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The Invisible Crisis of Modern Society:
Reconstructing Sociology's Paradigmatic Assumptions
( Paradigm Publishers 2007)
Bernard Phillips and Louis Johnston
Part I Introduction
Social Science and Metaphysics
The Web and Part/Whole Approach to the Scientific Method
The Invisible Crisis of Modern Society
The Plan of This Book
Part II Physical and Biological Structures
Chapter 1 Isolation Versus Interaction
Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Buckley's Sociology and Modern Systems Theory
Sommer's Tight Spaces:Hard Architechture and How to Humanize It
Some Implications
Chapter 2 Outward Versus Inward-Outward Perception
Kelly's The Psychology of Personal Constructs
Gouldner's The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology
Berger's Ways of Seeing
Some Implications
Part III Personality Structures
Chapter 3 "Head": Stratified Versus Interactive Beliefs
Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Levin's Experiment on Prejudice
Merton's "The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action" Some Implications
Chapter 4 "Heart": Alienation Versus Expressive Orientation
Marx's 1844 Essay on Alienation
Simmel's "Metropolis and Mental Life"
Horney's The Neurotic Personality of Our Time
Some Implications
Chapter 5 "Hand": Addiction Versus Pragmatism
Hesse's The Glass Bead Game
Kaplan's The New World of Philosophy
Knottnerus on Concentration Camps
Some Implication
Part IV Social Structures
Chapter 6 "Head": Scientistic Versus Scientific Method
Peirce on the Scientific Method
Nietzsche's The Gay Science
Mills' The Sociological Imagination
Some Implications
Chapter 7 "Heart": Anomie Versus Cultural Value Fulfillment
Durkheim's Suicide
Williams' American Society
Chua's World on Fire
Some Implications
Chapter 8 "Hand": Social Stratification Versus Egalitarian Social Relationships
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Goffman's Asylums
Illich's Deschooling Society
Some Implications
Part V The Situation
Chapter 9 "Head": Labeling Versus Reflexive Behavior
Hoyle's The Black Cloud
Scheff's Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism, and War
Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Some Implications
Chapter 10 "Heart": Negative Versus Positive Reinforcement
Van Vogt's The Players of Null-A Vidich's and Bensman's Small Town in Mass Society Busch's "A Tentative Guide to Constructing the Future" Some Implications
Chapter 11 "Hand": Conforming Behavior Versus Praxis
Greenstein's "Modifying Beliefs & Behavior through Self-Confrontation" Bondurant on Gandhi in Conquest of Violence
Lundberg's Can Science Save Us?
Some Implications
Part VI Conclusions and Implications
Chapter 12 Connecting the Dots
Conclusions
Some Implications
Preface
The significance of the following pages is yet to be assessed. Will it communicate effectively to contemporary sociologists and their students? To other social scientists? To a broader reading public? Will it succeed in opening the door to a rethinking of the metaphysical and epistemological assumptions prevalent throughout the social sciences as well as modern society? Will it help to usher in the development of alternative paradigmatic assumptions which promise to help resolve basic contradictions between present ideals and practices within the academic world and beyond? More concretely, will it help academicians and others to develop a scientific method which follows scientific ideals and, as a consequence, penetrates deeply into the complexity of human behavior and into urgent social problems? Will we social scientists learn how to use that broad scientific method in our everyday lives? And can we succeed in demonstrating to others how knowledge can be put to work to solve problems, and how such partial solutions can in turn yield greater understanding?
Our grandiose aims for this book are implied by the above questions. We earnestly believe that the times call for such optimism about the possibilities of the social sciences, given the threatening problems facing the human race in our new century. Yet at the same time we are aware of the incredible difficulties involved in developing the changes called for by positive responses to those questions. However, despite current highly threatening events, and despite a prevailing pessimism throughout the social sciences, we have never lost our commitment to the Enlightenment dream of societies based on reason and, we would add, a scientific method that promises to continually and rapidly extend our understanding of human behavior without any limit. We hope that this book will succeed in helping to open the door to the development of such a method along with the metaphysical stance or worldview that will make this possible.
We would like to thank David Christner, to whom this book is dedicated, for his continuing and enthusiastic encouragement and insights during the development of this manuscript. As an early participant within the Sociological Imagination Group--described in the Introduction--he joins us in our optimism about the possibilities of the social sciences. We also wish to thank Harold Kincaid for his close reading and many suggestions that have yielded numerous additions to the manuscript. Much the same is true for David Knottnerus' reading of the entire manuscript and his many insights. Thomas J. Scheff has also contributed most substantially, both through his development of a methodology which has become a key portion of our own approach to the scientific method as well as through his reading of parts of the manuscript. And we are most grateful to Dean Birkenkamp, President of Paradigm Publishers, for his continuing support for our efforts along with important suggestions. In addition, we extend our thanks to other individuals who identify with the Sociological Imagination Group and who have been most encouraging: Hans Bakker, Stephen Baran, Martha DeWitt, Kevin Fox Gotham, Paul D. Johnson, Alan Kahn, John Livingstone, Michael Lynch, John Malarkey, Neil McLaughlin, Adam Rafalovich, Suzanne Retzinger, Hilarie Roseman, Sandro Segre, Robert Stebbins, Emek Tanay, Jonathan Turner, Jean Van Delinder and Todd Williams. Finally, our long list of references indicates individuals who were only indirectly involved, yet who formed the backbone of this book.
Bernard Phillips and Louis Johnston,Longboat Key, Florida, May20, 2006 bernieflps@aol.com
Part I Introduction
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour
Rains from the sky, a meteoric shower
Of facts. . . .
They lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun, but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay
Social Science and Metaphysics
Al Qaeda's assault on the American people on September 11th, 2001, accompanied by increasing concerns over the deadly nature of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, has dramatically increased a sense of insecurity and fear for the future throughout the world. Martin Rees, England's Astronomer Royal and a professor at Cambridge University, has examined such problems in Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning. Rees claimed that "The 'downside' from twenty-first century [biological and chemical] technology could be graver and more intractable than the threat of nuclear devastation that we have faced for decades" (2003: vii). Yet we should not minimize nuclear threats. As we move into the twenty-first century the "club" of nations with nuclear capability will, in all probability, continue to expand along with the nuclear capabilities of terrorist groups. At the same time, there appears to be no corresponding expansion of the ability to understand and control whatever forces are making for an increasingly dangerous world.
