Peter Emmerson

6.3

Part of this exercise has been to relate the difficulties experienced by sociologists with those of natural scientists. I have attempted to show that even though physicists are generally more distant from idealism than social scientists, their programme is not free of it, partly related to their partnership with the figurations of mathematicians who worship absolute truth. Even though Einstein was more tentative than Newton as regards his findings, many clearly believe that the theory of relativity is an absolute truth in waiting. Natural scientists have become to some extent, the victims of their own success, overconfident in their techniques, especially mathematics, and less sceptical of their conclusions. A famous example is Stephen Hawking who is on record as saying that he is close to solving, mathematically of course, the riddle of universe. Another is Richard Dawkins who is aware of the relative uncertainty of our conclusions but is emphatic that science is correct and that there is incontrovertible evidence that God does not exist. The Hadron Collider at Cern is being used to find the particle of particles upon which all matter is founded. I have not the slightest intention of trying to denigrate the remarkable achievements of Professors Hawking and Dawkins, or the scientists who can construct and now run such an extraordinary machine as the Collider, nor all their colleagues past and present; the products of science are too impressive to treat them with anything other than respect. However, I do wonder about the possibility of realising such exalted goals in a universe so relatively uncertain. As I’ve tried to argue, idealism is misleading and has the capacity to allow the formation of unuseful conclusions. Mathematics is an application that in some aspects has become an ideal – the calculations of a Newton, an Einstein, a Heisenberg, a Hawking are speculations about absolute truths believed to be existent in the universe. This is secular deism. I suspect that their objectives will not be achieved, because in the universe I inhabit full of relative uncertainty, low on ideals, where question replaces question, as model replaces model, human values always enter into it!

On these grounds the essay has tried to offer a critique of models that rely on ideals such as ‘certainty’ and ‘uncertainty’, and that it is better to look at these as strong or weak beliefs respectively. I was listening one morning to a Reith lecture by the Astronomer Royal, Professor Sir Martin Rees, who was speculating about the limits of scientific knowledge. He stated that we know what happened fractions of a second after the ‘big bang’ that is believed to have formed the present universe. There was nothing tentative about this statement which surprised me and yet does not. I emailed him to ask why he was so certain and he very generously replied, referring to calculations based on background radiation and the levels of helium and deuterium in the universe. He went on to say that there is no credible alternative. Unlike the tenor of his lecture, this conclusion does contain an element of doubt in that an alternative may yet be developed. However, to all intents and purposes he is certain – why? His confidence is founded on the rock of mathematics, an ideal that justifies a particular belief over another. I am not sufficiently knowledgeable nor skilled to challenge Professor Rees’ conclusion on astronomical or mathematical grounds but if eminent scientists such as he are certain about their findings there is still plenty to do to promote a more tentative approach that espouses relative certainty/uncertainty, even after 400 years of scientific debate in which certainty has been increasingly questioned.

The continued level of resistance to a world that is relatively uncertain, especially where eminent scientists are concerned, is important. Some of the reasons for this have been addressed in this essay. However, even those who are not schooled in the nature of social theory could be sufficiently aware of the relative uncertainty of factual things, especially the highly educated. Nevertheless, high status people, some of whom are mentioned in this article, who are members of figurations that have enormous influence on decisions made in the UK, persist in making statements that accept uncritically the separation of politics from science from morality. Whilst some of those involved are professional ideologists such as Michael Portillo, others such as Lord Bingham and Professor Wolpert could surely in attitude be more discriminating. Yet Professor Wolpert was adamant that his science was not sullied by moral imperatives. This is interesting if only because of the incredibly sensitive area in which Professor Wolpert practices his science. Stem-cell research has stupendous implications for the future of human beings and yet one of the men who is managing this research is almost totally naïve or telling fibs. Einstein was distraught about the relationship between his work and the development of nuclear weapons: even though his moral purpose may well have been the good of humanity, he could not control the eventual outcome. Does not Professor Wolpert see that he is at least to some degree culpable for the future use of his work? Does he not see that he is part of a community that will override any idealism that directs his science if it can profit anyone?

The goings on at the UEA climatology department are a fine example of the relationship between moral belief and scientific practice: at least the climatologists know the importance of slanting the message because the message is at all times relatively uncertain. If people like Professor Wolpert understood this we would be less prone to accepting scientific findings as truths and more sceptical of their potential as forces for the benefit of people. This is not an argument against science, for I am proud to be a scientist; it is an argument against the idealism in science, it is an argument for the promotion of tolerance because we live in a relatively uncertain world, a view of the world that has been promoted by scientists above all, albeit clearly unaware of their idealism. Science is about knowledge held as relative uncertainties, not as uncertainties.

