Positivist sociology borrows natural-science criteria and lacks the dialectical principle
Evidence
Sociology has been an attempt to create a method of historical and political science in a form dependent on a pre-elaborated philosophical system, that of evolutionist positivism, against which sociology reacted, but only partially. It therefore became a tendency on its own; it became the philosophy of non-philosophers, an attempt to provide a schematic description and classification of historical and political facts, according to criteria built up on the model of natural science. It is therefore an attempt to derive “experimentally” the laws of evolution of human society in such a way as to “predict” that the oak tree will develop out of the acorn. Vulgar evolutionism is at the root of sociology, and sociology cannot know the dialectical principle with its passage from quantity to quality. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1524
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines Gramsci’s critique of sociology as ‘philosophy of non-philosophers’ built on vulgar evolutionism — a key negative definition in his historical-materialist toolkit.
- XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School critique of positivism as naive science-modeled social analysis, and to how later theorists reject ‘laws of social evolution’ in favor of historically specific critique. — connects to: Sociology attempts an exact positivist science of social facts — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1523; Sociology is a positivist science of social facts, a philosophy in embryo — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1523; Negative dialectics preserves undefined experience as a counterweight to philosophies of science — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2578 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Sociology attempts an exact positivist science of social facts
#exemplifies(1.00) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1523 - Sociology is a positivist science of social facts, a philosophy in embryo
#exemplifies(0.95) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1523 - Sociology derives from vulgar evolutionism and cannot grasp the dialectical principle
#expands(0.95) - Negative dialectics preserves undefined experience as a counterweight to philosophies of science
#responds-to(0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2578 - Splitting praxis into sociology and metaphysics erases the dialectic.
#qualifies(0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1546