At this time in the 21st century we appear to be losing a race between biophysical technologies that are unleashing ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction and social science technologies for controlling the use of those weapons. Some would argue that our problems in this century are nothing really new, and that there is no need to be frightened by "prophets of doom and gloom." For the human race has managed, somehow, to overcome many earlier threats to its continuing existence. This was dramatized by Thornton Wilder in his play, "The Skin of Our Teeth," referring to the many very narrow escapes throughout human history. Yet science has taught us that what has occurred in the past yields no guarantee as to what will occur in the future. The accurate prediction of future events must be based not on commonsense convictions as to the repetition of phenomena but on scientific understanding. Without such understanding we continue to live in a dream world of unrealistic optimism if we assume that once again we will escape disaster by the skin of our teeth. All the while that we continue to fiddle and avoid confronting the realistic problems we face, Rome is burning, yet our understanding of what is happening to us and what we can do about it remains drastically limited.
Why do we appear to be losing this race between forces that will yield destruction and forces for achieving understanding? Is it inevitable that the former will overtake the latter? Does our basic problem lie with the biophysical scientist? With the social scientist? With human nature? Or does it lie to a large extent--as we believe--with our fundamental assumptions or paradigm, that is, our metaphysical stance as to the nature of reality? In other words, are we to a large extent the victims of our own worldview or Weltanschauung which provides a foundation for all of our behavior as individuals and societies from one moment to the next, granting the existence of other forces as well? From this perspective, the solution to our contemporary problems would require not merely limited changes in modern society but fundamental changes in every single one of our institutions along with corresponding changes in the individual's patterns of thought, feeling and action.
Suppose, for example, that our present metaphysical stance or worldview as to the fundamental nature of reality builds on the idea that human behavior is not nearly as complex as it actually is. And since our metaphysical assumptions are the basis for our epistemology or methods for discovering the nature of reality, we would then expect that our approach to the social sciences has been far too simplistic. For example, we would not be surprised if social scientists proceeded to divide up the pie of human behavior into distinct pieces to be investigated by anthropologists, economists, historians, political scientists, psychologists and sociologists who generally fail to communicate their findings to one another despite scientific ideals calling for such communication. That would be an example of a metaphysical assumption or worldview as to the simplistic nature of human behavior trumping scientific ideals calling for openness to the full range of phenomena relevant to a given problem. This is assuming that any given problem is sufficiently complex so as to require that we bring to bear on it the range of social science knowledge.
This is in fact what appears to have actually occurred. The situation of a lack of integrated understanding of human behavior is far worse than most of us imagine, all apparently based an oversimplified worldview or metaphysical stance. For example, there are no less than 43 distinct Sections--and counting--of the American Sociological Association, with only limited communication across these Sections. But the situation is even worse than this. The five-volume Encyclopedia of Sociology (Borgatta and Montgomery, 2000) lists 397 specialized topics within sociology, and once again the overall situation appears to be one of limited communication across these specialized fields. The result is that sociological understanding--and understanding within the social sciences in general--is based on bits and pieces of knowledge that have not been pulled together so as to provide the comprehensiveness essential to penetrate the complexity of human behavior. This leaves us all relatively helpless in the face of threatening problems such as terrorism. Successes in the far simpler realms of physical and biological phenomena appear to have influenced social scientists to see human behavior in much the same way. And the resulting failure of social scientists to make much headway is not traced back to their simplistic assumptions about the fundamental nature of reality--that is, their worldview or metaphysical stance--which make such headway almost impossible.
Just as there is specialization with limited communication throughout the social sciences, so is there specialization with limited communication dividing all academic disciplines as well as applied fields. Specialization, when it is accompanied by communication among specialists so as not to lose the forest for the trees, can be a most useful procedure. But specialization without such communication can easily yield partial knowledge that fails to address adequately the problem at hand. As the saying goes, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Particularly important is the separation between philosophy, which is much concerned with metaphysics or worldviews, and the social sciences. William James, one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism, put forward his view of the importance of philosophy for all of us, quoting from an essay by G. K. Chesterton:
There are some people--and I am one of them--who think that the most
practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy (1907/1995:1).
James went on to claim that, within the new philosophy of pragmatism, "Science and metaphysics would come much nearer together, would in fact work absolutely hand in hand" (20). His view of metaphysics was shared by the original founder of pragmatism, Charles Peirce. Peirce claimed that "metaphysics, even bad metaphysics, really rests on observations, whether consciously or not," contradicting "the common opinion. . .that Metaphysics. . .is intrinsically beyond the reach of human cognition" (1898/1955: 310-311). Even today the "common opinion" among social scientists is that metaphysics, and philosophy in general, is much like angels dancing on the head of a pin, and that the scientific revolution over the past centuries was achieved by rejecting philosophical "speculation" and substituting concrete evidence for untested ideas. Yet this narrow view of the nature of the scientific method ignores the fundamental role of metaphysical assumptions in shaping how scientists--and everyone else--go about their work. As illustrated above, when we assume that human behavior is no more complex than physical or biological phenomena, then the result is our present bits and pieces of un-integrated knowledge which fail to yield substantial understanding of human behavior and fail to provide a basis for solving problems. To illustrate further, such a simplistic assumption appears to have yielded throughout history what Robert Merton has called "the unanticipated consequences of purposive social action" (1936; see Chapter 3). As one of a great many examples, Southern sheriffs using cattle prods and police dogs on civil rights demonstrators did not anticipate the consequence that televised footage of their behavior would help to create a moral outcry that influenced the passage of civil rights legislation. Those sheriffs had adopted an oversimplified view of their behavior, failing to allow for the impact of television.
Apparently, an understanding of our metaphysical stance or worldview is incredibly powerful in yielding insights into our current problems. For this one aspect of our worldview, our assumptions about the simplicity or complexity of human behavior, yields a profound critique of almost every one of the studies in the social sciences that has ever been undertaken. For those very studies, based as they are on a narrow worldview or metaphysical stance, yield partial information, and there is little awareness of this limitation. And in turn that partial information can be a dangerous thing when it comes to using it in efforts to solve the full range of our problems, whether large-scale problems or personal problems. This has to do with the efforts of professionals like politicians, educators, social workers, criminologists and psychotherapists. It also has to do with the understandings employed by the rest of us, including journalists, business people, those in the arts, biophysical scientists, engineers, doctors and nurses, lawyers, and everyone else
Yet how are we to uncover the nature of our worldview, given the overriding importance of our doing so at this time in history? For example, should we turn to the academic philosophers who have been writing about metaphysics for many years? Karl Mannheim, a sociologist who attempted to penetrate the nature of our worldview, has this to say in an essay he wrote "On the Interpretation of Weltanschauung":
Is it possible to determine the global outlook of an epoch in an objective, scientific fashion? Or are all characterizations of such a global outlook necessarily empty, gratuitous speculations? . .theoretical philosophy is neither the creator nor the principal vehicle of the Weltanschauung of an epoch; it is merely only one of the channels through which a global factor . . .manifests itself. . . .If, on the other hand, we define Weltanschauung as something a-theoretical with philosophy merely as one of its manifestations, and not the only one, we can widen our field of cultural studies. . .our search for a synthesis will then be in a position to encompass every single cultural field. The plastic arts, music, costumes, mores and customs, rituals, the tempo of living, expressive gestures and demeanour--all these no less than theoretical communications will become a decipherable language, adumbrating the underlying unitary whole of Weltanschauung (1952: 9, 13-14).