 6.2

 If we learn Elias’ lesson it is that when doing science we should speak in reality congruent ways such as relative certainty or relative uncertainty that relate to continua not dichotomies. Going beyond these limits we fall prey to the traps of idealism, into which it is so easy and comfortable to fall; the place where Homo clausus lives and sleeps in dichotomous reverie, not haunted by the doubt that accompanies a closer association with reality, secure and comfortable in the certainty of pure being. Marx missed the point when bemoaning capitalist people’s lack of critical awareness; religion is not the opiate, it is but a feature of a broader and more profound danger, a trap that Marx himself fell into – idealism. Safety lies at either end of the dichotomous rainbow where in a dream state ‘all’ is possible, where ‘I’ can be separated from ‘we’. I have found it all too easy to fall into the trap of using non-process words such as nouns, epitomised by dichotomies which are so entrenched in our language conventions: there are undoubtedly such instances still undetected in this essay. There is a need for constant vigilance to avoid such ‘trains to nowhere’. But just as importantly, there is a requirement for creativity so as to find new process words that will make doing social science less idealistic in future. If these things can be done we may be able to develop a more realistic sociology that will be engineered to detect more quickly the difference between science that is useful and pseudo-science that is too shrouded in ideals and too distant from reality to get a better hold on social problems.

This is not to suggest that in using a process approach the problem of how to produce more valid and reliable sociological evidence will be solved, but it does offer a sociological, scientific way of moving on from the impasse that emerged during the 1970s as Parsonianism and Marxism went into decline, and sociology was re-cast as another member of the humanities.

 6. Recap and Conclusion

 6.1

 In this essay I have tried to show how in using the model developed by Norbert Elias we may be able to confront more clearly some of the problems facing sociology, and probably social science in general, using sociological frameworks rather than those from theology or metaphysics: theometaphysics. I want to argue that this involves developing a process style of analysis that questions any material that tends to petrify or misrepresent the dynamism of social life. The language and concepts that sociologists use are crucial in this undertaking and with this in mind I have attempted to explore the use of social influence as an alternative to power, and relative uncertainty as opposed to uncertainty. We might call these the tools of process sociology: process technology.

I have also tried to argue that what Elias’ sociology does is offer the possibility of resuming the social scientific business of sociology that Comte inaugurated by ditching the idealistic material that qualifies as theometaphysics so that we can do better science. Thus, there should be no claims to the truth, no claims of objectivity, no speaking of freedom or causality – all that process sociology can establish at present, other than banal causal explanations, is that sociological variables are interdependent with one another in a web of probabilities. In the spirit of this model I have argued that we should use the less-idealistic relative uncertainty, in order to help the move beyond static, dichotomous methods of thinking and analysis that paralyse our understanding of the social and natural universe.

This is a big task because of the immense complexity of social processes, which are arguably more challenging than those of natural science. I think it is fair to say that in life’s webs of activity, there is control, but only to a degree: we can predict with reasonable accuracy the time at which we arrive home from work. However, a person’s wider fates are much more relatively uncertain because of the complexity of the variables involved, whether it be those of absolute monarchs such as Louis XIV, or billionaire capitalists like Warren Buffet. We need more Homines aperti in sociology, people who think figurationally, who live at closer proximity to the outside world, who are sensitive to the flux that exists there and are willing to apply process technology to gain greater levels of conceptual proximity and perceptual interdependence: people who are in better shape to clear the utopian clutter that litters the social scientific path. The evidence suggests that such people are in a quite small minority, even in the West; hence the frustration of Darwinian disciples such as Richard Dawkins.

5.4.2 What sociologists can do for sociologists.

At least physicists have produced waves as conceptual technology to explain aspects of highly proximate materials such as liquids, even though using them to interpret the behaviour of radio technology may be stretching them beyond the distance needed for enough perceptual interdependence to provide a more thorough interpretation. Unfortunately, the same is not true for sociologists, or social scientists in general: it is as if sociologists have reached their version of the wave – particle dilemma just beyond the starting line with the issue of structure – agency for example. On one level both are pseudo-problems correlated with too high levels of idealism.

I would suggest that natural scientists have until now managed to resolve previous dead-ends because they are at a greater distance from idealism as their problems are inherently more practical: even though the idealistic impulse is explored through the activities of the immensely influential pure mathematical truth-finders, theologians and philosophers are at a much greater distance and play a much smaller part in the work of physicists than sociologists as I have explained earlier in the essay. Relatedly, natural scientists have had much greater success at making the leaps of imagination that go beyond the barriers imposed on their insight by theometaphysical conventions that specify outcomes in terms of ideals such as moral truth; if it works it’s sufficient. Such a position has allowed much greater proximity to the objects they research even with their dependency on pure mathematics: the attempt to model the much more alien sub-atomic world, where a whole new mathematics had to be invented by the figuration dominated by Heisenberg may be a step too far.

For sociologists with their much closer proximity to theologians and philosophers and their conventions, it is more difficult to see beyond the ideal horizon: theometaphysical conceptual technology is so ingrained in the thinking and perceptions of sociologists that the attainment of relative detachment takes more time. The very material sociologists analyse, people and that which bonds them together, are a source of ideals: there is no moral problem such as poverty in planetary analysis. Sociologists have a habitus much closer to Homo clausus than do biologists: over-involvement is everywhere. Correspondingly, it is arguable that sociologists need to pay greater attention to idealism and have more to gain by abandoning the use of ideals such as objectivity and exploring the possibilities of ‘relative detachment’. This humanizes the process of doing social scientific research by jettisoning pseudo-debates about alien experiences such as value-freedom, structure and agency. I might suggest that scientists are people who exercise their skills in self-control and conceptual sensitivity in order to create dynamic models, low in idealism. Such models require researchers to distance themselves sufficiently from their values so that they can interdependently gain closer proximity to the problem under consideration to allow them to do science. As far as I can see this will increase their level perceptual interdependency with their subject matter so that they can make better sense of it.

