist even in the 1990s. Most of this knowledge/technology/techniques was not developed by, or for, social scientists. But as it has all come together, social scientists have also found it incredibly valuable.

It is fascinating to read how ancient Rome is being totally rethought, with the help of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), insights from bioecology (such as predator-prey modelling), archeology informed by remote sensors, osteology, polar ice core readings, tree-ring records, epidemiology, population genetics, and so on.

In 2013, you are not going to get very far in your career as an ancient historian, let alone archeologist, simply by studying the ancient languages, and the extant literary record. Even adding old-fashion discursively-based "social theory" will not help. And beyond ancient history, it will be increasingly impossible to forge a career in social science full stop, if you all have is verbal, reading and writing skills. The days of merely reading and discursive 'critique' are ending.

Indeed. So various specialists learning to work together. So whose doing this work on Ancient Rome - sounds like interesting reading.

Psychology is a social science. It's also a biological science. And it's a behavioral science. And it's a form of philosophy. Sort of the wedge between the humanities and the hard sciences.

I'd be looking at psychology generally, and not just the behaviorist schools of thought (completely avoiding Freudian theories) to actually find data on why people do stuff.

I'd be looking at sociology - not a science, but a humanity connected to the social sciences in more general, theoretical terms - for some general thoughts (inconclusive) on structural/functional elements in social change. But discarding any grand claims. Useful for insight only.

I'd be avoiding political theories in the design process. Political science is not a science. It's an art, and it's presumptuous on old modes of thinking - these need to change. The system is flawed and the way we think about the system especially so. Political theories however might help with understanding what structurally is and this can be quite insightful.

Then, I'd take a huge helping from ecology and environmental science, and fuse this with the way humans actually behave...and the way nature actually behaves

Then....and only then would I start remotely thinking about what the new way should look involve, let alone what it would look like.

P.S. My training is social science, my specialty is psychology, my other training is sociology. I read hard science for fun.

Thanks Emma. The Good News is, the Bureau of Rural Sciences has published a series of explanatory pamphlets, "Science for Decision Makers", on the following topics.

Agricultural Sleeper Weeds
Assessment of Vegetation Condition
Australia’s Pest Animals
Climate Change
Coordinated Land Use Mapping for Australia
Managing Connected Surface Water
Managing Non-Renewable Groundwater Resources
Old Growth Forests in Australia
Plantations and Water Use
Rural Lifestyle Landholders
Sourcing the Salt
Sustainability Indicators
Understanding Groundwater
Groundwater Recharge
Water Banking
Managing Interactions between Humans and Seals

On these topics at least, Australian politicians have NO EXCUSE for their public posturing.

The first questions are, "what are we", and "how did we get here". Answers to these questions are determined through geophysical and evolutionary history.

Examples of early theoretical postulations include Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis, since which time we have learnt a great deal. We now have a substantially more developed corpus of empirical observation than when those postulations were first expounded.

Those are good questions and to be perfectly honest, the sum of what I've learned more or less boils down to

"We are a varied, yet surprisingly homogenous species of highly adaptable, creative, and sensitive apes"

Basically leading to the concepts

1. Unified humanity; race etc doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things
2. Primate based but distinguished context in animal kingdom
3. No matter what happens, we are capable of adapting. We can invent our way out of things.
4. Our strength and our weakness is sensitivity. We can be intune to many things, but this is often misguided, and overwhelming. Adjusting the tuning devices in our culture and psyche in a way that takes into account circumstance and individuality, will likely resolve most of that dilemma.

But.....I don't know all the evidence. Just what I've seen.

Religion is an old tuning device. It doesn't usually take into account circumstance and individuality and the evidence would suggest to me anyway that needs to occur. Therefore, religion is probably an obsolete tuning device in its current forms.

Same with the state system in its current forms.

This is just irresponsible speculation, but I'd be willing to be that the 'religion' phase was somehow genetically-selected for. And maybe now, there is no advantage to having the 'religion gene', so it will slowly get de-selected. God knows what will replace it though. Yes, pun intended.

Oh, and I define 'religion' broadly to include belief systems like Marxism.

All good points, Emma, but you do not mention the life support system on which all human life depends and of which each and all of us are composed.

1. I'd add that race does matter, as do the various manifestations of tribalism that we and our fellow chimpanzees share.

3. If the definition of 'adaptation' includes death and extinction, then I'd agree that humans can adapt.

4. I care not a jot about the notion of sensitivity; I'm rather more concerned with awareness.

Elsewhere on this page, I've mentioned Ronald Wright's "A Short History of Civilisation". If you have read it, please comment; if not. please do so at your earliest convenience.

The same holds for Bill Bryson's "Short History of Everything".

Cheers!

Re: life support system, adaptation means we can adapt to it and not just from it. We can choose to continue treating nature as a fiefdom where all is to be exploited, we can also choose otherwise. I vote for choosing otherwise.

1. I was referring to the grand scheme of things, not specific examples. But just as we learned tribalism through evolution, we can learn to adapt to alternatives to tribalism, or at least adapt our systems so that the positive impacts of tribalism override the negatives.

