Pr

of
ile
Prof
ofile

MARIO BUNGES
PHILOSOPHY OF
SOCIAL SCIENCE
Andreas Pickel

hilosophy of social science is not widely considered a crucial or even indispensable implement in the toolbox of practicing sociologists,
economists, political scientists, and others. Among
the good reasons for this absence is the fact that
much philosophy of social science is not particularly relevant for the working social scientist. It is
in many cases just another highly specialized field
that is only tenuously connected to the concerns of
those whose practice it purports to study.The three
books reviewed in this essay represent notable exceptions to this rule.
Mario Bunge is a scientists philosopher of science. His works are not distant reflections of a philosopher who is far removed from the problems
encountered by scientists in the field. Rather, in
his studies, which also cover an astounding range
of disciplines in the natural sciences, his approach
is to describe and analyze scientific research, and
identify and criticize its philosophical presuppositions. See Bunges Philosophy of Physics (Dordrecht:
Riedel, 1973); with Martin Mahner, Foundations
of Biophilosophy (Berlin/Heidelberg/New York:
Springer, 1997); with Ruben Ardila, Philosophy of
Psychology (New York: Springer, 1987).Unlike most
philosophers of science, he works from the inside
out, taking as his point of departure the practice
and problems of the disciplines he investigates.
At the same time, however, Bunge is also a
philosophers philosopher of social science. His
eight-volume Treatise on Basic Philosophy, (published between 1974 and 1989 by Reidel) his early
work on causality, his later work on Scientific Materialism and The Mind-Body Problem, taken to-

gether constitute perhaps the most comprehensive

and systematic philosophy of the twentieth century.
Bunges philosophical mission is to help restore the
unity of knowledge in an age when much of academic philosophy is divorced from the sciences, or
has even turned against them, and when the unity
of the sciences is threatened from within by their
fast-paced growth and increasing specialization. In
Bunges work, philosophy and science are part of
the same project, and it is this that makes his philosophy of science of such general significance for
the working scientist.
Bunges forays into the social sciences in the three
books reviewed here should be placed in this larger
context. Finding Philosophy in Social Science is a
systematic application of his general philosophy of
science. See Bunges Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1,
From Problem to Theory; Vol. 2, From Explanation to Justification, rev. ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.:
Transaction Publishers, 1998). It starts by mapping
out the various relationships between social science
and philosophy. The first two parts of the book,
From Fact to Theory and From Explanation to
Justification, could well serve as core reading for
any foundation course in the social sciences. The
first part explores, in Bunges usual compact and
precise fashion, basic concepts such as pattern,
causation, chance and chaos, social fact, concept
and proposition, fuzziness and exactness, ideal type,
approach and paradigm, problem, hypothesis,
theory and model, reduction, and reductionism, to
mention a few.
The second part explores basic concepts such
as description, explanation, Verstehen, social indi-

MARIO BUNGES PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

71

cator, reality check, applied science, technology,

pseudo-science, and ideology, as well as the role of
values and morals in social science. The third part
of the book examines a large number of fundamental philosophical problems in social science, including individualism and holism, idealism and materialism, subjectivism and realism. It is also in this
part that he presents his own systemic approach to
social science, on which more below. In addition,
this part contains powerful criticisms of many contemporary approaches in the social sciences, such
as vulgar empiricism and crypto-empiricism, pragmatism, social constructivism, and relativism.
The final chapter is devoted to a brilliant and
devastating critique of rational choice theory. Bunge
leaves no doubt about his own position on all these
fundamental problems. His is neither individualist
nor holist but systemist. He defends an emergentist
materialism against idealism and various forms of
reductionist materialisms; ratio-empiricism against
intuitionism, vulgar empiricism and pragmatism; and
scientific realism against subjectivism, conventionalism and relativism. Notwithstanding the relevance
of this book for social science, philosophers may
generally feel more at home with it than social scientists. This is where the second book under review comes in.
Social Science under Debate surveys and assesses
the entire range of major social science disciplines
sociology, economics, political science, cultural
science, and history. The sheer scope of the literatures the author attempts to cover is brazenly ambitious and audacious, as most social scientists who
struggle to keep up with the developments in their
field will agree. Bunges highly critical discussion
of major schools and approaches in the five disciplines is unlikely to make him new friends among
the many social scientists who follow one or the
other of the approaches he criticizes. No Kuhnian
reassurances of normal science here. Nor will his
roughly 40-page per discipline treatment make it
difficult for opponents to dismiss his attempt as
superficial and distorted. Yet Bunge pursues a particular purpose in his critical survey of the social
sciences: to work towards a unified social science,
and one that is better linked to its potential applications, that is, to social technology. Accordingly,
the second part of the book takes on the applied
disciplines devoted to sociotechnologies: action
theory, law, management technology, normative
economics, and large-scale social planning. As Bunge
states in his Preface (p. x):This book is not an impartial description and dispassionate analysis of the
72

