From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Sat Oct 15 2005 - 11:37:31 EDT
---------------------------- Original Message ------------------------- Subject: The utility of statistics in social science From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <adsl675281@tiscali.nl> Date: Sat, October 15, 2005 11:20 am ----------------------------------------------------------------------- As regards the utility of social statistics to describe aggregate social trends and effects, Lenin started to write a pamphet on the topic during the first world war, a month or so before the February revolution in 1917. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/jan/00d.htm He never completed it. His focus seems to have been on the nationalities question and the demographics of the world population. His comments are interesting, insofar as he explains why quantitative investigation is relevant: namely, to get beyond "generalities", "phrase mongering" and concepts devoid of real content. This is, incidentally, the same Lenin who made a study of Hegel's dialectics. Here's an excerpt: "Of the essays here presented for the reader's attention, some are published for the first time, others appeared in various periodicals before the war. They deal with a question which now, naturally, arouses especial interest-the significance and role of national movements, the relationship between the national and the international. The biggest drawback, one most frequently encountered in all the arguments on this question, is lack of concreteness and historical perspective. It has become customary to smuggle in every manner of contraband under cover of general phrases. We believe, therefore, that a few statistics will prove anything but superfluous. A comparison with the lessons of the war of what we said before the war is not, in our view, unuseful. Unity of theory and perspective gives the essays continuity. Facts are stubborn things, runs the English saying. It comes to mind, in particular, when a certain author waxes enthusiastic about the greatness of the "nationality principle" in its different implications and relationships. What is more, in most cases the "principle" is applied Just as aptly, and is just as much in place, as the exclamation "many happy returns of the day" by a certain folk-tale character at the sight of a funeral. Precise facts, indisputable facts-they are especially abhorrent to this type of author, but are especially necessary if we want to form a proper understanding of this complicated, difficult and often deliberately confused question. But how to gather the facts? How to establish their connection and interdependence? The most widely used, and most fallacious, method in the realm of social phenomena is to tear out individual minor facts and juggle with examples. Selecting chance examples presents no difficulty at all, but is of no value, or of purely negative value, for in each individual case everything hinges on the historically concrete situation. Facts, if we take them in their entirety, in their interconnection, are not only stub born things, but undoubtedly proof-bearing things. Minor facts, if taken out of their entirety, out of their interconnection, if they are arbitrarily selected and torn out of context, are merely things for juggling, or even worse. For instance, when an author who was once a serious author and wishes to be regarded as such now too takes the fact of the Mongolian yoke and presents it as an example that explains certain events in twentieth-century Europe, can this be considered merely juggling, or would it not be more correct to consider it political chicanery? The Mongolian yoke is a fact of history, and one doubtlessly connected with the national question, just as in twentieth-century Europe we observe a number of facts likewise doubtlessly connected with this question. But you will find few people-of the type the French describe as "national clowns"-who would venture, while claiming to be serious, to use this fact of the Mongolian yoke as an illustration of events in twentieth-century Europe. The inference is clear: we must seek to build a reliable foundation of precise and indisputable facts that can be confronted to any of the "general" or "example-based" arguments now so grossly misused in certain countries. And if it is to be a real foundation, we must take not individual facts, but the sum total of facts, without a single exception, relating to the question under discussion. Otherwise there will be the inevitable, and fully justified, suspicion that the facts were selected or compiled arbitrarily, that instead of historical phenomena being presented in objective interconnection and interdependence and treated as a whole, we are presenting a "subjective" concoction to justify what might prove to be a dirty business. This does happen ... and more often than one might think. Proceeding from these considerations, we have decided to begin with statistics, fully aware of course that statistics are deeply antipathetic to certain readers, who prefer "flattering deception" to "base truths", and to certain authors, who are prone to smuggle in political contraband tinder cover of "general" disquisitions about internationalism, cosmopolitanism, nationalism, patriotism, etc. "
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Oct 16 2005 - 00:00:03 EDT