Following Mannheim's argument, philosophers do not have the answers on the nature of our worldview or metaphysical stance, granting their concern with this issue. For it takes very broad studies of "every single cultural field" to uncover assumptions which underlie and shape our entire way of life. Perhaps, then, we should turn to social scientists, who have indeed investigated all of these phenomena. Yet here again we come up against a brick wall. As we have noted, social scientists have shied away from efforts to understand something as broad as a worldview or metaphysical stance. Given their oversimplified understanding of human behavior, they have divided it up into literally thousands of watertight compartments. And the result is that almost all we have are what Edna St. Vincent Millay has called "a meteoric shower of facts" which remain largely unrelated to one another. It would take an alternative worldview that fully recognizes human complexity to begin to link those pieces to one another, a worldview that has yet to be understood and employed.
Our pursuit of the fundamental assumptions guiding sociologists and others should not neglect the work of Thomas Kuhn, the historian of science whose The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) has been having an enormous influence not only on the social sciences but also throughout the academic world up to the present time. His concept of "paradigm" has many meanings, yet one of them points to the importance of the basic assumptions that underlie a given science and that must be challenged by an alternative paradigm if indeed that science is to undergo a revolution. Kuhn saw such revolutions as "changes of world view" and not merely the substitution of one theory for another, suggesting that this process might be extended to basic changes in culture or society as well. Kuhn's idea here--to be elaborated in Chapter 3--is that a basic change requires a new set of fundamental assumptions (or paradigm) which promises to resolve the problems or contradictions within the former assumptions (or paradigm). The widespread attraction of his book can, then, be partially explained as deriving from the interest of academicians in a theory of change as well as their interest in uncovering basic assumptions. Our own rethinking of sociology's paradigmatic assumptions involves not just the raising up of assumptions to full view. It also involves the presentation of alternative assumptions which promise to resolve contradictions within the previous ones. And it also points toward basic changes in the scientific method along with basic changes in society, since those assumptions are by no means limited to those of us in the academic world.
The Web and Part/Whole Approach to the Scientific Method
There is indeed a way to begin a journey that employs a scientific method for understanding human behavior along with a worldview that confronts the complexity involved. Sociologists need not give up on the possibility of fulfilling the Enlightenment dream of Auguste Comte. The approach we shall adopt builds, first and foremost, on the incredible potential of the human being. Given the range of problems that we humans have not yet been able to solve, and given their threatening nature, it is easy to lose sight of that potential and to adopt a pessimistic view of our future. Our potential is based very largely on our complex language, which sharply distinguishes us from all other forms of life. It is language which twentieth-century research has discovered to be absolutely central to an understanding of human behavior. It is language which has been the fundamental basis for the development of human civilization. It is language which will continue to be the basis for our further development. It is language which is our most powerful tool for solving problems. And it is language which ushered in the creation of our second most powerful problem-solving tool--the scientific method--which has been much the basis for the industrial revolution and the process of modernization over the past four centuries. In this book we shall focus on both language and the scientific method.
It was the 18th-century Enlightenment era which, based on scientific achievements in the 17th century, developed the optimism about the possibilities of the human being which became much of the foundation for the development of the social sciences. That optimism and faith in the scientific method influenced Auguste Comte in the 19th century to develop his vision of sociology as a new and wide-ranging "science of society." And it also motivated classical sociologists like Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Simmel to carry that vision much further, proceeding far more systematically and empirically. It is a combination of the breadth of classical sociology--coupled with the breadth of some modern sociologists together with the specialized achievements of contemporary sociology--which is the basis for the present approach.
Two 20th-century sociologists in particular have influenced our own orientation: C. Wright Mills and Alvin W. Gouldner. Although we shall examine their contributions in Chapters 6 and 2, respectively, an introduction to their work is in order. Despite Mills' short life--from 1916 to 1962--and his preference to work alone with no following, his The Sociological Imagination (1959) was rated in a 1997 survey of the members of the International Sociological Association as the second most influential book for sociologists published during the entire 20th century (Phillips, 2004). It preceded works by Merton, Berger and Luckman, Bourdieu, Elias, Habermas, Parsons and Goffman.. It was in that book that Mills developed his image of the breadth of perspective required to penetrate the depths of human behavior:
The sociological imagination. . . .is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another--from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry. It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self--and to see the relations between the two (1959: 7).
It was in The Sociological Imagination that Mills developed a direction for actually achieving such breadth, namely "to shuttle between levels of abstraction" (1959: 34). Instead of remaining at a high level of abstraction ("grand theory") or at a low level of abstraction ("abstracted empiricism"), the social scientist should move up and down the "ladder" of abstraction. It is such movement that addresses the long-standing conundrum of how to link abstract or general theory with concrete empirical research that has been plaguing the social sciences. Metaphorically, by moving up language's ladder of abstraction we gain the height that enables us to see far and wide, linking those phenomena when we come down that ladder. And by moving very far up that ladder, we can even encounter our metaphysical assumptions and alter them as needed. In an early article analyzing social science textbooks, Mills (while still a graduate student) criticized their authors--including his own Chair--for their rejection of the importance of philosophy and emphasizing instead "lower levels of abstraction" (1943: 168). Mills' own doctoral dissertation demonstrated another possibility by focusing on the concrete origins of the abstract ideas developed by the originators of the philosophy of pragmatism (1964).
Alvin W. Gouldner carried forward Mills' breadth in his The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970). It was there that he emphasized the importance of the sociologist's "background assumptions" which are "world hypotheses," that is, "primitive assumptions about the world and everything in it. World hypotheses. . .are what are sometimes called "'metaphysics'". It was through his exploration of metaphysical assumptions that Gouldner was able to emerge with his emphasis on the importance of a "Reflexive sociology," an orientation which challenges fundamental although largely invisible assumptions held by contemporary sociologists:
What sociologists now most require from a Reflexive Sociology, however, is not just one more specialization, not just another topic for panel meetings at professional conventions. . .The historical mission of a Reflexive Sociology as I conceive it, however, would be to transform the sociologist, to penetrate deeply into his daily life and work, enriching them with new sensitivities, and to raise the sociologist’s self-awareness to a new historical level. . .A Reflexive Sociology means that we sociologists must--at the very least--acquire the ingrained habit of viewing our own beliefs as we now view those held by others (1970: 489).