SOCIETY MAY / JUNE 2001

cur rent state of the social sciences and

sociotechnologies. Far from gloating over accomplishments, it focuses on flaws likely to be rooted
in either mistaken philosophies or ideological dogmas. Like his general philosophy of science, systematically applied and elaborated in Finding Philosophy in Social Science, Social Science under
Debate is based on a systematic, coherent, and lucid philosophy. In fact, the author conveniently
manages to sum up his master ideas in a dozen
statements at the end of the Preface (p. xiii).
The third of Bunges books under review, The
Sociology-Philosophy Connection, is somewhat
narrower in scope. It combines elements of both
works already discussed, but contains a number of
previously published contributions that cannot be
found in either. Of particular importance are the
two chapters that introduce Bunges conception of
mechanismic explanation, a crucial part of his social philosophy that is further discussed below. A
third chapter is a discussion of quantification and
measurement that is a gem for those of us too easily
intimidated by social scientists wielding apparently
sophisticated mathematical methods. Bunges report on instances of pseudoquantitation includes
examples from the work of Vilfredo Pareto, Samuel
Huntington, Gary Becker, and James Rosenau. In
addition to another critique of rational choice
theory, he takes to task Poppers social philosophy,
c r i ti ca l th eo r y,
p h eno m eno l og y,
ethnomethodology and interpretive anthropology,
as well as the constructivist-relativist sociology of
science. Fittingly, his final chapter is entitled In
Praise of Intolerance toward Academic Charlatanism.
All three books reviewed here could individually
serve as an introduction to the philosophy of social
science and to the social philosophy of Mario Bunge.
However, each offers specific elements not to be
found in the others. Finding Philosophy in Social
Science provides a systematic introduction to basic
concepts used in all social sciences, as well as a
survey and critique of widely held philosophical
doctrines and assumptions. Social Science under
Debate surveys five major social science disciplines
and five types of social technologies. This book is
particularly useful for those interested in problems
of theory and practice, policy issues, and the relationship between ideology and science. Finally, The
Sociology-Philosophy Connection is a general introduction to explanation in the social sciences, as
well as a critique of some major social philosophies,
approaches, and methods.

Bunges books on social science are chock-full of

ammunition for anyone who wants to expose the
philosophical fallacies in the work of intellectual
opponents. To be sure, Bunge mercilessly exposes
weak and erroneous assumptions in all philosophies,
approaches, and disciplinary traditions. This alone
constitutes an immense contribution to social science, yet would likely elicit the justified response
from the criticized that demolition is always easier
than construction. Bunge would agree. While his
philosophy shares a great deal of common ground
with the critical rationalism of Karl Popper (which
Bunge dubs logical negativism), he is adamant that
criticism, refutation, and falsification should not
be overrated. [E]xaggerating the importance of
criticism at the expense of creation and analysis, or
of observation and experiment, comes dangerously
close to both scholasticism and skepticism, as well
as to the fashionable view that all research is just
discussion. After all, negative truths are more plentiful and thus cheaper than positive ones (Sociology-Philosophy Connection, p. 127). It is one of
the great strengths of Bunges philosophy of social
science that in addition to powerful criticism, it
offers a variety of constructive proposals for how
to do better. By way of illustration, two of his fundamental ideas in this respect will be briefly discussedsystemism and mechanismic explanation.
A longstanding and unresolved philosophical
debate in the social sciences is over the primacy of
individualism or holism. Rational-choice theorists,
for instance, are strict methodological individualists, whereas structural-functionalists are methodological holists. Their disagreements stem in part
from fundamentally different conceptions of social
reality. Is a society a whole transcending its members, or is a society simply an aggregate of persons?
The methodological implications of this basic ontological disagreement are the source of unfruitful
division and unfortunate confusion in the social sciences. Bunges solution to this problem, implicitly
practiced by many who intuitively sense the inadequacies of both positions, is to reject yet affirm
both. His dialectical solution is called systemism.
Systemism is an alternative to both individualism and holism. It accounts for both individual
agency and social structure. It postulates that everything is a system or a component of one. It models every system in terms of composition, environment, and structure. It breaks down society into
four major subsystemsbiological or kinship system, economic system, political system, and cultural system. It can be applied at sub-national, na-

