A Popperian Analisys of Jean-Claude Passeron's Sociological Reasoning

In the book “Le raisonnement sociologique: L’espace nonpoppérien du raisonnement naturel”, the French sociologist Jean-Claude Passeron argues that the structural use of natural language in the social sciences creates what he calls "sociological reasoning," a method based on natural reasoni...

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Bibliographic Details
Author: Tarbes, Sergio
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2018
Country:Brasil
Institution:Universidade de Brasília (UnB)
Repository:Revista de Filosofia Moderna e Contemporânea
Language:Portuguese
OAI Identifier:oai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/22106
Online Access:https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/fmc/article/view/22106
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Passeron
raciocínio sociológico
ciências sociais
Popper
Kuhn
sociological reasoning
social sciences
Description
Summary:In the book “Le raisonnement sociologique: L’espace nonpoppérien du raisonnement naturel”, the French sociologist Jean-Claude Passeron argues that the structural use of natural language in the social sciences creates what he calls "sociological reasoning," a method based on natural reasoning where Popper’s "demarcation" and "falsifiability" and Kuhn’s "paradigms" and "normal science" would not be possible. This article analyzes the empirical foundations of Passeron’s assertion by means of a method inspired by the ideas of Karl Popper, consisting, in this case, in the presentation of empirical examples that contradict it. The results allow us to conclude that if there are difficulties in the social sciences to perform experiments and to consolidate paradigms, such difficulties cannot be attributed to the use of natural language.