2. We can adapt to that too, but not just that. Obviously though, if we're all dead, that would be the limit. I don't however, think we can adapt to everything else being exintict (we're highly adaptive, not perfectly adaptive). Not yet anyway, this isn't The Enterprise, we can't turn a tea towel into creme broulle.

3. Awareness and sensitivity are related. No input, no output. Tuning the sensitivity means altering the awareness.

I will read both at my convenience, thanks for the suggestion.

As a social worker, I was thinking the sames things. The social work model is based on "systems theory" and that nothing acts independently. We do need to study human behavior more because of the irrationality of the acts of humans upon themselves. To see a catastrophe encroaching and to do nothing is simply not rational.

Replace 'judgement' with ethic and you have something that lies outside the realm of the natural world. Thought, and the neuroanatomy that creates it, is part of the natural world; but the consequent abstract concepts, bizarrely, are not.
That is, unless you have seen an ideal Platonic solid or a 4 dimensional construct or the property of being good in your travels.
Maybe the social sciences have ended but philosophy sure hasn't.

Seamus,

"Thought, and the neuroanatomy that creates it, is part of the natural world; but the consequent abstract concepts, bizarrely, are not."

- Yes, the ontological status of concepts or ideas is an interesting question. Much will hinge on how you read the word "natural" though. It doesn't necessarily end with "matter." Gravity is considered "natural" and while we experience the effect of it, it is not something that we can see directly or hold or smell.

My input above was only in reference to Clive's argument about the categories "human" and "natural" and how they relate.

."..unless you have seen an ideal Platonic solid ...in your travels."

- I believe that that possibility would be discounted by definition.

Gravity is a physical property and is ontologically of the universe. The 'property of good' is not. An easy way to see the distinction is to jump of the roof, gravity will break your legs the property of being good will not help you in the slightest.

sure, but my original contention was that: 'Thought, and the neuroanatomy that creates it, is part of the natural world; but the consequent abstract concepts, bizarrely, are not.'
to which geoffrey responded:
'Yes, the ontological status of concepts or ideas is an interesting question. Much will hinge on how you read the word "natural" though. It doesn't necessarily end with "matter." Gravity is considered "natural" and while we experience the effect of it, it is not something that we can see directly or hold or smell.'

So, my reply to this was to try and establish the distinction between things that exist in the natural world (even if they can't be detected dirtectly by the senses) and metaphysical concepts such as morals. My use of the word ontology was used to discriminate the natural domain. I take your point that ontology is commonly used to define 'a list of things that exist in the world' but ontology can be used to discriminate subsets in the world 'the ontology of art', for example. It was in this sense that I use the word ontology. I believed that i had defined my use of the word sufficiently by stating 'gravity... is ontologically of the universe', inferring then that all things that are not of the universe, or stuff of the universe, were not in this particular ontology and were metaphysical.
The discussion with geoffrey really was around the distinction between gravity, a thing that can't be felt or seen, and morals, a thing that can't be felt or seen. Perhaps the word ontology was used loosely and out of context but the distinction is still real.

Felix, I take it you have read Bill Gammage's latest The Biggest Estate on Earth, and no doubt much more than I have on Aboriginal Theology. I was taken with Gammage's 'theology is ecology' summation of indigenous religion.

In a system where each human being has a totem, from which they have come, which it is their duty to protect, and to which they will return after death made a profound difference to this land pre 1788.

Yesterday, at the Yabun Festival in Victoria Park, I heard a remarkable concert by Archie Roach. Introducing one song he told ius that his late partner's totem was the pelican, and that she has now become a pelican. As sophisticated Europeans we would have smiled down upon this notion. But it is a system that protected the land, it's flora and fauna.

To quote from Gammage: 'Since 1788 at least 23 mammal species have become extinct and since about 1940 almost one third of the of world mammal extinctions have been in Australia' (page 17)

Patrick, I agree that Philosophy has not relied on the "distinction between natural and social" as the broader Social Sciences have. But while that might be the case at the departmental/institutional/disciplinary level, I suspect there are still squillions of individuals who either assume a sharp distinction, or whose research interests don't really require the issue be given much thought.

I only ever took a couple of classes in the Philosophy department, but one I did take blew my mind. I don't know about you, but I know of a small number of periods in my life when the 'learning light' flashes extremely brightly, where you instantly think you can see the world from a few feet taller than before that trigger experience. This Philosophy course was one of those - Early Modern Empiricists Theories of Perception. The lecturer was OK, but nothing great. The difference was that I read the actual Philosopher's works very closely - Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. The 'mind-blowing' bit was the realisation that up until then, I had spent my whole life never really having a clue what a "person" is. I realised that even thought I did, I really never had a clue what "I think, therefore I am" meant.

The way those guys were so dexterous with notions of the 'human', the 'social', the 'physical', the 'natural', the 'mathematical', 'spirit', 'the soul', 'god'. I got the most out of Locke's "Human Understanding" because up until that point, I had only ever read/heard Locke's name used as a swear word: "the father of libertarianism". In History classes, all Locke did was "invent the doctrine 'terra nullius' ( he did no such thing; TN was not invented until the 20th century); 'provided legal fascade for expropriating the lands of the American Indians and Aborigines, and justified their genocide'.

