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Human Society and Scientific Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Th. Geiger
Th. Geiger*
Affiliation:
The University of Toronto
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Extract

The idea that scientific laws might apply to man and his society is not much more than one hundred years old, and even today many historians and other students of the so-called humanities fiercely deny the possibility of ascertaining sociological or historical laws similar to the laws of nature. In this sense, Anglo-American epistemology makes a distinction between the sciences proper and the humanities, as German and other European scholars distinguish between Natur- and Geisteswissenschaft, the natural sciences and the knowledge of cultural phenomena. Such distinctions are due, in part to an outmoded conception of the scientific law, but primarily to an even more obsolete conception of man, his society, culture, and history.

(1) Until the end of the nineteenth century, a scientific or natural law predominantly meant a law of causality, and such a law implied that the same cause always and invariably “produced” or “evoked” the same effect. The natural law, in this context, was not even a product of scientific cognition, but allegedly inherent in nature itself. The scientist merely “discovered” actually prevailing laws. This was the viewpoint of the so-called realistic school of thought. In a twofold way this concept of a law has been shaken.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , May 1952 , pp. 184 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1952

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References

1 Über die Sicherheit und die Grenzen geschichtlicher Erkenntnis (München, 1917).Google Scholar

2 Geschichte als Sinngebung des Sinnlosen (Leipzig, 1918).Google Scholar

3 Zurich, 1950.

4 “Wissenssoziologie” in Vierkandt, , ed., Handwörterbuch der Soziologie (Stuttgart, 1931), 662.Google Scholar

5 Der Deutsche Staat des Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1914).Google Scholar

6 Soziologie als Wirklichkeitswissenschaft (Leipzig, 1930).Google Scholar

7 An attempt in this direction has been made in mv Vorstudien zu einer Soziologie der Rechte (Copenhagen, 1947), 19.Google Scholar

8 Präludien (Leipzig, 1894), 26 ff.Google Scholar; Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1907), 355 ff.Google Scholar

9 Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft (2nd ed., Berlin, 1910).Google Scholar