Abstract
Poe Yu-ze Wan pursues a new foundation of the social sciences by developing a general categorial framework applicable to any special field and knowledge interest. Wan’s points of reference are realism in the philosophy of knowledge field, and the primacy of an ontological foundation of science as compared to epistemological claims. The most important single author Wan refers to is the philosopher Mario Bunge. Aside from this, throughout the book the reader witnesses a controversy with Niklas Luhmann, whose capricious systems theory is not introduced as an exciting variant but as a complete failure. “Bunge versus Luhmann” would be a proper subtitle to his book. It is said in advance that the merits of the book do not depend on who is winning (in Wan’s arrangement of the fight). However, there are great merits.
In Reframing the Social, Wan manages to both make comprehensible the vast and sophisticated contemporary literature in the field of scientific realism and ontology, and to introduce step-by-step his own theoretical model which may not be impressive by its originality but its coherence and completeness. With respect to the contemporary field of research, Wan brilliantly condenses theoretical frameworks into propositional lists of what is essential to, respectively, ontology (pp. 22–24), to the emergent systems approach (pp. 41–42, 46), to ontological levels (p. 52), to methods (p. 53), to holism (p. 64), to social systems (p. 62), and to systemic sociology (p. 63–64).
In the first two chapters, Wan motivates his choice of “critical realism” as being the best founded and most powerful philosophy of science. He refers to the British philosopher Roy Bhaskar, the more recently established Cambridge Social Ontology Group (CSOG), a broad variety of further authors (pp. 18–19), and always to Mario Bunge, all who witness the relevance of critical realism. If compared with competing epistemological “isms”—pragmatism, empiricism, (transcendental) idealism, constructivism—realism stands out for the axiomatic belief that our relation to reality cannot be sufficiently captured by means of our conceptual and methodical approaches. Just because our access to reality may forever be fragmented and provisional, its existence and structure “out there” cannot be limited to what we know or believe to know. Wan follows Roy Bhaskar in positioning realism between two fallacies (pp. 20–21). The “epistemic fallacy” tends to identify the structure of the world with the resulting effects of our capacities to investigate it. The “ontic fallacy” originates in assuming that reality determines what we know about it—ignoring the unavoidable impact of cognitive conditions and social impacts. “Critical realism” attempts to avoid the first by giving reality a chance to reveal its structures and powers (at least via surprises of all kinds) and the second by being aware of the Popperian proviso to all knowledge.
The alliance between realism as epistemological approach and realism as ontological conviction is hereby established and Wan leaves aside the still-ongoing discussion on the conceptual fine structure of philosophical realism. Instead, he turns to his main topic of “re-ontologizing the reality.” Ontology, by and large, is the search for the basic furniture of the world (to use a metaphor from Bunge’s 1977 book) which in its generality precedes every division of the world into fields of perception and research. Put briefly, the most basic concept is that of the “thing,” which is in a “state” or “change of state,” thus allowing for speaking of “facts.” “Swift changes” can be called “events,” prolonged “processes” (p. 42). Things have “properties” (tendencies, liabilities) which operate as “causal powers” and interact with others to produce “events.” Things are necessarily material, however they may, and usually are, complex compounds of other things. Interaction of things in a specific way generates “systems.” Systems generate features which are not possessed by their components. The interaction between components may change their basic outfit. The next construction step is the introduction of “levels.” Every system of any order consists of elements of a system of lower order and contributes elements to a system of higher order (p. 50)—as we observe in chains like molecules-cells-organs-bodies, or people-groups-classes. Levels let systems consist of “parts” and make them the “wholes” of parts. The final conceptual step introduces “mechanisms” in which the working of a system becomes manifest and therefore allows for finding causal explanations, even if there is no ideal way for their disclosure.
The essential features of this ontological model are captured in Bunge’s CESM-model, the letters standing for composition, environment, structure, and mechanism. Wan gives a concise description. Again, Wan provides well-organized lists of items specifying the model’s conceptual (seven items), methodological (six), and research strategic (six) features. A rather interesting amendment is the author’s reflection on the possibility to expand the concept of causality by means of the neglected Aristotelian variants of formal, material, and final causes (pp. 133–136). The final chapter adds a thoughtful examination of “analytical” philosophy which Wan interprets as reductionist in the sense that all social action should be reduced to individual action. He insists, again following Bunge, also that social systems have powers and dispose of emergent causal mechanisms which cannot be reduced to lower levels. Whether methodological individualism or emergent systemism, the normative message for doing proper science is to investigate by all means causal mechanism.