By de-idealizing sociological thinking and models sociologists may establish a better fit with their dynamic social subject matter and thereby improve their scientific understanding of social processes and the problems that occur. It strikes me at this point to mention something the Austrian psychologist Heider felt important, that human beings have a remarkable understanding of the world that social scientists can only dream about. On a daily basis we predict what will happen very well, not with exactitude but with sufficient skill to offer good probability of success. We go wrong more often than not because we allow our desires to over-ride our experience. Why therefore, should it not be the case that social science could improve its understanding with the help of more realistic concepts and models? People on one level are objects bound together by processes we cannot see. For early scientists the stars were connected by supernatural forces: the concept of gravity developed by Newton expressed God’s invisible divine laws. Gradually astronomers and physicists have moved away from theology and philosophy to achieve a level of ‘relative autonomy’ that facilitated a change in identity from natural philosophy to natural science. Yes, human beings have the ability to reflect and adapt their behaviour in a way that planets do not, but much of the time we act in an habitual fashion and cannot but reflect on how often we don’t learn the hard lessons of the past. In the heat of the moment we rely on habit, a compound of genetic predisposition and learning. Much of our thinking and activity is relatively predictable: rates of re-offending for those released from jail is a case in point. Is it not the models and concepts of social science that make such common sense regularities obscure? It is my argument that we should consider how idealism skews our perceptions, patterning our sensory experience with anti-real understanding and keeping us at a distance from that which we study, and what can be known. Is not the point about science when all is said and done that it just gets closer to the world of sensory reality than any other method? But to see more clearly you have to have the tools for the job. The microscope is a piece of technology that offers a greater degree of visual precision than the eye for small objects. It brings human thought processes much closer to the material it wants to understand. This closeness to the material, which is a feature of more reality-orientated models, helps distance researchers from their values to produce people with even greater relative detachment we call scientists, much less prone to flights of fancy. With less idealistic concepts and models sociologists might also produce better technology, process technology, and see more clearly.

Returning to the example of class. From an over-idealistic perspective, the processes involved in the problems inappropriately modelled as class are viewed through a veil of excessively static conceptual material that derives from the structural analyses of Marx and Weber: the limitations of structuralist models were discussed earlier in connection with Foucault (2.3.3) and Marx (4.2.2). In particular, by giving precedence to structure they dehumanize people who are explored as though they have no emotions: this is Homo clausus in action. Both models contain a set of class compartments which have not a hope I hell of mimicking the dynamics of identity and conflict. Such a rigid perspective is so distanced from that which it pretends to describe that it encourages the researcher to make the facts fit the theory, especially as the model being used is heavily idealistic and therefore prone to truth statements: if I look out on the world from the distance provided by the concepts of truth technology, I am supremely confident in ignoring or putting aside what doesn’t correspond to what I already know for definite.

From the perspective of a process model the initial move is towards relative detachment, (not the ideal noun of detachment which is nothing but a synonym for objectivity) that heightens the researcher’s consciousness of the danger of idealism. Such a move increases the likelihood of constructing a model much closer to the facts using what we might call process technology, i.e. dynamicized, operationalized concepts and models that fit much better with the material under consideration. Thus the researcher is much more in contact and sensitive to what is being studied and sees more, and in turn is much less influenced by truth statements and less likely to dispense with observations that don’t fit the theory. Because a process perspective is dynamic, its values are much more conditioned by ‘relative uncertainty’, and is less prone to favour any of the superior truth statements contained in the model.

5.4 Let’s get up closer: an exploration of conceptual proximity as perceptual interdependence – a better fit?

5.4.1 What sociologists can do for natural scientists.

 In his attempt to dynamicize the raw material of sociology by reducing what I see as the the level of influence of the old truth-finders and paving the way for the development of new more reality congruent concepts, Elias breathes life into the arid, petrified analysis typical of notions such as ‘class‘. In testing his replacement (‘the established and the outsiders‘) by studying people in a district of Leicester, he demonstrated how this type of approach can provide new insight into the complex dynamics of the conflicts experienced by different groups of residents, who for all intents and purposes were of the same social class. The research revealed the interdependencies of an intricate pattern of more realistic variables such as violence, length of residence, levels of social connectivity, stigmatization.

It seems to me that one explanation for this improvement is that in emphasizing the process approach we remove damaging amounts of idealism and at the same time, decrease the perceptual distance between social scientists and the problems they study. I want to suggest that this also has the benefit of clarifying what is observed, rather as a good quality lens allows microscopes to offer up more detail. The long process of the development of knowledge with all its ups and downs, advances and reversals, formations and destructions; has produced in science, a formal, less egocentric, less ideal method of analysis, that demands a high level of relative detachment and examines the world and human experience in terms of interdependencies.