If social scientists make the basic assumption that they must avoid any focus on themselves as they proceed with their investigations, Gouldner implies that they are avoiding an examination of their own impact on the research process. A reflexive approach makes for much more complex research, yet it also opens up to vital factors which must be taken into account in order to understand what is in fact going on. In a discussion of his book after it was published, Gouldner brought forward another idea that is central to the focus of the present book on addressing the fundamental assumptions of sociologists along with the rest of us. It has to do with the sociologist's usage of language:
The pursuit of. . .understanding, however, cannot promise that men as we now find them, with their everyday language and understanding, will always be capable of further understanding and of liberating themselves. At decisive points the ordinary language and conventional understandings fail and must be transcended. It is essentially the task of the social sciences, more generally, to create new and “extraordinary” languages, to help men learn to speak them, and to mediate between the deficient understandings of ordinary language and the different and liberating perspectives of the extraordinary languages of social theory. . . .To say social theorists are concept-creators means that they are not merely in the knowledge-creating business, but also in the language-reform and language-creating business. In other words, they are from the beginning involved in creating a new culture (Gouldner, 1972: 16).
It is, then, both language and the scientific method--the two most powerful tools of the human being--which will also be our own two most important tools in this effort to probe the social scientist's fundamental assumptions and come up with an approach that addresses human complexity. And it is the work of Mills and Gouldner--coupled, of course, with the work of a great many others--which guides our own orientation. That orientation finally broke into print in a systematic way with Beyond Sociology's Tower of Babel: Reconstructing the Scientific Method (Phillips, 2001). It was based on applying recent developments in the philosophy of social science (Duhem, 1954; Quine and Ullian, 1970; Kincaid, 1996) to sociological research so as to take into account the web of phenomena surrounding any given isolated hypothesis. Those new developments point toward the web of phenomena which make up the entire context of a given investigation, versus centering on whatever can be approached mathematically. From the perspective of methods in sociology, those developments open up to the importance of qualitative no less than quantitative procedures for research. This broader approach to the scientific method, in the spirit of Mills, Gouldner and Kuhn, is illustrated by the work of Willer and Webster, 1970; Phillips, 1972, 1979, 1985, 1988, 1990; Scheff, 1990, 1994, 1997; Lauderdale, McLaughlin and Oliverio, 1990; and Wallerstein, 1980, 1991).
This "Web approach" to the scientific method was continued in a volume with ten authors, Toward a Sociological Imagination: Bridging Specialized Fields (Phillips, Kincaid and Scheff, eds., 2002). The topics ranged widely, indicating the possibility that this approach to research might be applied to the full range of topics within sociology and even throughout the social sciences. Topics included the process of secularization, small-group experiments, explaining inequality, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, prejudice, aspects of mental illness, and working class emotions and relationships. The methodological approach accepted by the authors included a commitment to the importance of a very wide range of phenomena in any effort to investigate a given problem, granting that this was an ideal more than something that the authors generally were able to achieve. That wide range of phenomena includes physical structures, biological structures, social structures, personality structures, the momentary scene and long-term history. It also encompasses the cognitive, emotional and active or interactive aspects of human behavior. Metaphorically, we can see these three aspects as stressing the "head," the "heart" and the "hand."
The "Web approach" to the scientific method presented in those two books--Beyond Sociology's Tower of Babel and Toward a Sociological Imagination--includes five components (Phillips, 2001, especially Chapter 1):
(1) definition of the problem,
(2) movement up language's ladder of abstraction,
(3) movement down that ladder,
(4) integrating knowledge, and
(5) reflexive analysis and interactive worldview.
Those components are not different from our ideals for the scientific method, which specify openness to all phenomena relevant to a given defined problem. Yet they differ substantially from near-universal practices, which ignore reflexivity and severely limit attention to the other components of the Web approach. As a result, the range of phenomena that are seen as relevant to any given problem also becomes quite limited, as illustrated by extreme specialization with limited communication among specialists. We may note here the importance of Mills' work with reference to (2) "shuttling" up and (3) down language's ladder of abstraction as well as (4) integrating knowledge. We may also note that (3) movement down that ladder includes not just using more concrete concepts but also the testing of abstract propositions in order to present evidence toward their verification or falsification.. And in addition we may note Gouldner's contribution to (5) with his emphasis on a reflexive sociology. But let us not forget Gouldner's contribution to the centrality of our tool of language on which the scientific method itself is based. We might also look to Kuhn's concern with paradigmatic assumptions as pointing in the direction of (5) worldviews. As for (1), the other four components of the scientific method help the researcher to define any given problem in a very broad way. And that breadth in turn transforms apparently trivial problems into important ones. Mills is admired largely for his ability to confront the fundamental problems of modern society.
Over the next few years there was progress in developing more systematic and thorough explanations along with further illustrations. For example, Robert Stebbins used the Web approach to analyze the nature of the Protestant work ethic in his Between Work and Leisure: The Common Ground of Two Separate Worlds (1994). Thomas Scheff's Goffman Unbound (2006) not only provided another illustration of the approach but also carried further an explanation of the importance of moving down language's ladder of abstraction. He had developed his Part/Whole approach to the scientific method in three earlier monographs (1990, 1994 and 1997). Just as a novelist can write about the momentary details involved within any given human situation--such as the play of emotions, the thoughts of those involved, and the specific actions that take place --so can the social scientist do the same. In Scheff's 2006 publication he was able to combine the Web approach (and its detailed illustrations of shutting up the ladder of abstraction) with the Part/Whole approach (and its detailed illustrations of shuttling down the ladder of abstraction). The result is what came to be called "the Web and Part/Whole approach." The change is not a shift in direction but a matter of giving equal emphasis to Mills' call for shuttling both up the ladder and down the ladder..
Another contribution to the Web and Part/Whole approach was a volume collecting the papers given at the fourth annual conference of the Sociological Imagination Group in August, 2004 in San Francisco (Phillips, ed., 2005): Understanding Terrorism: Building on The Sociological Imagination. The senior author had organized that group with the help of Harold Kincaid--a philosopher of social science--and Thomas J. Scheff The group's first conference in 2000, had been the basis for the volume edited by Phillips, Kincaid and Scheff and described above. Publications and other materials of the Sociological Imagination Group: can be found on its website, www.uab.edu/philosophy/sig
The Web and Part/Whole approach aims to capture the breadth of our ideals for the scientific method by providing a framework broad enough to encompass the full range of social science research. This breadth might be illustrated by its links to a variety of contemporary sociological theories, each of which also strives for comprehensiveness. For example, there is Jeffrey Alexander's emphasis on the importance of culture and language, building on the earlier work of Talcott Parsons. This is exemplified by an analysis of "binary discourse" in civil society, with its focus on a dichotomous emphasis within culture--by contrast with the inclusion of a gradational orientation--that treats the in-group favorably and the outgroup very negatively (2001: 193-201). We also have Nicholas Luhmann's concept of "autopoiesis," referring to the importance of self-reference or self-consciousness in human behavior, which links to the idea of reflexivity and makes possible the continuation of social structures (1984/1995). This idea is paralleled by Anthony Giddens' concept of "recursivity," emphasizing the feedback between structure and agency that is based on the agency's conscious anticipation of the outcome of any action. His approach, in common with that of the Web and Part/Whole orientation, sees "structuration" as linking momentary actions to long-term structures, emphasizing the importance of momentary actions and viewing structures dynamically (1979, 1984).