tional, and transnational levels of analysis. Above

the level of societies organized within nation-states,
there are regional supersocieties (e.g. the European Union) as well as the world social system. It is
important to note that, unlike Parsonian systems
theory, systemism is not a theory but only a framework or approach, just a skeleton to be fleshed
out with specific hypotheses and data (Finding
Philosophy in Social Science, p. 265). As such, it is
not static or blind to processes of conflict and
change. [A]doption of the systemic approach will
avoid the pitfalls and tunnel vision which the narrow specialist invariably falls into, incapable as he
is of taking into account any features that are not
studied in his field. In other words, systemism favors interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity. By
the same token, it helps to avoid the costly mistakes made by the specialistscientist or technologist, policymaker or managerwho overlooks most
of the features of the real system he studies, designs, or steers (Ibid., p. 266).
Mechanismic explanation, Bunges second major contribution to the social sciences to be discussed here, should not be confused with mechanical explanations. Whereas a few of the mechanisms
studied by contemporary science and technology
are mechanical, most are not. Indeed, there are
mechanisms of many kinds: electromagnetic,
nuclear, chemical, cellular, intercellular, ecological, economic, political, and so on. For example,
inclusion and exclusion, conflict and cooperation,
participation and segregation, coercion and rebellion, are conspicuous social mechanisms. So are
imitation and trade, migration and colonization,
technological innovation and the various modes of
social control. Any explanation involving reference to a mechanism m ay be said to be
mechanismic (The Sociology-Philosophy Connection, p. 18-19).
Mechanismic explanation differs from most standard modes of explanation employed in the social
sciences: the neopositivists covering law model
of scientific explanation, the interpretive approach
of the hermeneutic or Verstehen school, as well as
functional and teleological modes of explanation.
We define a social mechanism as a mechanism in
a social system. Since every mechanism is a process in some system, a social mechanism is a process involving at least two agents engaged in forming, maintaining, transforming, or dismantling a
social system. There are many types of social system: think, for example, of childless couples and
extended families, streetcorner gangs and informal

MARIO BUNGES PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

73

social networks, schools and churches, factories

and supermarkets, economies and polities, and local governments and multinational blocs. Correspondingly, there is a large variety of social mechanisms (Ibid., pp. 56-57).
The concept of mechanism should not be confused with the concept of system. Note that our
definition presupposes a distinction between system and mechanism: the latter is a process in a system. This distinction is familiar in natural science,
where one is not expected to mistake, say, the cardiovascular system for the circulation of the blood
or the brain with mental processes. But it is unusual in social studies (Ibid., p. 57).Mechanism
is to system as motion is to body, combination (or
dissociation) to chemical compound, and thinking
to brain (Ibid., p. 58). In the systemic view, agency
is both constrained and motivated by structure, and
in turn the latter is maintained or altered by individual action. In other words, social mechanisms
reside neither in persons nor in their environment
they are part of the processes that unfold in or
among social systems (Ibid., pp. 57-58). All mechanisms are system-specific: there is no such thing as
a universal or substrate-neutral mechanism (Ibid.,
p. 59).
There will be much to disagree with for social
scientists from various disciplines and paradigms,
if only because Bunge leaves virtually no stone
unturned. More important, here is a philosophy of

74

SOCIETY MAY / JUNE 2001

social science that is at once critical and constructive, unified and systematic, rooted in a thorough
and deep understanding of contemporary science
in general and the specific philosophical problems
of social scientific research in theoretical and applied disciplines in particular, clear on the distinctions between social science and social technology,
and explicit about the indispensable role of ideology, politics and morals in social studies. In short,
Bunges work constitutes a landmark contribution
to the social sciences.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS

Bunge, Mario. Finding Philosophy in Social
Science. New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1996.
Bunge, Mario. Social Science under Debate. A
Philosophical Perspective.Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1998.
Bunge, Mario. The Sociology-Philosophy Connection. New Brunswick and London:Transaction
Publishers, 1999.

Andreas Pickel is associate professor of political

science at Trent University in Canada. He is coauthor (with Helmut Wiesenthal) of The Grand Experiment: Contrasting Views on Shock Therapy, Transition Theory, and the East German Case.