That Philosophy course made me realise that the Historians, Sociologists, and legal academics had only read "Two Treatises of Government", and even then, either not very closely, or without much charity, or in isolation from his biography, and the intellectual and political world he wrote within. Because once you've read "Human Understanding", only then can you fully appreciate what Locke was driving at in "Two Treatises of Government". None of the social science I was taught or read at university discussed "Human Understanding". They never mentioned that Locke had two degrees from Oxford - in Arts and Medicine - was elected to the Royal Society, worked on experimental sciences in Physics with Newton and Chemistry with Robert Boyle (of Boyle's Gas Laws fame) (who had been Locke's mentor). Thus they either ignored, or did not know, how mind-blowingly brilliantly and dexterously Locke integrates 'persons', 'psychology' ("associationism"), Physics (natural philosophy), 'nature' 'law', 'slippery rhetoric', all with a sterling understanding of - and education in - Theology. Here we had the real deal of a Social Scientist, who saw the inextricable links not only between the physical, life, social, and human sciences, but even with bloody God in the mix! I also learnt that it does not matter if a scholar is ultimately shown to have been "wrong" (after all, look how wrong, wrong, wrong Aristotle was). What is important as a student is being exposed to such a stratospheric native intellect, as well as the best education, and sleeves rolled up in the worlds of experimental science, politics, and the Church! Where are such people working in Social Science today?

After that Philosophy course, I found it very difficult to take any Social Scientist seriously. They just lacked the education and cognitive skills needed to understand 'the Social'. One thing I will say is that I think university Philosophy departments are much smarter and - collectively - far more perceptive Social Scientists than their colleagues elsewhere in the university. At least that appears to be the case at present, I don't know if that has always been the case.

Oh blast, forgot. The thing is that today's debates on abortion, euthanasia, pharmacology, gender/sexual identity, reproductive technology, animal rights, and even corporate law, legal obligations of religious schools in hiring, UN membership,and criminal responsibility can all be helped immensely by the writings of a man in the 17th century. As a result of that Philosophy course, I read some of Derek Parfit. He was recommended to me as 'arguably the greatest philosophical mind alive today'. Admittedly, I haven't devoted enough time to him, but so far my attitude is 'mere footnotes to Locke.'

Well, it's been a long time since I've looked at any of this, but if you concur on Parfit, I will revisit him carefully.

Yes, I remember there was great confusion in our class over Locke's 'identity/diversity'. We had to write a paper. I think I was the only one who got more than 12/20. I think it might have been an HD. Anyway, the reason I found it not so confusing is that I had taken a little bit of Maths in 1st Year, up to Linear Algebra. Now, we had just studied Descartes, and so knew (well at least I did), that D made a great leap from Euclidean geometry to Analytical Geometry, which is basically what we know today as Linear Algebra. So I understood how twp, three, or an infinite number of points (coordinates on plane), or ideas, or 'things' could all be the same, no matter how distant from each in space. If there was one single way they could all be connected, they could say they shared the same 'identity'. The gazillion points that lie on a parabola share the exact same identity. That 'identity' is whatever form of y = ax^2+bx+c that individual parabola took.

Now, of course, Locke doesn't talk like this, and maybe I was completely off in using Cartesian analytical geometry notions of 'identity' as analogous to not only Locke's 'Person = Identity", but then "Identity" is not an idea, a sensation, a thing, but a RELATION. Just as the points (1,1) and (-2,4) are far from each other in space, they share the same 'identity' through the relation y = x^2. They share a single identity, from which (3,4) is 'diverse'. I'm rambling now; it was a long time ago. But whether right or wrong Cartesian geometry made all Locke's thought experiments sound pretty common sensical to me. Though I do recall he gets into some trouble when one person's body is entered by another's soul, and a prince and vagabond change clothes, and both arrive at St. Peter's welcoming mat at the same time.

But grasping that whole 'personal identity' is a 'relation', that goes beyond cartesian geometry, because personal identity relates not just 2-D space, nor even 3-D, but also TIME. Now, one of the things I puzzled over was if we can say there is a person because of a shared history, can we say anything about whether that relation will hold going forward, or speculate what would have to happen to totally change that relation, so that a person today might not be that person in 5 years time. Unfortunately, we had to move on.

Maybe Parfitt will satisfy here? After my experience of going directly to the sources - Derrida, etc - and seeing that, yes, I could now see how they had reached the apex of academic acclaim. Yes, we are dealing with some stratostrophically sophisticated intellects. So, I became a lot less cynical, and took the view if there's smoke there's probably fire. As I made clear, for me there was no more than smoke with Foucault, and his copy-boy Edward Said was just fraudulent. Similarly, I cannot see what anybody sees in Judith Butler. Once I did my Classics mini course, I found her language quite easy to get through. But also realised how dependent she was on Derrida, and most ironically the old misogynist queen, Foucault. Her writing takes me nowhere, except to her next rip-off from some sleazy old French dude. As an insightful, let alone brilliant, analyst of human beings interacting through sex and gender, she would not know if her ass was on fire. I can't imagine that Judith Butler has ever sneezed, or burped, let alone had an orgasm, or perspired, or been drunk, or stoned, or played 'spin the bottle'. Judith, girlfriend, get ye to a Biology class.

Ah Descartes, the last person in history who could know everything.

Locke knew a lot more than Descartes, my friend.

