Social Cognition

On the Question of Methods in Social Cognition

When discussing the selection of methods for social cognition, it is crucial to emphasize the importance of avoiding the absolutization of any single approach while neglecting others. Such a danger indeed exists, as evidenced by the presence of two extremes.

The first of these extremes is the outright denial of the possibility of applying methods used to study natural phenomena to the investigation of social objects. This viewpoint is characteristic of certain representatives in the natural sciences and specialized fields. An illustrative example is the musings of Professor Muravyov, a physicist in Mark Aldanov’s novel Origins: "Physics," he believed, "can regard history only as a tiny superstructure over astronomy. But if we physicists, or at least I, are inclined to see the laws of nature as simple statistical generalizations, then the very notion of historical laws seems questionable. The historical process is a sequence of accidents." Unfortunately, this inclination to treat history and other social phenomena as mere chains of chance events devoid of any regularities is occasionally found even among social scientists. This leads them to reject the possibility of applying the methods of the natural sciences to social study—a position that is hard to agree with. As K. Kh. Delokarov rightly notes, the human being, as the fundamental bearer of sociality, is "simultaneously natural, social, and spiritual in essence." Therefore, attempts to apply the methods and concepts of natural sciences—whether mechanics, biology, geography, or otherwise—to the description of social processes and human behavior cannot be considered entirely devoid of meaning.

The second extreme involves attempts to fully transfer the natural-scientific approach, with all its methods, to the study of social phenomena. Examples of this can be seen in Jacob Moreno’s sociometric ideas and Talcott Parsons’ concept of "action." In striving to create a "comprehensive science" that would encompass all levels of human social life and include both the study and resolution of social problems, Moreno argued that "socionomy" (the science of fundamental social laws) should manifest itself in "sociodynamics" (a lower-level science concerning processes that occur primarily within small groups), "sociometry" (a system of methods for identifying and quantitatively measuring emotional and interpersonal relationships within small groups), and "sociatry" (a system of methods for studying individuals whose problems and difficulties are rooted in a lack of group behavior skills).

Parsons, in his analysis of the works of Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Vilfredo Pareto, and the British economist Alfred Marshall, sought to identify elements of a new unified approach to social phenomena that signaled a crisis in utilitarian and positivist interpretations of human existence. He came to understand human action as a self-organizing system. Unlike physical and biological systems of action, its specific characteristics lay, first, in its symbolic nature—regulated by mechanisms such as language and values; second, in its normative nature—where individual actions are governed by widely accepted norms and values; and finally, in its voluntaristic nature—a certain irrationality and independence from environmental conditions while still being shaped by subjective "definitions" of situations.

The truth, as the saying goes, lies somewhere in the middle. The idea of a significant future for the continued application of the natural-scientific approach and its methods to the study of the world was once expressed by I.P. Pavlov, who wrote: "All life, from the simplest to the most complex organisms, including, of course, humans, is a long series of ever more intricate balances with the external environment. The time will come—however distant—when mathematical analysis, based on the natural sciences, will encompass with grand formulas all these balances, eventually including the balance of life itself... Here and now, I defend and assert the absolute and undeniable rights of natural-scientific thought wherever and for as long as it can demonstrate its power."

In light of this, it can be concluded that the attempt to understand the social through the lens of the natural sciences, utilizing methods from specific scientific disciplines that investigate natural phenomena, is indeed legitimate. However, it is essential to remember that the application of these methods has its limits, determined by the specific nature of the objects under study—that is, social phenomena—and that exceeding these boundaries should be avoided.