This is particularly true of the natural sciences and their associated disciplines where the level of idealism is comparatively low anyway: natural scientists find restraining the level of over-indulgence in human values easier, as their models and observations are more reality congruent right from the start. Another way of putting this is to argue that the success of science is a function of relatively close conceptual proximity with the problem being addressed because it is low in idealism. Interrelatedly, there is a sufficiently high level of perceptual interdependence between models and the reality they attempt to mimic and explain. However, as scientists get closer to studying human beings the problems of over-involvement rise (increased interference of values): thus human biology has much more difficulty in having its findings validated than botany, evidenced by the angry battle between the evolutionists and the creationist theometaphysicians. The other area of difficulty with over-involvement mentioned earlier is pure science: see Hawking & Mlodinow and 3.2/3.3 above.

Probably the most influential model of science is still that of Karl Popper. Popper’s view is founded on the efficacy of rationality, whether verbal or mathematical, as the tool to assist the trial and error analysis of what we know. Social science has been much less successful than natural science for all the reasons so meticulously documented in Popper’s Poverty of Historicism. Nonetheless, Professor Popper does not consider Elias’ critique of historicism. Consequently, he does not see that the problem may well be a function of lack of conceptual development related to the excessive influence of theometaphysics. My point is that too high a level of theometaphysics in sociological concepts produces poor conceptual fit between sociological models and the material being studied which distances sociologists (and social scientists generally for that matter) from the subject matter to which they are intending to understand: they suffer from low perceptual interdependence in relation to their low conceptual proximity. It is not surprising therefore that Popper arrives at such a conclusion as regards historicism, as his model contains too much theometaphysics in analyzing fluid historical material using tools designed by ancient Greeks to explain stability!

Whilst natural scientists employ mathematics to guide their analysis as Popper says, the key feature of their approach, as far as I’m concerned, is the use of ‘reality congruent’ models, not the maths that sanctions it. From my point of view, these models use concepts that are low in idealism, and are more interdependent with the reality being studied, allowing a more precise view: without wanting to labour the issue to much, natural scientific concepts allow the observer to get much closer to reality because it is less mediated by idealism or values. In theoretical physics there are two models that try and explain the physical world: wave theory and particle theory. Both of these theories are useful but neither explains everything. Consequently, there has been a protracted struggle to rationalize the dilemma using a series of ingenious mathematical analyses, the latest of which is M-theory. Could however the problem be nearer home? Is it possible that the difficulty lies in the inability of physicists to find the conceptual means of getting close enough to their prey because they are too bound-up in knowledge conventions such as dichotomies (positive and negative being a very influential example) defined by philosophers long ago? – so much for philosophy being ‘dead’ Messrs Hawking & Mlodinow! The use of theometaphysical concepts such as dichotomy introduces a limit to the degree of engagement scientists can have with the problem under scrutiny, leaving them potentially too low in perceptual interdependency to gain a more adequate understanding.

The difficulty for physicists studying the sub-atomic universe is extreme. Could it be that at such enormous perceptual distances the conceptual apparatus available at present is never going to be viable? It occurs to me that concepts developed to understand planets such as wave or particle theory have insufficient proximity, and perceptual interdependence with the atomic world to allow the level of correspondence necessary for better explanation. By comparison, the experience of light is less distant in that we can see directly its effects. Correspondingly, we have higher levels conceptual proximity and perceptual interdependency: the adjectives used at present to measure it, such as speed or velocity seem useful in coming up with answers (not truths by the way) to important problems and have contributed to the development of incredible models such as those of Newton and Einstein. However, to get to an understanding of the noun – ‘what is light?’ – we must journey to a far more distant horizon which may need a totally different conceptual framework to bridge the gap. Unless we take the damaging effects of idealism more seriously we may never find out: one wonders whether dichotomic concepts such as ‘matter’ and ‘anti-matter’ which encourage us to ignore the detail that really exists are really helpful. Till then we stumble around re-jigging our models using wave and particle to understand alien places, nobly assisted by our committed figurations of truth-finders the mathematicians and philosophers.

Of course we must be prepared to accept that the development of the conceptual technology to provide good access to such distant areas of understanding could well be beyond the capacity of our remarkable brains. Only work will tell. It is my argument that we need to be high in relative detachment, high in conceptual proximity, high in perceptual interdependence if we are to stand a chance. From my perspective this implies a state of mind that is low in idealism, as distant as possible from the thoughts of Homo clausus and the theometaphysicians.

5.3 Let’s get rid of dichotomies.

 In his work Elias draws attention to the problem of dichotomies and the way in which they are interdependent with a static view of the universe. The word dichotomy derives from metaphysics arguing that our experience can be understood in terms of pairs of opposites such as ‘Good and Evil’, famously addressed by Nietzsche who was critical of such a style of analysis because it gives the impression that there is nothing in between the two extremes. I would go even further and suggest that in reality neither good nor evil exists; they are ideals, products of the mind of Homo clausus. Hegel had tried to sort out the problem of the frigidity of dialectics (another word for dichotomies) by locating them in history, thereby imbuing them with movement and energy. From this perspective, dialectics indicate points of conflict between people, differences of opinion which are eventually resolved, often through war, to form other dialectics and so on: history from the Hegelian perspective is a process of becoming, in time we move closer and closer to the ideal, very much as Aristotle argued.