To illustrate further such links to contemporary sociological theory, the approach's emphasis on language as well as on a contrast between egalitarian and stratified structures overlaps with Jurgen Habermas' concept of an "ideal speech community" (1984). It also overlaps with Erik Olin Wright's efforts to build on the Marxist tradition with his focus on the importance of stratification, the ideal of equality, and history as well (1992). And if we move from stratification within a given nation to international stratification--along with the importance of history--then we also have an overlap with the work of Immanuel Wallerstein on world-system analysis (1974, 1979). Yet this openness to international stratification by no means rules out the importance of the political processes taking place within any given nation, as illustrated by the work of Theda Skocpol (1979). One additional example has to do with the role of biology, as illustrated in Jonathan Turner's view of its role in interpersonal behavior (2002). The Babel book includes illustrations of human perception as a key aspect of the impact of human biology on our behavior.
The Babel book with its focus on the Web approach to the scientific method distinguished among the languages of social science, biophysical science and literature (Phillips, 2001: 21-23). We might carry further our understanding of the role of language in human affairs by seeing these languages as emphasizing, respectively, three capacities of language: dichotomy, gradation or number, and imagery. The social sciences have emphasized dichotomies, such as the distinction between equality and hierarchy or conformity and deviance. This goes back to the fundamental nature of all languages: their division of the world into two categories. There is the phenomena denoted by a given word, on the one hand, and all other phenomena, on the other hand. Such a dichotomous perspective also appears to be the emphasis within everyday speech and thought.
The biophysical sciences, by contrast with the social sciences, have emphasized the gradational component of language. Here, we might see just about everything as a matter of degree, and we might even go so far as to designate a given phenomenon with a number and use that number as a basis for making predictions about the occurrence of that phenomenon. Following the title of a book by Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1954), the development of mathematics has been essential in the development of the biophysical sciences. For example, it is the calculus which became the basis for much of the ability of engineers to make use of physical science knowledge in their procedures for building public works and developing means for transportation and communication. It is indeed difficult to imagine the development of physical science without the tool of mathematics with its gradational orientation.
Literature, by contrast, emphasizes imagery, which uses language to represent sense experiences. This takes us back to biological or perceptual experiences so fundamental that they precede the development of language, granting that language shapes those experiences and is in turn shaped by them. In Chapter 2 of this book we examine a book by John Berger, based on the British Broadcasting Corporation's television series, "Ways of Seeing." Berger begins his book with these words:
Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it (1985: 7),
Images from literature are, potentially, powerful means of communication. They can help the scientist to understand what he or she has learned, and they can also help the scientist communicate that knowledge.
It is a focus on only one of these capacities of language--whether dichotomy, gradation, or imagery--which is a basis for a narrow or what might be called a stratified worldview or metaphysical stance. By contrast, a focus on all three is a basis for a broad or what might be called an interactive worldview. Given an effort to include all three capacities of language, this should not imply that a new worldview will automatically be in play. For it is possible to compartmentalize one's approach to those three capacities and, thus, continue with the narrow orientation to phenomena that characterizes a stratified worldview. Consciousness of the limitations of that worldview together with awareness of an alternative worldview appear to be essential in order to escape from that compartmentalized perspective.
The sociologist's paradigmatic assumptions include not just a metaphysical stance or worldview but also an epistemological stance or an approach to the scientific method. It is that epistemological stance--the nature of our broad approach to the scientific method--which has been our focus within the preceding section on the Web and Part/Whole approach to the scientific method. That stance, although not as high up on language's ladder of abstraction as a metaphysical stance, is nevertheless higher than specific theories. Given that height--which enables epistemology to trump theories in violation of scientific ideals--we can expect a more scientific epistemology to help social scientists develop a much broader approach to theory and thus move toward integrating their knowledge and their usage of language's three capacities. But to do this requires illustrations of the Web and Part/Whole approach to the scientific method. There are a great many within the chapters of this book, but an illustration is also called for in this Introduction. It will be an example that returns us to the threatening problems examined at the beginning of this Introduction.
The Invisible Crisis of Modern Society
Daniel Lerner, a political scientist, initiated an international study half a century ago to learn about the transition from preindustrial to modern society (Lerner, 1958: especially 23-25). That study unearthed a very broad problem linked to the modernization process, and this is the problem that we shall examine. As part of that study Tosun B., an interviewer who lived in Turkey's capital city, Ankara, embarked on a two-hour drive on the dirt road connecting Ankara with the small village of Balgat. After locating the village chief, Tosun asked the chief how satisfied he was with life. The chief replied:
What could be asked more? God has brought me to this mature age without much pain, has given me sons and daughters, has put me at the head of my village, and has given me strength of brain and body at this age. Thanks be to Him.
The only non-farming person in Balgat was the village grocer. His response was markedly different from that of the chief:
I have told you I want better things. I would have liked to have a bigger grocery shop in the city, have a nice house there, dress nice civilian clothes. . . .I am born a grocer and probably die that way. I have not the possibility in myself to get the things I want. They only bother me.
The grocer had made many trips to Ankara, with visits to shops and movie-houses. He had seen in a film the shop that he wanted, with "round boxes, clean and all the same dressed, like soldiers in a great parade." Yet the villagers of Balgat looked down on this shopkeeper, who was not a farmer like them. They also saw him as rejecting the worth of his own community, and even the supreme authority of Allah.
Tosun asked both men what they would do as president of Turkey. The chief would attempt to obtain "help of money and seed for some of our farmers." As for the grocer, his answer was not limited to helping the villagers of Balgat: "I would make roads for the villagers to come to towns to see the world and would not let them stay in their holes all their life." Yet another difference between the two men's responses to Tosun had to do with this question: "If you could not live in Turkey where would you want to live?" The chief's response was "Nowhere. I was born here, grew old here, and hope God will permit me to die here." Yet the grocer could imagine himself living outside of Turkey, as shown by this response: "America, because I have heard that it is a nice country and with possibilities to be rich even for the simplest persons." Yet the grocer's dreams were never fulfilled, for he died in Balgat several years later.