Importantly, Wan distinguishes clearly between the widespread search for statistical regularities and the attempt to discover causal mechanisms. While statistics more or less follows Humean empiricism and positivist nomologism, realistic inquiry is inspired by the belief in the powers of nature. Chapter Seven, “Mechanismic Explanation in Social Science: An Assessment,” is one of the most fruitful chapters. It brings to the fore divergent consequences implied in the options between empiricist and realist accounts of doing research. “Bringing causal powers back in” is Wan’s utmost concern. Whoever wishes to become introduced to the contemporary philosophical debate on causality (with special reference to social causality) cannot do better than studying this book.
Now, to the general framework for ontologies of all kinds in all domains. Wan’s excellence is in the precise definitions of concepts, the fine tuning of their relations, the formation of a comprehensive model, and his regard to a vast amount of literature. The above aggregation of key words can by no means make visible the efforts Wan has invested to bring in virtually all authors relevant to each topic, to ponder carefully different approaches, and to construct a coherent whole of “emergent systemism.” However, big theoretical surprises are not his business.
Theoretical surprises are more associated with the competing approach to systems theory by Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998). Throughout this book, Luhmann is denounced as an enemy in his own camp, and more dangerous than any combatant from a different one. According to Wan, Luhmann is wrong on virtually every point. His ontology is “imaginary,” “impervious to empirical tests and theoretical critic” (p. 21), “out of step with contemporary science” (p. 65), suffers from a “pessimistic/fatalistic understanding of complex social systems” (p. 107) and a “conflation of the ontological and the epistemological” (p. 16), and is “deeply flawed” on the issue of whole and parts (p. 49). Some readers may take Wan’s criticism as welcome munitions, others may be puzzled by his complete unwillingness to weigh the pros and cons. The point seems to be a Kuhnian one: there are competing paradigms of ontology-based realist systems theory and of an epistemology-based constructivist alternative but they cannot be appreciated fairly from one or the other position. Indeed, it would be futile to go accurately through Wan’s partisan presentation of Luhmann’s theory step-by-step, touching upon Luhmann’s “holistic excesses” (p. 48), his “inept understanding of emergence” (p. 72), viewing “human beings/psychic systems” as the “environment of social systems” (p. 87), his political “fatalism to participative planning” (p. 92) on the basis of the “non-steerabilitiy of complex social systems” (p. 101), and his replacement of causal analysis by “structure-functionalism” (pp. 110-117). For Wan the common denominator of all deficiencies is the neglect of an ontological foundation of systems theory. Since Luhmann is confessedly epistemologically orientated, compromises are out of sight. A few comments concerning the essential differences are added.
Luhmann’s initial concern is not the “being” of a social system but its capacity to describe itself and its external reference. This primacy of the ontology of the system’s observer and the sociological observation of how observers draw distinctions and construe semantics is at the heart Luhmann’s analysis—be it addressed to systems of intimacy, organizations, or functional systems. In Wan’s theory the observer is almost not present, just following the received view of the sciences in which the photographer never appears in the picture. Luhmann’s originality certainly has to do with the attempt to lay ground for a social theory in which the observation of observing systems is basic, including the paradoxical reflexivity between observation and second-order observation in observing systems (as Heinz von Foerster put it). This is why ensuring system identify in an environment is considered more important than observing the parts of a whole. A fruitful comparison would have needed to take into account this point of departure.
The most heated controversial point (see p. 49) is Luhmann’s exclusion of people (or actors with flesh and blood) from all social systems or, positively, the sole acceptance of communicative operations as sociological “things.” If this is taken to say that all kinds of psychic, biotic, and environmental forces are irrelevant, this is a trivial misinterpretation. They are essential—but they should be studied by scientists who know the stuff: psychologists, biologists, environmentalists, and others with the capacity, methods, and instruments to analyze personalities, dirty water, illnesses, and climate change. A sociological observer, Luhmann would insist, is restricted to observe how these matters are communicated, the communication provided by the scientists mentioned included. The methodological advantages and theoretical moves being opened by a supposedly weak ontology should have received more attention.
Compared to Luhmann’s sociology, it seems fair to say that Wan (and Bunge) are much closer to the analysis of social systems in terms of a modern interdisciplinary approach, joining together the results and competences from various fields and thereby attempting to model the interaction mechanisms of a variety of forces. Fruitful, relevant, and influential as this may be in politics and in “reframing the social,” it should not completely invalidate Luhmann’s approach to understand the social by means of its essential communicative function.