In recognizing the idealism in Hegel’s analysis, Marx carried out a reform by grounding dialectics in human survival activity: conflict is not a matter of differences of opinion, it is based in the battle for resources. However, as pointed out in 4.2.2, this modification didn’t fully remedy the problem because he failed to see the need for a more thorough scientific clean up of Hegel’s theometaphysics. By importing a theometaphysical concept, the dialectic, into his model, Marx had installed an idealist, anti-scientific concept to drive its functioning and the rest of his analysis. Thus instead of being more measured about the validity of his model he was certain.

If we adopt Elias’ view and develop new process concepts which are more reality-oriented, we will get better access to sociological material and, concomitantly, distance ourselves from idealism: we will in fact be more social scientific. Marx, like Hegel, begins with the ideal model and imposes it on the real, but characterizes it as science; in fact this is more like philosophy. Science works from a theory, which may be ideal, and checks it against reality; if it doesn’t work, the model is modified or thrown out. The classes that Marx discovers, the proletariat and bourgeoisie, derive from his dialectical beliefs and as such are logical impositions upon social experience, not suitable for testing. They are pure, rational constructs in a dialectical system that served the needs of Marx’ ideals, rather than his scientific question. Consequently, Marx and his followers were far too over-confident in his findings which in turn oiled the wheels for their premature application to real social situations. If it had been treated more realistically as a model for testing, then perhaps it would not have been used at all. Instead, as with psychoanalysis, the theory was checked-out in the real world where real people suffered as experimental guinea pigs, justified by a conviction in the truth of the model based on ideals. Thus, ironically, too many of those desperate for emancipation were subjected to new types of abuse and exploitation by those who succumbed to Marx’ religious zeal as he proselytized its pseudo-scientific truth: ref the Communist Manifesto.

The other sociologists, Comte et al, covered in this essay are guilty of the same mistake; but not Elias. The process approach steers us away from such extreme positions, getting us to focus on the material highlighted by Nietzsche between the ideal limits of any dichotomy or dialectic. Elias suggests the use of continua, employing sociological concepts that are more sensitive to patterns of change such as ‘involvement’ and ‘detachment’. There is a much more constrained importation of ideals here that gets rid of the respective theometaphysical notions subjective and objective. ‘Involvement’ and ‘detachment’ are foreign to the language of an alien like Homo clausus; they are much more human, the sort of language relevant to the experience of Homines aperti. They denote the level of human value an idea contains: involved being high in value; detached being low. However, we are always in a relative state as regards these extremes; we are therefore to some degree relatively involved/relatively detached. Emotions, values etc. cannot be renounced they are just allowed greater or lesser impact on our words and deeds.

 5.2 Let’s get back to science

The problem of ideals discussed in this essay is a corollary of the work of Norbert Elias, who as far as I can see, has taken our understanding of questions in relation to what we can know in general, and what we can expect from science further than anyone else. It is my impression that most other writers have unfortunately missed the point. This is especially the case with those people who, so bereft at the latest defeat of idealism, left grieving over the corpse of the absolute truth of Marxism, have transmogrified into postmodernists: such people were more political activists than social scientists anyway. By contrast, if they had listened to Elias they could have continued to develop the sociological enterprise proper, founded by the likes of Comte, Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and unlike Parsons, taken it to the next more scientific ‘reality congruent’ level.

By the mid-1960s the structural-functionalist model, synonymous with the American sociologist Parsons, had almost achieved the level of dominance required for it to be given the status of what Thomas Kuhn called a ‘paradigm’. Elias however was not convinced, having detected the haunting voice of Homo clausus in Parsons’ arguments. For example, one of Parsons’ most important concepts is the notion of system. System implies some structure that is governed by a fixed set of rules that bring about order, continuity and resistance to change – in What is Sociology? Elias says: ‘[t]hink of concepts like norm and value, structure and function, social class or social system. The very concept of society has this character of an isolated object in a state of rest’: 113. I think Elias has a point. Parsons’ work freezes the life out of the people it seeks to understand, thereby distorting the feverish, noisy, chatty experience of the world I inhabit, in favour of a refrigerated, sterile, noiseless and orderly model of human activity in which institutionalized automata drift elliptically around the social system like a planet round the sun, kept in equilibrium by ‘functional invariants’. The sheer dynamism of an ordinary day is missing because structural determinants are privileged over people.