It was Lerner's study which was fundamental to the focus on the aspirations-fulfillment or expectations-fulfillment gap throughout the previous publication, Beyond Sociology's Tower of Babel (Phillips: 2001). It was there that the senior author introduced a schematic diagram, "Figure 1-1. The invisible crisis: the escalating gap between expectations and fulfillment," which is reproduced here with a changed figure number (2001: 20). This is a diagram not based on any one specific study, but rather deriving from many different studies suggesting the nature of the change from
Figure 1 about here
preindustrial to modern society. The top curve of rising expectations or aspirations illustrates the great difference between the chief's aspirations on the left-hand side (preindustrial society) and the grocer's aspirations on the right-hand side (modern society). As for the lower curve, fulfillment of expectations, we see that curve gradually moving toward the horizontal.
As a result, the two curves are close to one another within preindustrial society and increasingly further apart as we move into modern society, illustrating an increasing "gap between what we want and what we are able to get." We may see the chief as located on the left or preindustrial side of Figure 1 where the gap between the two curves is small ("What could be asked more?"). And we can see the grocer as located on the right or modern side of Figure 1, where the gap is very large ("I have told you I want better things"). These two individuals, taken together, suggest a long-term trend from preindustrial to modern society. The scientific and industrial revolutions beginning in the 17th century and continuing to the present day not only have transformed the physical world. They have also yielded what has been called a "revolution of rising expectations," where the modern individual has learned to want more and more yet has been unable to fulfill those accelerating desires to an increasing extent.
Both material and nonmaterial goals or values are involved in this revolution of rising expectations or aspirations. For example, the grocer not only wants "a bigger grocery shop in the city, have a nice house there, dress nice civilian clothes." He also would like to "make roads for the villagers to come to towns to see the world and would not let them stay in their holes all their life." His desire to help others is linked to fundamental and widely-shared nonmaterial or intangible goals associated with political revolutions that accompanied the scientific and industrial revolution. For example, the American revolution pointed toward a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people," in Lincoln's words. And the French revolution emphasized the ideals of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." Those revolutions illustrate a great change: from an emphasis on hierarchy in government and elsewhere to a concern for equality and the worth of every individual.
Yet just as the grocer experienced hierarchy in his own village, where the farmers saw him as the lowest of the low, so do we all experience continuing hierarchy or social stratification in almost every aspect of life, despite our egalitarian ideals or values. This is a finding of modern social scientists that is backed up by literally thousands of studies. Persisting hierarchy is to be found not only in the world of work, where almost every occupation reflects it. We find it as well in the school, in church, in the family, in friendship groups, and in informal and fleeting relationships. Looking at Figure 1, the persistence of such hierarchies in all walks of life helps us to understand the failure of that lower curve--of the fulfillment of expectations or aspirations--to rise up to meet the upper curve of expectations or aspirations. It appears to be the case that patterns of social stratification or persisting hierarchy generally work to prevent the individual from fulfilling expectations. We can see from the limited rise of the bottom curve that there has indeed generally been some increase in that fulfillment, but that increase does not prevent a widening gap. Yet we must bear in mind that Figure 1 is no more than a schematic diagram., and that we will be gathering evidence on its validity throughout this book.
The English poet, Robert Browning, had something to say about this aspirations-fulfillment gap: "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" Browning is arguing that if we fail to create some gap between what we want and what we already have, then we drastically reduce our basic motivations. And it is those very motivations which are basic to our ability to fulfill our highest ideals. This suggests the idea that our curve of aspirations or expectations should indeed be above our curve of fulfillment in Figure 1, working to pull up that curve of fulfillment. Yet if we examine Figure 1 we find a much different situation, where the gap between the two curves continues to increase with no evidence that the upper curve is succeeding in pulloing up the lower curve. Thus, what Browning suggests is an ideal situation which we might, hopefully, move into once we learn how to move our curve of fulfillment close to our curve of aspiration. We must first discover the nature of the forces preventing our fulfillment from moving up. As a result of those forces, we often choose to give up on our aspirations, coming to believe--as did the grocer of Balgat--that we cannot fulfill them. An alternative is to keep hope alive, which is a basis for the optimism of the scientific method.
The historian Daniel Boorstin published The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961) a few years after Lerner's The Passing of Traditional Society appeared. Boorstin emphasized this problem of the aspirations-fulfillment or expectations-fulfillment gap:
We expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical. We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be inspired by mediocre appeals for "excellence,". . .to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly. . .to revere God and to be God. Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer (1961: 3-4).
This expectations-fulfillment gap that Boorstin describes has implications far beyond our resultant feelings of disappointment at not having a compact car that is spacious, not staying thin while eating, and not being ever more neighborly while being constantly on the move. There are also our expectations for peace and love in a world full of war, violence and prejudice; for safety in a world with increasingly deadly weapons, for equality in a world of hierarchy; for the well-being of the human race in a world of poverty and disease; and for institutions and people governed by reason in a world full of ignorance. These are some of the aspirations-fulfillment or expectations-fulfillment gaps referred to in the first paragraph of this Introduction. They are also contradictions between our ideals or cultural values and our actual practices which fail to help us fulfill those ideals. And this is the broad problem--linked to a great many specific problems--that will be our focus throughout this book.
It is the Web and Part/Whole approach which enabled us to locate this broad problem. For one thing, that approach opens up to long-term historical situations, and this problem has been developing over at least the four centuries of the scientific and technological revolutions. Also, the Web and Part/Whole approach opens up to both cultural values or aspirations (top curve of Figure 1) and patterns of social organization like stratification and bureaucracy which limit their fulfillment (bottom curve), phenomena usually kept separate and studied by different specialists. In addition, we have both the use of gradational language (emphasized in Figure 1) as well as dichotomous and metaphorical language (emphasized in the story of the grocer and the chief), suggesting the importance of both quantitative and qualitative research. Still further, it is an interactive rather than a stratified worldview or metaphysical stance which has enabled us to develop this epistemology or approach to the scientific method.
As for the title of this book, if we assume that the aspirations-fulfillment gap sis increasing, then this suggests the development of a genuine crisis, indicating the ever greater frustration of fundamental cultural values and individual goals. It is the stuff that can easily lead to individual violence against others or against oneself. And all of this--given the highly abstract nature of cultural values or individual aspirations as well as the long-term genesis of this problem--remains relatively invisible. That invisibility makes the crisis all the more dangerous. For how are we to confront what we fail to see? In a war the enemy is concrete and we can thus more easily learn how to defend ourselves and also how to carry out offensives. But how do we fight what remains invisible?