Then you "know what lies he will tell" so you would be in a position to rebut them. I am reminded of Admiral Villeneuve before the Battle of Trafalgar, he did not want to leave port (remind you of anyone?) but did so when he was otherwise about to be replaced. He correctly predicted the British tactics "Nelson will attempt to cut our line and isolate us". His last command to the rest of the combined fleet was "Any Captain who is not in action is not at his station." So will you or Clive be at your station? Or staying in port? I still remember what happened to Readfearn in Brisbane and he quit his job at the Courier Mail and has been trying to rewrite history ever since. I will, and have, taken on the likes of Leigh and Chapman in any and all forums because I know I can beat them because their cases are worthless so guys go for it. No excuses or running for cover.

This is typical of the sneering rubbish that is always trotted out. And exactly what qualifications does Clive Hamilton or Tim "no rains" Flannery have? None! And it does not matter. If Monkton is such an easy target and so easily discredited then why not do it rather than staying in harbor trembling with fear. Will you or Clive be at your stations or missing in action? (strange how that phrase has changed its meaning since Vietnam)

Once again a rationalisation of not coming out of port. Monckton has a huge following, if he were beaten in a fair fight it would discredit him (not sure how much it would reduce world temperatures though) Then take him on and best him if you can or if you dare! I remember the headline in the Courier Mail after he spoke there. It was "Monckton takes Brisbane!". Not everyone has degrees in geography or social ethics or the philosophy of environmental politics or whatever. They are impressed by such actions and headlines. So take him on!

Now do I not remember the Catholic Church carrying out exorcisms and excommunicating comedian Dave Allen but not Adolf Hitler? So what has that got to do with the price of fish? Far more important is the billions of dollars spent on desalination plants because of predictions by scientists (sic) that we faced permanent drought. Most of these plants are now mothballed.

Patrick

"Well yes, that Lord Monkton is a pretty intimidating figure. Why, armed only with a degree in Classics...".

While I have no interest in the goggled-eyed kook, tragically, as we are finding out more and more about the shocking state og the humanities/social sciences, an Oxbridge Classics degree places a humanities scholar on such another plane as a humanities/social science scholar, that the PHDs and published papers, rarely, if ever, compensate for their own non-Oxbridge Classics undergrad degrees. Without at least some of that training, current social scients haven't go a clue what a philistine and ignorant was separating the social sciences from the natural.

Still, you are quite right to be suspicious of any claim that this singular Cambridge MA in Classics gives him the same right to expect the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, give me an Oxbridge Classics graduate over what has been going on in the the social sciences over the past four decades [and yes, is my general preference when recruiting fresh graduates.]. That is, he might not be a much of a match to the climate scientists, but clearly he is to non-classicists social scientists, and their fear of debating him.

OTOH, what is attributed to 'Graves Disease' is not much different from people I recognized my whole life. I say these pay "suffer from 'ocular shock'/ They have witnesses something/s so horrifying to them, their faces are perpetually stone, and their eyes never stop seeing the horrifying event. So perhaps he is mad.

Narcissistic perhaps - rather terrifying, you bet.

The idea that we have had such an impact on the planet and its processes that we are now effectively in charge elevates hubris to ungodly levels.

That scale of our impact is enough that the external Nature that gave birth to us and sustained us with its abundance and occasional tough love is broken and no longer "stable" ... more precisely that dynamic equilibriums are off running their own show.

At least the dinosaurs could point a scaley finger at an asteroid and curse the Newtonian gods that sent it hurling into earth. I think we'll be pointing our scaley fingers at each other.

Sean, do you think there are any positive aspects to people's impact?

The implication in much of this discussion is what we do is basically bad, and we have to learn our lesson.

Is that the case?

Shane, those are good points about the aggression a lot of physical/natural scientists had/have towards the social sciences. I mention some of the more influential and rabid of them above. But note that a lot of these scientists spoke/speak from a particular social science worldview - overwhelmingly marxists, as in the case of Lewontin, Rose, etc.

and a lot less pissed.

I am not sure how seriously to take this sweeping comment but again this is back to front. Social theorising was expelled from natural sciences which tries to present itself as value neutral (or simply technical).

Marx lived in a fascinating period of change and tried to keep abreast of the latest scientific findings (eg Darwin, Leibig et al) while remaining critical of the society in which it emerged. It was quite possible for Marx to appreciate Darwin for bringing history to the natural sciences (not naturalising history!) for the first time and remain critical of the ways the science of evolution was used to justify the status quo.

Progressive social scientists rejected evolutionary views like those of Herbert Spencer's which claimed to be based on some 'law of nature' which determined that it was the superiority of the British that led them to having an empire and that sort of thing. Of course this argument was no less convincing when Russian bureaucrats used Marxist 'laws of history' to prove that "communism" was the end of history or when Nazis used it to justify their role in history.

Not quite sure who catastrophists are - James Hanson would be one I guess but they don't come from social science backgrounds. Its true that those who are critical of science are not scientists for the most part but that only shows how uncritical many scientists are of the social implications of their work. There's no contradiction in being a critique of science and being pro-science, any more than being a movie critic makes one anti-movie (quite the reverse).