Since this time Parsonianism has gone the way of Marxism and in the process has turned down the level of certainty firing through sociological networks, forcing the truth-finders in sociology to look elsewhere for ideas to explain their predicament. The collapse of theoretical authority has been associated with the development of a series of almost warring factions within sociology, redolent of the experiences described so vividly by Leon Festinger and his colleagues in relation to the formation and collapse of messianic movements: see When Prophecy Fails. As the apostles of doom (ex-Marxists/functionalists) gradually begin to understand how foolish they have been in over-committing to the faith, they experience cognitive dissonance – feelings of conflict and deep unease flood their thoughts about their belief and involvement in the enterprise. At first these feelings are mitigated by an attempt to shore up their growing level of doubt by looking outside the membership and recruiting new support. Many sociologists reacted to the theoretical crisis in confidence by looking for support by recruiting the ideas of high status non-sociological truth-finders such as philosophers and mathematicians. Their plight was made more salient by the election of a more authoritarian Conservative government in the early 1980s which portrayed sociologists for the most part as subversive parasites in need of a dose of reality: the newly confident established business figurations headed by Margaret Thatcher, moved the reduced funding to more useful sociology.

One aspect of these changes has seen the growth of interest in mathematical idealism, to feed the informational, number crunching needs of ‘government by audit’. By reducing taxes and interrelatedly central financial support for public services in the 1980s, the Conservative governing figurations had to put controls in place to limit the potential for a decline in the output and quality of services provided. Whilst this was disguised in all sorts of ways to make the auditing pill more palatable, it was essentially a surveillance device; Ofsted being an educational example.

Another idealistic reaction to the cognitive dissonance experienced by many post-1960s sociologists has been a resurgence of interest in the work of a whole set of relativist philosophers. Probably the most significant example has seen the importation of French structuralist and post-structuralist philosophers such as Michel Foucault into sociology, an act of re-colonization by the old enemy. Other notable inclusions into the sociological canon are Heidegger and Benjamin.

I think Festinger’s model explains quite well the behaviour of some sociologists who in the wake of the collapse of confidence in Parsonianism and Marxism and the attack from the neo-capitalist followers of Adam Smith, shored up their relative uncertainty by recruiting new members to the discipline in order to regain control. Whilst I have very fond memories of two of the most eminent and influential sociologists of modern times, Zygmunt Bauman and Tony Giddens, who have always been warm and generous to me, I feel they have been too willing to listen to outsiders from cultural and literary philosophy, rather than contemplate the problem from within. Why couldn’t they listen to Elias? Cognitive dissonance, or even anomie, are very powerful forces. However, it is arguable that much of the trauma about the impending failure of sociology during the crisis of the 1970s could have been assuaged and a damaging insurgency from the old guard of truth-finders, the philosophers, possibly avoided. The messiahs, Marx and Parsons, could have been put aside by their apostles, or the apostles left behind, in favour of a less idealistic programme of research focused on figurational processes.

Elias was a trained scientist, having studied medicine as an undergraduate, who understood Comte’s message about the historical nature of knowledge, and the scientific character of sociology. However, Elias was more aware of the problems this legacy involves, in particular, the need to thoroughly sociologize the material inherited by sociologists, heavily contaminated as it is by mystical and philosophical influences. Such a project requires a more ‘reality congruent’ approach and the recognition that social experience is dynamic: it is necessary to replace old, static concepts inherited from predecessors with new more sociological, scientific concepts that are fit for the purpose of understanding social processes. For Elias all things are social, partly because of the significance of language in our lives, as Comte pointed out. Our knowledge comes to us from the previous generation, who taught us how to speak and what was important. However, unlike Comte, Elias recognized to a greater extent the significance of dynamics for an understanding of social life. So, as with natural scientists who produced a whole set of new concepts such as force, velocity and gravity; sociologists need a language that will facilitate scientific access to their material, an example being ‘figuration’.

 5. Some Implications of Elias’ model.

 5.1 From ‘relative detachment’ to ‘relative uncertainty’

 The past, certainly in Europe, was an enchanted place, full of demons, angels, pixies and the like. If Weber is right, people were dominated by superstition and their emotional desires; tradition held sway. He went on to say that since the Renaissance these less realistic ways of thinking and acting have been in decline, as more and more people in Europe saw the need to act with self-control, using foresight to make plans. In more recent times we have seen the spread of this style of operation throughout the world, even though some areas are extremely resistant. From Elias’ point of view this is not a good or bad thing, this was not inevitable, this is not part of some underlying governing law that brings progress, this is not guaranteed to continue in the future, it is just what has happened so far. Most importantly for this essay he alerts us to the problem of the way the ideas of the past can obscure our view of the present and future.

Concepts such as objectivity lead us into ways of analysis that confuse scientific problems rather than elucidate them. In developing the concept of ‘relative detachment’, Elias offers us a different direction that is more scientific because it is more reality congruent. Interdependently, it is more sociological. In so doing I would to suggest, he warns of the dangers of excessive idealism and the damage it can do to scientific enterprise. The use of language is critical to this end if we are to be as reality congruent as possible and avoid overextending ourselves by using metaphysical nouns such as objectivity without due caution. As mentioned earlier, Elias argues that if we are to achieve sufficient reality congruence to do science, we need to use process words; verbs such as ‘civilizing’ which is more in tune with the ever changing social environment. At the same time he alerts us to the harm done to scientific analysis by using nouns such as ‘civilization’, which tend to fix things in perpetuity rather than facilitate the exploration of a forever changing reality.