Is this idea of an "invisible crisis" no more than hype to get an audience to pay attention to these ideas? Is it a piece with "gloom-and-doom" scenarios, designed to create fear in an audience? Does it have little relevance to the concrete day-to-day issues that all of us must face in everyday life? We think not. As for invisibility, how often do we look back at our own entire past, thinking of our myriads of experiences as we proceed in everyday life? How frequently do we think of what happened in the 19th century, let alone a stretch of four centuries? How often do we think of the entire history of the human race and to our potential future? How often do we blot out problems in the present and potential problems in the near future because we have no clue as to how they might be solved? How often is our awareness captured by the daily news cycle of the mass media with its focus on the last 24 hours of minor tragedies and minor accomplishments, all the while avoiding the big picture?
As for the presumably threatening nature of the aspirations-fulfillment gap and its possibly increasing size, to understand it more clearly we might compare it to Marx's thesis of a growing contradiction between the "forces of production" and the "relations of production" (Marx, 1849/1964: 147). With respect to the forces of production, Marx never emphasized the importance of culture, and it has been modern anthropology and sociology which have taught us its power and reach. We see that power and reach in a continuing revolution of rising expectations associated with the scientific and industrial revolutions. We see it also in ethnic conflicts in the Middle East that spawn terrorism, conflicts based on far more than concerns for a higher standard of living. Granting the heightening of materialistic expectations, there are also heightened nonmaterial expectations, as illustrated by the American civil rights movement, the women's movement and the gay/lesbian movement. Yet we fail to see how this powerful revolution of rising expectations or aspirations threatens all of us to the degree that it remains far from being fulfilled. That gap between the two curves of Figure 1 remains invisible, given its long-term and abstract nature. Marx's own historical perspective was, unfortunately, tied to a theory of inevitable class conflict. That idea certainly has not stood the test of time, although class conflict remains a most important phenomenon in modern society.
The relations of production have to do with the social organization of productive activities, including such universal patterns as social stratification and bureaucracy. Marx saw the impact of those relations on the individual worker in his essay on alienation, to be examined in Chapter 4. He saw the phenomenon of alienation as encompassing all of the structures experienced by the worker: physical, biological, social and personality. And he saw that phenomenon as stretching far beyond the workplace to impact all aspects of society. A conclusion Marx drew, which has worked to discredit his powerful insights on alienation, was the necessity of a violent revolution that would establish a supposedly temporary dictatorship of the proletariat. Yet that conclusion is by no means essential to his argument for the alienating impact of patterns of stratification in the workplace. This is what the aspirations-fulfillment gap depicted in Figure 1 is all about. And Marx's view of it as affecting all structures parallels our own analysis of it as a child of a stratified worldview or metaphysical stance. Instead of a violent revolution that will unseat the bourgeoisie from power, what we appear to require is a cultural revolution--based on a more effective epistemology or scientific method--that will address our fundamental problems like alienation. Apparently, nothing less than such a revolution could succeed in closing the aspirations-fulfillment gap depicted in Figure 1's schematic diagram. Failing such a vast change in modern society, it appears that our "invisible crisis" may continue to become ever more threatening, just as Figure 1's aspirations-fulfillment gap continues to increase.
The Plan of This Book
The chapter headings, reflect an effort to build on key concepts developed within the literature of sociology and, to a lesser extent, psychology. We have, for example, the concepts of interaction, social relationships, social stratification, cultural values, anomie, alienation, labeling and conforming behavior. From psychology we have perception and reinforcement. Of course, many other concepts from the social sciences as well as philosophy are employed within the various chapters, We see this approach of building on existing literatures as essential to scientific ideals and also to our own approach. These basic concepts have often been abandoned by contemporary social scientists in their efforts to distance themselves from what they see as the simplistic contents of introductory textbooks, and generally in their attempt to become highly specialized as a basis for climbing the ladder of success. Yet we see those concepts--linked to a broad framework encompassing structures and the situation--as providing a backbone that can enable us to integrate highly specialized findings. Our argument is not against such specialization but rather against parts of a vast body of social science findings which remain unattached to one another.
The headings of Chapters 1-12 all have the same dichotomous format, such as "Isolation Versus Interaction" and "Outward Versus Inward-Outward Perception" This reflects our interest in emphasizing both language's dichotomous and gradational potentials as well as our metaphysical assumptions. We see the left-hand side of these titles ("Isolation," "Outward Perception") as linked to a stratified worldview or metaphysical stance, with the right-hand side ("Interaction," "Inward-Outward Perception") linked to an interactive metaphysical stance. And we see the possibility of moving, gradationally, from the left-hand side to the right-hand side with respect to the phenomena discussed in each of these chapters. Realistically, we believe that presently we are all more or less close to the left-hand side or to a stratified worldview, and it is that metaphysical stance which prevents us from understanding the existence of our large aspirations-fulfillment gap. And we attach a sense of urgency to the idea of moving toward an interactive metaphysical stance, as suggested by the right-hand side of these chapter headings. Such movement will also take us away from our overemphasis on language's dichotomous potential and work to include language's gradational potential.
As for language's metaphorical potential, that is illustrated by references to "head," "heart" and "hand" in the headings of Chapters 3-11. We see a lack of serious attention to metaphor--or, more generally, figures of speech--throughout the social sciences as a very serious failing. Our ideals for the scientific method call for effective communication to others as well as for the understanding by social scientists themselves of the significance of their own work. Yet this lack of attention, to communication and understanding, which includes a lack of interest in the achievements of literature and the arts, compromises those ideals. It is a species of what C. P. Snow argued in his The Two Cultures (1959): "Literary intellectuals at one pole--at the other scientists." A key ideal of democracy is an educated electorate, and this requires communication between academics and ordinary folk. Lack of attention to figures of speech with its resulting lack of effective communication goes against that democratic ideal, making it difficult for the public to educate those in power to their responsibilities and to educate the sociologist about human behavior.
A central metaphor for this book as a whole, one that is not to be found in the table of contents, is Figure 1'sschematic diagram with its increasing gap between the curves of aspiration and fulfillment. This is the problem on which all of the chapters are focused, with each chapter except the final one exploring one aspect of this problem. It is one thing to write about this accelerating gap, yet it is quite another thing to depict that gap with its ominous increase from preindustrial to modern times. We know of the importance of geometry within the history of mathematics as well as the importance of analytic geometry for the development of modern mathematics. It is visual representations, akin to figures of speech, which have helped mathematicians throughout the ages move up language's ladder of abstraction to their abstract ideas. And such images are no less important for social scientists grappling with the complexities of human behavior. Yet it remains for us to provide evidence that this gap is in fact increasing.
