On What There Is, Maybe
Turner versus Turner on “the Social”
In: Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of the SocialSearch for other papers by Paul A. Roth in
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Abstract
Stephen Turner, scholar that he is of the history of the social sciences, deeply appreciates how the history of social science stands littered with failed theories, ones that aspired to formulate a science of the social. But why? A key insight guiding his work from early to late has been a keen appreciation of a need to clarify what such a science is a science of. That is, Turner almost alone among the leading social theorists of the last several decades understood that resolving prospects for a science of the social required first achieving clarity regarding the constituent elements of any such explanation. His guiding question is: Just what is it for something to be both social and yet sufficiently thing-like so there can be something for some science to explain? In tracking how his concerns refocus and evolve in the several decades that span the time from his first book to his most recent with respect to the question of what makes explananda social, one achieves a synoptic view of how debate regarding the idea of a social science reshapes as it moves into the twenty-first century.