The inclusion of the adjective ‘relative’ (not to be confused with the noun ‘relativism’) is very important because it has a restraining influence on idealistic nouns such as detachment: to be detached is very similar to being objective in that both are expressive of a fixed state of isolation. Detachment is transformed by attaching Relative. Relative detachment is something more sensitive to real social experience because it demands a more subtle, tentative approach that respects the variability implicit in what people do and think, making it more difficult to jump to unrealistic, idealistic conclusions. By attaching ‘relative’ to ‘uncertainty’ I believe we achieve a similar outcome, providing a concept that is more realistic, and which has the increased likelihood of encouraging a more thoroughly scientific way of analysing human life by redirecting our efforts away from all too easy and attractive idealistic intellectual habits, typified by dichotomous noun-traps such as uncertainty and certainty.

  4.2.4 Weber

Idealism probably emerged as part of supernatural interpretations of experience but has one of its most potent modern influences through the notion of rationality. The argument is that logical analysis is our most trusted arbiter that guides us to the truth of things, or at least in the Cartesian/Popperian sense, sensitizes us to doubt. This approach was challenged by Max Weber who produced good evidence to suggest that there was not a single, definitive rationality, but, rationalities, contingent upon the goal to be achieved. Nonetheless, Weber, like Durkheim, was very much of the Kantian school, believing that we make sense of our factual experience using rational, ‘ideal’ models. On this basis he put together the notion of ‘ideal-types’ as the means by which we could measure social data in order to carry out a comparative analysis: how do we know the length of anything? – we use a standard measure graduated in an agreed unit such as inches. In sociology we need a similar standard by which to measure difference.

Perhaps the most famous example of an ideal-type is his model of bureaucracy which he used to understand real bureaucratic functioning by bringing to light the contrast between his sociological ideal model and real bureaucracies such as the civil service. Rationality in this sense is a method for the calculation of real historical contingencies rather than the means by which we elucidate the immanence of God’s laws or the absolute truth. What is rational for Weber depends on the level of emotion employed in the solution to a problem, or, whether we simply repeat the tried and tested methods of experience. Being rational is making a calculation of the means to an end, whether it is pleasing or not, whether it offends convention or not. Rationality is not a multi-purpose method of guaranteeing the absolute truth, it is a method of assessing the procedure most effective in achieving a goal, that is low on emotion and suspicious of the old way of doing things. Rational practice will therefore vary with the circumstances to which it is applied.

Weber argued that the rise in popularity of the rational style of analysis was evident during the Renaissance and has been growing ever since, not only with the emergence of institutionalised science, but also, capitalism. The latter, Weber argued, was the result of the activities of an ambitious group of people who saw the advantages to the profitability of their businesses of adopting the Protestant religious stance and a concomitant code of ethics which espoused the ascetic lifestyle of hard work and self denial: the Quakers are a well known example synonymous with famous modern companies such as Barclays, Cadbury (sadly no more) and Boots. What Weber does here is to highlight the way in ambitious business-oriented figurations used ideals as an element in their strategy for domination. When a position of dominance is achieved such that they become established, those same ideals are used to justify their actions and right to continue in control. Under capitalism you too can become wealthy if you work hard and are prudent with your earnings in accordance with God’s word, do as I say and do, or take the consequences!

However, by drawing our attention to the significance of ideals, either as a method of doing social science, or as a strategic method in the battle for social influence, Weber offers further evidence of a damaging connection with the Kantian approach by illustrating the correspondence between ideals and ordinary human day to day activity. Whilst this was a tactic in his disagreement with Marx over the origins of capitalism and the significance of religious ideals in social change, as far as I’m concerned it undermines the force of his own argument by privileging ideals. This is the really sticky part of his model. He sees the need to explore rationality as a historico-social process but then tempers this insight by including a version of Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ – the ideal-type, to steady the ship on what he fears is its drift into relativist waters. Nevertheless, by making the connection between social experience and changes in rationality he pioneers another important step towards a relatively uncertain view.

Weber’s model provides support for two conclusions relevant to my argument: he offers insight into how ideals play their part as ideological tools in the dog fight for survival; he also explains how moral thinking is an integral part of rational practice. In this sense he adds weight to the arguments of Comte, Marx and Durkheim. The problem is that in using ideals he damaged his science.

 4.2.3 Durkheim

The increased awareness of relative uncertainty evidenced in Marx’s analysis was given further impetus by Emile Durkheim’s more sociological account of the damage done to social cohesion by the industrial exploitation of the division of labour, so lauded by Adam Smith. Like Marx, Durkheim recognised the significance of work experiences in the formation of human togetherness or social solidarity. Such work experiences bring about codes of thinking and behaviour which extend beyond the labour process into wider social life. Industrial capitalism was successful at producing large numbers of cheap goods by breaking down work into simple, specialised tasks suitable for machines gathered together in factories and towns, serviced by people. Work that was too difficult for mechanization was again simplified as much as possible to remove its skill so that it could be done quickly by people with little or no training who were cheap and easy to replace.