Mainstream science once regarded the inferiority of women and black people as a scientific fact so we are justified in treating reductionist claims by natural scientists with a degree of skepticism. The idea that the small number of science critics had the power to drive out genetic (I think you meant) determinists is ridiculous - its still the dominant discourse. Those trying to forge a more multidisciplinary approach were rare (less so now) but again it was the natural scientists who simply wanted to reduce the social to the natural who predominated in the end. Wilson's heirs predominate in the new psy-sciences like evolutionary psychology, economic rationalism with its laws of the market predominate in economic rationalism and politics. Foucault and Said are important thinkers but are restricted to specialist areas I am only familiar with history taught at CQ Uni and Newcastle Uni and as far as I know these two thinkers have negligible impact on teaching of history which is firmly empiricist. Foucault is an important thinker in sociology - not in relation to science particularly though - and Said's critique has hardly touched the dominant Eurocentrism of most disciplines.

Clive, for somebody who objects to being identified with the post-structuralists, you sure do choose some weird authorities to wheel out! And when you are not wheeling out the post-structuralists, you bizarrely wheel out Marxists as authorities for your claim that 'the fog of modernity/modernism' is responsible for the Social Sciences banishing the Natural Sciences.

1. E H Carr (Marxist, Stalinist even) - Major player in banishing natural sciences.

2. Bruno Latour (post-structuralist) - arguably the most clownish leader of anti-scientist post-whatever cluelessness

3. "human-nature 'hybrid' -common garden variety Bhabha post-structuralism. Clive, by claiming a hybrid, you are also claiming separate, autonomous systems - the 'human' and the 'natural' - that are only *now* linking together. Thus you are repeating the very errors in the social sciences, you now denounce. The point is: 'human' and 'natural' systems have ALWAYS been the same system. Indeed, Social Science itself overwhelmingly knew this. It was not 'modernity'/'modernism' that split the universe in two - the 'human/social' and 'nature' - but revolutionary leftist Social Scientists; whether in their guise of Marxists, Communists, or post makeover as postmodernists/structuralists.

4. Lacan's "Umwelt" (post-structuralist).

But then even more bizarre is your choice of " few are trying to peer through the fog of modernism. In an epoch-marking intervention"

5. Dipesh Chakrabarty!!! (post-colonialist mash-up of Marxism and post-structuralism). This is no epoch-"maker". It is an admission of his epoch being "over".
.
How did we ever get sucked in by these clowns? No wonder much current scholarship in History, Economics, and many other branches of scholarship are looking back to the 19th century and re-reading William Jevons, Malthus, and so on. And even further back to Galen, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Ibn Khaldun.

We were once on the right path, but our brains turned to porridge, sick with Marxism and post-whateverism. That's discerning enough

Kim Darcy, you're an ideologue fighting a dead cold war. For your information there are Marxists who've been working on the ecological front, revisionists for sure, but they're at least unafraid of the historical and intellectual legacy of the 20C. Try John Bellamy Foster's 'Marx's Ecology' for starters: http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/pb0122/

Anthony, I think my posts make it clear that I admire Marx immensely. As I also said, Marx himself, saw the need to integrate the phsyical/natural sciences with social sciences. My beef is with his various loony bins of disciples over the past 60 years or so; especially those former Communists in academia who went to Brazil or Thailand for ideology reassignment surgery, returning as tanned, buffed, and siliconed postmodernists, ready to babble whatever they have to do to keep their pay check, get that tenure, and the kids to love them.

I still like Marx a lot, even though History has taught us a lot. I still think Marx has a lot of relevance today (though not Communism or International Socialism). He could be given a makeover in time for the ball. 'The tendency for the average rate of profit to fall has to fall' can be given the snip. We'll have to do something with seeing the 'labor theory of value' as a zero-sum game, with the ever-present 'reserve army of labour' ensuring that capital's gain is equally labour's loss. Best to use insight's from the unquestionable squillionaires Marx's proles have become in 2013, compared to his prediction of "dictatorship of the prolateriat" or Rosa Luxemberg's even more biblical "Socialism or Barbarism". We're doing fine with neither.

What we need to do is to integrate how, rather than Marx/Luxemberg's predictions, economic growth throughout most of the world has been spectacular. Since Marx's times, per capita GDP has grown by 1000% in the natiosn he knew as the capitalsit world in 1870. The great-great-great-great grandkids of those he called prolaterian, and assumed would lead humanity in a revolution of consciousness, as well as production. Well those kids today are watching plasma TVs, driving cars, and flying overseas for annual holidays, and are so fat from too much food.

How we integrate this historical fact is the challenge. WE can't use anything from the 20th century at least from the period Keynes to Solow. But there are now lots of better-trained Social Scientists working on research such as the energy-efficiency model of production.

So thank your for the book selection. It will be so refreshing to read a Marxist with some about the natural/physical sciences.

Shane,
Just a small but important point.
James Hanson is not regarded as a "catastrophist" by the scientific community of which I consider myself a part, as he is a highly respected scientist who has a measured approach. A catastrophist might say that the east coast USA storm was caused directly by climate change. Someone such as Hanson would not say that, but he may say that there is likely to be an increase in frequency of such storms with anthropogenic climate change. Similarly with our current bushfires.
If Hanson is regarded as flogging catastrophe, we are definitely having one, but I am pretty sure that scientists like him just do their best to get the message across that there is an imminent danger. Anything less in the light of knowledge that can't be ignored would be irresponsible.
Of course the Italians locked up the scientists who didn't warn of the earthquake, but that is another story!