As for the contents of the various chapters, we might note the importance of imagery in the selections listed in the table of contents. For one thing, we have a number of pieces of fiction represented: Abbott's Flatland (Chapter 1), Hesse's Magister Ludi (Chapter 5), Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (Chapter 8), Hoyle's The Black Cloud (Chapter 9), and Van Vogt's The Players of Null-A (Chapter 10). Yet images are by no means limited to those fictional examples, for many of the pieces of nonfiction convey powerful images. For example, Ivan Illich presents in his Deschooling Society (Chapter 8) a vision of social stratification throughout society as a kind of "schooling," where we all learn a "hidden curriculum" of conformity to the powers that be, just as children learn to conform to the desires of their teachers. His idea of "deschooling," then, is nothing less than a direction for getting rid of social stratification or persisting hierarchy in all of our institutions. This image of schooling suggests the immature nature of our societies. Illich's images of schooling and deschooling thus enable us to see more clearly the nature and implications of the abstract concept of social stratification.
A more well-known and influential example can be taken from Nietzsche's The Gay Science (Chapter 6), where he developed the idea that God is dead. When we understand that metaphor as invoking not just religious hierarchy but also patterns of persisting hierarchy or social stratification throughout society, then we can see it as constituting a powerful force for reinforcing sociological knowledge of the near-universality of those patterns. But there are many other examples of metaphorical power within the nonfiction books examined here. For example, there is Chua's title of her book, World on Fire (Chapter 7). There is Lundberg's image of a governmental official attempting "to fly the modern stratoliner without an instrument board or charts" (Chapter 11). There is Levin's image of human relationships as a kind of "see-saw" (Chapter 3). There is Marx's view of the workplace as producing workers who are "crude and misshapen," who are "slave[s] of nature," who live in "hovels," and who exhibit "cretinism" (Chapter 4).
Our argument in the above pages pointed toward the existence of an increasing gap between expectations and their fulfillment in modern society. Yet we view that argument as no more than an introduction to this idea of a growing gap, rather than providing substantial evidence for its existence. We wished to establish an intuitive basis for the hypothesis that will be tested within the following chapters, the first of the two basic hypotheses in this book:
(1) The gap between aspirations and their fulfillment is in fact increasing in modern society.
Evidence supporting this hypothesis would indicate that we are in fact threatened by an invisible crisis at this time in history. Such evidence would help us to understand the breadth and fundamental nature of the threat we are facing. And as a result we could learn to convert our invisible crisis into a visible one as a basis for confronting it effectively. The overall result would be much the same as an early warning system for the emergence of a monster tsunami, a wave large enough to threaten modern society as a whole. Presently, the social sciences have failed us in providing such an early warning system, and the results may well prove to be catastrophic.
Yet evidence for the existence of such an invisible crisis is not evidence bearing on how it might be confronted effectively, and that has to do with our second hypothesis:
(2) To the degree that a worldview or metaphysical stance is stratified versus interactive, there will be a large gap between aspirations and their fulfillment.
This has been our argument in the above pages as well as in prior publications, and the time has come to develop more systematic and comprehensive evidence bearing on it. Of course, a worldview or metaphysical stance is by no means the only factor behind a large aspirations-fulfillment gap, and we hope that this study will encourage others to investigate such factors as well as to corroborate the findings presented here. But a worldview or metaphysical stance appears to be the most invisible factor involved as well as the one that is most difficult to measure. And it may well prove to be the most important force operating to widen the gap between aspirations and their fulfillment, given its fundamental nature with its implications for every aspect of modern society.
Yet how can such extremely broad propositions be tested? Surely not with the traditional and highly specialized approach that conforms to a stratified worldview. For example, we are dealing with an extremely long stretch of time. Further, the gap has to do with both culture and patterns of social organization like stratification, two fields of knowledge that generally are kept very far apart by sociologists. And we must pay attention to physical, biological and personality structures, to social structure, and also to the momentary situation as well as long-term history, fields of knowledge kept even further apart throughout the academic world. It is by shifting to the Web and Part/Whole approach to the scientific method that we aim to carry forward scientific ideals into the complex realm of human behavior and link all of these phenomena. That approach also implies a metaphysical stance or worldview: an interactive versus a stratified worldview. It also involves a central ideal of the scientific method: addressing, over time, more and more of the forces relevant to the defined problem. The promise of this approach is not simply for the problem at hand but for all social science research. If it indeed proves to be effective, then it provides a direction for carrying forward scientific ideals into the range of complex problems that we humans face.
The practical difficulties involved in testing our two extremely broad hypotheses, even with the aid of the Web and Part/Whole approach, dictate that we make them more manageable. Our focus will be on the kinds of aspirations or expectations that are associated with existing cultural values throughout modern society, given that those values summarize the aspirations that are widely shared by individuals. For example, there are the cultural values of equality, freedom, individual worth and democracy. Thus, unique or idiosyncratic aspirations by particular individuals are not involved here. As for the fulfillment of expectations, our focus will be on the degree to which patterns of social stratification or persisting hierarchy exist throughout society. Such stratification, which contrasts with egalitarian interaction, restricts the fulfillment of people-oriented cultural values like equality, freedom and democracy. Also, stratification restricts the fulfillment of work-related cultural values--like achievement and success--for most individuals, given its invidious nature. As for the nature of "modern" society, our focus will be on the past four centuries, which have seen the origins and development of the scientific and industrial revolutions along with the continuing development of technologies primarily based on biophysical science.
In our effort to avoid a narrow approach to our two hypotheses in this book, we have centered on secondary analyses of previously-collected data--or previous theoretical, philosophical or literary arguments or examples--from 33 different works, three for each of the following eleven chapters. Such an approach is unusual but by no means unprecedented inside or outside of the social sciences. For example, "meta-analysis" procedures in preventive medicine collate thousands of studies and therapies in order to reach overall conclusions within a reasonable period of time. Within sociology the secondary analysis of data sets from a variety of archives--such as that for the U.S. Census--is a well-established procedure. Yet a major problem within secondary analysis is that the original data were collected for purposes other than those of the secondary analyst. Thus, the measurements employed within secondary analysis must make do with data not specifically designed for the purposes of the secondary analyst. Balancing this defect, however, is the credibility deriving from the use of multiple studies.
However, what is new in our own approach to secondary analysis is an emphasis on the abstract conclusions of the author or investigator rather than on the specific data collected in a given study. For those conclusions often carry the author's central images by contrast with the specific data obtained, granting the importance of such data. And it is those images, illustrating a key potential of language that social and biophysical scientists generally neglect, which are no less important than language's dichotomous and gradational potential for helping us to understand the complexities of human behavior. This is also why the 33 selections in this book include the work of philosophers and literary figures along with social scientists, for we desperately need their contributions to imagery in order to understand our situation as human beings and the problems we are facing at this time in history. This is not at all a question of viewing those authors as second-class citizens who have been given grudging permission to be heard. Rather, their ideas are absolutely essential if we are to understand the invisible crisis of modern society, and they provide balance to the sociologist's orientation to dichotomy and--to a lesser extent--to gradation.
Of course, tests of our two hypotheses on the basis of new studies involving primary data would be most welcome. Such studies might develop measurement procedures that would help to shed light on these hypotheses