Some remarks on the hard core of soft sciences

Maurice Godelier

pp. 237-246

in: Martin Carrier, Johannes Roggenhofer, Günter Küppers, Philippe Blanchard (eds), Knowledge and the world, Berlin, Springer, 2004

Abstract

This title is deliberately ironic and intended to provoke. Many scientists in the so-called "hard" sciences view social sciences as hardly sciences at all but rather, at best, as literary tracts that employ pseudo-arguments to express their authors' ideological positions. Here, again, I caricature, but I am not personally outraged when people denounce as "pseudo-scientific" writings that contain an eclectic mix of the ideas of Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard and other authors who have been elevated through no desire of their own to the status of gurus of thought.

Cited authors

Derrida Jacques

Foucault Michel

Lyotard Jean-François