Hi

I guess I was responding to Kim who suggested the social scientists were among the catastrophists and the only person whose name came to mind as a candidate was Hanson who is not a social scientist. I suppose in my mind he was the one who has sounded the alarm bells most often and is the most vocal about the worst case scenarios.

Its a hard sell because we can't point to any individual event and say this is caused by global warming (and more than you can point to today's share price and show that the share price is rising) because its a trend. I am suspicious of apocalyptic scenarios as much as because they are trying to predict and unknown future and are politically disempowering for most people.

/As far as/, sorry. My English is no longer what it used to be...

Ironic isn't it? Just as Anthropology has split in two, with one half disappearing in a puff of puffery obsessed with race, ethnicity, and gender as mere 'orientalist discourse'. In 2010, the American Anthropological Association dropped the words "science". This was just a final acknowledgement of the truth of what been going on in most Anthropology departments over the previous three decades. What duffers they look now!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/science/10anthropology.html?_r=0

I think the current most likely saviours of the social sciences are Physical/Biological Anthropology (they were the dissenters in the AAA. That is, they were correct), Archaeometry (or Archeological Sciences), Big History, Historical Demography and population genetics, and a rejuvenated Historical Geography purged of all that anti-science Marxist, Critical Theory, Discourse Deconstruction cognitive pollution, which has made Geography so irrelevant over the same past three decades or so. What a tragedy, when it was Geography that was most equipped to bring the physical/natural sciences back together with the social sciences.

Maybe it's just me ...maybe there was some point in time when there was such a notion as "a social science"... coincident with phrenology I suspect... a courageous effort to bring the flaming torch of science to the problems of crime and social decay.

Actually science isn't too good at this society business is it... all those variables sliding about the place... how does one find the distilled essence of the absolute truth.... that if you add a spoonful of proletariat to 15% solution of capital and the means of production, season with an oppressive state apparatus and you'll have rampant bolshevism. Every time. Like chemistry.

Just doesn't seem to work like that does it, society? Never seems to do the same thing twice. Not exactly. And the smallest of differences can be critical.

That's not to say one abandons all reason and rational analysis of how society might work - as a species we seem programmed to seek out or even invent patterns in the complexity around us - but is that science? Or is it an art?

I think it is a great leap forward for anthropologists to reject the sciency trappings of the discipline... the delusion - the fiction - that anthopology or any of the social "sciences" can ever be objective, true and eternal and value-free, like chemistry.

Rather these fields are forever mired in argument, emphasis and revision - as they should be - being about us - ourselves always being locked in argument, emphasis and revision.

Don't get me wrong - I quite like science... some of my best freinds etc. It's how we can almost understand the world that confronts us. But there are limitations to the "predictive capabilities" of science when it is applied to a mob of unruly, stroppy agents who act differently in every time and place you put them. .. namely us.

And the attempt to develop and apply "scientific" principles to society in various forms has always ended sadly and profoundly inhumanely. The starting point is all wrong.

The early social scientists and anthropologists were deeply embedded in evolutionary notions which were seen as 'objective' ways to understand social disadvantage (ie the poor were losers in a natural competition based on survival of the fittest and poor nations were racially inferior and thus needed to be placed under white nation tutelage (ditto for women being biologically destined for motherhood). Critiques of these positions led to a separation of positive science from social science and with the rise of physics as "the" science (backed for scientific reasons [sic!] by the military). These observer independent views are no longer tenable even in physics but it maintains this image of science in the popular mind. Radical political economist like Marx spelled out the way money and class dominated systems of capital accumulation but eventually disciplines like political economy (studying what surely must be the self evident connection between money and power) were split into the "sciences" of economics and politics as separate disciplines. Orientialism too has disappeared as an academic discipline once the Orient was able to speak for itself (tho the social sciences remain largely Eurocentric).

Shane, you are stuck on a hamster wheel circa 1975.

I wouldn't worry Marxism had a brief influence in the 70s and postmodernism is limited in influence to literary criticism. Foucault is a key thinker in sociology but history is still taught largely along simple empiricist lines.

Your suggestion we should back back to the Nineteenth Century is being realised all over the place. Neoclassical economics a la Jevons is dominant in uni and in policy making (despite the failure of markets in Global Financial Crisis - no sign of any change to the perfect markets thesis) and Malthus is main 'social' thinker in environmental science textbooks (and his co-thinkers from the 70s Erhlich and Hardin). In psych Wilsons (1975) 'Sociobiology' is a dominant framework in its evolutionary psychology form (along with behaviorism). Of course no one would dream on the natural science side of suggesting we should go back and study Darwin or Newton.

How did we ever get sucked in by these clowns? No wonder much current scholarship in History, Economics, and many other branches of scholarship are looking back to the 19th century and re-reading William Jevons, Malthus, and so on. And even further back to Galen, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Ibn Khaldun.

“I wouldn't worry Marxism had a brief influence in the 70s”.