These changes that took place during the Industrial Revolution had been so significant and so rapid, that they had, according to Durkheim, caused a rupture in the social landscape, leaving the pre-industrial, rural moral codes trailing behind in their wake and for a growing number of people, obsolete. In Durkheim’s view, a new set of moral codes suitable for urban, industrial society would take time to evolve, perhaps always lagging behind due to the relentless and ceaseless pace of change endemic to market capitalism. The moral ferment caused by these forces left people in permanent states of uncertainty about how to behave and think in the new industrial, urban world, where intense deregulation demanded much more flexibility.

The discomfort experienced by people was recognised by Durkheim who ingeniously modified the theometaphysical concept of anarchy, translating it into a social scientific term that related such change to measurable social events – ‘anomie’. Anomie is the result of social dislocation and the loss of common sense knowledge on what to do for the best, leaving people perpetually unsure, confused and even suicidal. Even though Marx used alienation to explain similar things, his analysis was more idealistic: alienation will be ended by the demise of capitalism and a return to a state of true nature. In contrast, Durkheim portrayed anomie as a socio-pathological condition requiring coping strategies until rules emerge to regulate the new system such as professional ethics.

In developing the concept of anomie, Durkheim moved sociology away from the traditional truth-finders by reducing some of the idealism in our understanding. Anomie is a more reality-oriented, more scientific concept, that increases the distance of sociological understanding from theometaphysics by focussing on specific social experiences and their connection to moral understanding. Interrelatedly, and more importantly for my analysis, Durkheim points directly to the issue of moral uncertainty and its causes. The arrival of capitalism and the need to drive down costs by exploiting the division of labour through greater levels of specialisation of job function has the effect, he believed, of distancing people from one another because there is less commonality of experience. Most cultures have family names that speak of job function that spanned generations of people: in the UK we have people called Baker, Taylor, Smith, Cooper whose names speak of ancestral jobs. In capitalism the rate of change of employment function is comparatively so high that relatively new occupations become redundant within four generations; an instance being the bank clerk. Durkheim argued that this process of diversification and permanent deregulation has led to increased individualism causing tensions and social problems such as rising levels of crime and, most notably, suicide. By introducing the concept of anomie, Durkheim prioritized social experience over that of idealism and at the same time brought attention to our need to explore the uncertainty of modern experience driven by capitalist’ thirst for innovation. In this model, morals are social rules that form the very fabric of human social experience because they bond people together by imposing obligation on one another. Morals are therefore subject to social change, the are not absolutes given on tablets of stone from on high. The social scientific style of analysis is suggestive of ‘relative uncertainty’.

Traditionally the analysis of morals has been the home ground of idealism and its experts the theometaphysicists, no doubt because of the importance of values for social order: see Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. This approach argues that the source of our moral thinking is on the one hand religious and on the other metaphysical: the Ten Commandments are a very influential example of the former; Aristotle’s search for the good life exemplifies the latter. Durkheim challenged this approach, by exploring the formation of morals in relation to their social function as the glue that holds us together. From this point of view morals are emotional and symbolic representations of human bonding, so pivotal to human identity and survival that they are translated into sacred texts and rituals. Morals, for Durkheim, are the shared values that structure our social existence by providing a consensus on how to think and behave.

Even though Durkheim does go some way to demolishing the idealistic theometaphysical monolith upon which rights and wrongs are written, he is not fully immune to idealistic fancy. In developing Comte’s message, he builds idealistic patterns of analysis into his model by employing the approach of Immanuel Kant. Kant attempted an unsuccessful repair of the fissure that emerged in metaphysics with the disagreement between the rationalists such as Descartes and the empiricists such as Locke and Hume. On the one hand the Cartesians were convinced that the truthfulness of mathematics allowed them access to a method of finding absolute truths such as the existence of God, without any reference to the uncertain world of sensory experience. On the other hand there were people like Locke who argued that the mind cannot think mathematically until it synthesizes ideas from sensory experience. In trying to bridge the gap Kant, as far as I can see, simply reformulated it producing what Michel Foucault later called the ’empirico-transendental double’. Even though Kant argued that our powers of reason were useless unless they were made to address factual problems, he could not integrate pure reason with sensory experience. Thus, the Kantian perspective is just another version of the dichotomous, fractured world according to Homo clausus, who looks out on a universe fashioned by his mental apparatus, rather than a full amalgamation of mind and sensory experience. Thus, Hume’s worrying conclusion that the absolute truth could not be explained by collecting empirical evidence, remains unassailable. Consequently, Kant’s re-evaluation still gives pride of place to ideals (noumena) because they can be fully understood by the human mind rather than just experienced as mere appearance (phenomena): Homo clausus is fully reinstated.

From this point of view, the laws of nature are statements of a general kind which are the results of the pure reason; they are ideals. Our day to day experience is structured according to their governance. For Kant a moral problem is resolved by comparison with the general proposition or ‘categorical imperative’: it is wrong for you to disobey the law because if everyone did there would be chaos: pure Hobbes. Durkheim translated this position into sociological language. For Durkheim there has to be a general moral stance for consensus to exist otherwise anomie will result and potentially, social breakdown. Even though Durkheim points to the social nature of morals he cannot distance himself sufficiently from idealism to offer an explanation which can fully embrace relative moral uncertainty, a properly social scientific conclusion.