Well clearly, you were the only who got that memo. As late as 1994, we have even DERRIDA, conceding that the Social Sciences were still being driven by Marx. Derrida called for an official truce with the post-structuralists. No, he even offered his hand in a marriage of convenience with the Marxists; but not Marx himself, only the ‘spectre of Marx’:

“The name of New International is given here to what calls to the friendship of an alliance without institution among those who ... continue to be inspired by at least one of the spirits of Marx or of Marxism. It is a call for them to ally themselves, in a new, concrete and real way, even if this alliance no longer takes the form of a party or a workers’ international, in the critique of the state of international law, the concepts of State and nation, and so forth: in order to renew this critique, and especially to radicalise it.”

I'm sure you've read it, so I won't cite.

Now, I thought Derrida was a very clever man, but a complete charlatan when it came to politics, and way, way out of his depth when the issues required scholarly engagement with the reality of actual breathing, living human beings, operating in an equally real physical/natural world. Outside his parlour room, Derrida was a con-artist. Still, he knew who was 'on the list' for parlour room knees-ups, and who was "the Other".

You then claim:
“and postmodernism is limited in influence to literary criticism. Foucault is a key thinker in sociology but history is still taught largely along simple empiricist lines."

Except, perhaps, when that History is being taught by the likes of the Head of Sydney Uni’s History department - not to mention “Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow. Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia and the Australian Academy of the Humanities”- saying quite the opposite? Indeed, this is what she had to say on the matter back in 1991. She was a little peeved at the suggestion academics might make their social science more broadly accessible; not because she objected to the democratisation of knowledge; far from it; after all, she was still a practicing Communist. The real problem was “the epistemological gap between many academics and many journalists.”

Journalism just wasn’t postmodern enough to understand:

“Their mission is justified in terms of uncovering the truths that governments wish to conceal, presenting themselves as truly objective, as against the biased claims of others.” [Oh the irony, given what Media Studies departments have delivered to us as journalists 20 years later!

OTOH, she continues:

“Most academics in the humanities and social sciences, and as far as I know in the physical and natural sciences as well, now reject positivist concepts of knowledge, the notion that one can objectively know the facts. The processes of knowing, and the production of an object that is known, are seen as intertwined. Many take this even further, and argue that knowledge is entirely an effect of power, that we can no longer have any concept of truth at all. Most journalists, meanwhile, continue to talk as if none of this twentieth century philosophic critique has happened.” (Meanjin 1991)

Now, unless the good Professor really had no idea how she could ‘know the facts’ about “most academics in the humanities and social sciences”, we can safely say that postmodernism’s influence had infected far beyond the literature department, even 20 years ago! OTOH, I am not privy to what the people in the natural and physical sciences thought of being bundled in with ‘revolution by discourse’ crowd.

In 2006, she published “Is History Fiction”? – a product of the course she had been teaching since 1992 – “Writing History”. If you sincerely continue to believe otherwise, you should buy the book, and catch up with what has been the reality in Social Science academia, beginning in the 1970s, and only snowballed ever since. Indeed, the good Professor in 2013 “continues to write on questions of history, fiction, memory, and writing, most recently an essay entitled “Memory, History, and Ego-Histoire: Narrating and Re-enacting the Australian Freedom Ride”, for a special issue of Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques, forthcoming in 2012.”

Nah, no postmodernism or Foucault in the History department, just empiricism. This is just one example. You might object that the former Head of ANU’s History department, then Sydney’s is a maverick, but somehow I doubt it. ;)

Why am I reading all this political denunciation ... this "are you or have you ever been a member business"

You seem to be assuming that anything remotely connected to marxism should be torn out root and branch from the garden of academe. That right? Do you have a list of names, or do you work off reading lists?

Now if you'd explain that implicit view fine - but just throwing allegations and insinuations about on the basis of your interpretation of these folks' views seems a bit well "ideological".

Which particular bits of Marx do you dislike? Or is it just Althusser and those academic froggy wankers you take exception to. Text and verse, please Kim.

Shane,

At the risk of getting myself added to Kim's list of suspected leftists, you might enjoy a look at Pyotr Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid" . A very interesting and perceptive bit of thinking and observation given the place and time - Russia 1905 from memory.

Kropotkin was an anarchist nobleman, a zoologist, botanist and half a dozen other enthusiasms. This was an attempt to show how co-operation and mutualism were deeply embedded - evolved - in both biology and in social relations.

Not so much an attempt to imply an inevitability - some iron laws of social progress - but more to argue against those who see Darwinism as a purely competitive battle within and between species.

Interesting bloke. Interesting way of looking at things.

Peter, there's nothing confusing or mystical. My posts have engaged directly and closely with posts and arguments of Clive and Shane, Names are named very clearly and explicit reasons are given for how they are relevant to what Clive and Shane are saying. Basically, I am saying that Clive and Shane have spent their lives worshiping at the altars of the very social scientists, they now claim have killed the Social Sciences. I name and explain many of the deities Shane and Clive worshipped. Ergo, Clive and Shane are accessories to the death of the Social Sciences. You are probably a mere naive passenger caught up in all the hustle and bustle of being 'progressive'. ;)

The well-known sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein took up the question of the "two cultures" of science vs humanities in his 1991 book 'Unthinking Social Science: limits of 19th century paradigms' (and before). Both sides will have to change and he suggests there is increasing overlap in any case.

He argues that the future lies with the 'new sciences' based on complexity (and the work of Prigogine) which challenge the Newtonian reductionist model at the heart of natural sciences and its search for 'simple' Truths.

On the other side Cultural Studies - whose critique of traditional social science as based on a false universalism (a canon) argues for a return to context and specificity - a new social science good which acknowledges the role of values (and power) which might lead to more effective public policy outcomes than the present 'objective' and technocratic approaches which predominate in economics and engineering.
.
Though they are separate movements they share a critique of positivism (tho not starting from same place) and arguing that the Good (and Beautiful) cannot be separated from the True in the way mainstream sciences pretend. At present those battles are fought within each culture but Walllerstein argues the need for new 'structures of knowledge' which incorporate the insights of both.

How this will play out will not be determined by intellectual debate but all the social forces that are at play in universities and elsewhere.

I agree. The Anthropocene marks the need for natural and social scientists to focus jointly on the connections between cultural and biophysical dimensions of the systems we are part of, and of the issues we both co-create and need to address.

Ontological/epistemological differences are important but would take forever to address first. The “Nature/Culture” framework argued against in this piece has been falling apart for a while (> e.g. Bateson, who coincidentally was just elected at the California hall of fame) and should continue to do so as natural and social scientists engage with each other about the links between their disciplines.

And such work is already, and increasingly, happening.

Yes lots of interesting material I am getting my head around 'complex adaptive systems'. Systems theory has a chequered history in relation to progressive sociology (much as evolution does) but the end of these binaries is happening as you say. Cheers

Shane,
Hmm the brain is a complex adaptive system almost in its own right.
I too have been looking at complexity theory trying to make sense of the biological world. So far it just tells me I need to learn more, especially maths, oh hell!
On that the complexity of the university can be reduced to a mathematical equation, an algorithm. And Paul Davies' (you know the Mind of God astrophysicist guy) latest effort on the origin of life is that Life is an Algorithm.
So therefore the complexity of Life and of the Universe itself can be completely reduced. So the concept of the brain as a materialist object is a slam dunk!
I must say that even as a scientific person, the reductionism of science does sometimes grate a little when observing the beauty of Nature! I mean does the Universe really have to be an algorithm? Anyone interested in the Higgs (boson) field finding in 2012 will, you can take it from me, have absolutely no hope of understanding anything about it without a degree in advanced maths. Therefore the universe and its complexity is completely unknowable to most of us.
But Life we are stuck with, algorithm or no, till we pass. Which makes biology by far the better choice for anyone down to earth.
Stuart Kauffman is another author who has dealt with the origins of life, but in terms of complexity, and his latest is to propose a kind of force for ordered complexity that rivals entropy apparently. Truth can fortunately be approached from other angles than algorithms!

Sholto, Clive is talking about the present and recent past.. I'm pretty sure that not even Leibniz anticipated late 20th century AGW. ;)

@Kim Darcy; Agreed that Leibniz didn't anticipate late 20th century AGW, but H.T.Odum did ... and his rationalistic work was in the recent past. Also, consider that Clive mentioned Descartes & Kant as sources of the 17th-century enlightenment rationalism. This was later advocated by Leibniz - so I'd suggest a closer reading of the rationalist works and Leibniz in particular in order to see that Clive's argument is something of a straw person. If he'd like to deal with specific people then that would be fine. Personally I don't think the social sciences are "dead", a sexy sound-bite, it might be more productive to say they are maturing.

Christoper, your post is more an example of what Clive is criticising, not a "clarification", let alone a challenge. "Exploring climate change and human responses and understandings of it" is precisely the sort of activity that Clive argues has killed the Social Sciences. Your post and citations continue what Clive calls the "modernist" separation of "the social" from the "natural/physical". Your post continues this tradition by choosing the object to be studied as the "human responses" and "human understandings" of the exogenous "climate change." Clive's argument is precisely that this old thinking is now - and long has been - irrelevant and useless. Clive argues that this social/natural split was always wrong, and a conceit of modernism all along. But now, with the glaring, uncontradictable facts and experiences of AGW, we have no excuses to continue with the false dichotomy of modernist Social Science. Clive's whole point is that the notion of studying "human RESPONSES" is more or less a category error because it is the climate is now the OBJECT, that is doing the "responding" to “society”, which is the active subject. Those responses are to the agency of the active subject – “society” – on the object “climate system” over the past 150 years or so. But Clive's argument is that even the Social Sciences were to wake up and see this, it still would not be enough, because it would still involve 'placing some events into the box marked “Nature” and some into the box marked “Human”.'

But this is now impossible; as reality - ALL reality - has moved into a new epoch, that some argue (quite persuasively in my view, too) even constitutes a new GEOLOGICAL epoch (traditionally thought as being the slowest changing system going) "known as the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans, it marks the end of the Holocene, the 10,000-year period of remarkable climatic stability and clemency that allowed civilization to flourish." This new epoch was completely unimaginable when Clive thinks the Social Sciences (18th century). And all Social Science that has developed since 1800, has done so contrary to realities of the Anthropocene world we had been living in over that time, but rejecting/ignoring in the Social Sciences.