Causation, Statistics, and Sociology

Bibliographic Data

ID23746176
AuthorsJohn H Goldthorpe (0000-0003-1131-2619, corresponding author)
Year2000
Pages137-160
Publication date2000-07-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueOn Sociology (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198295716.003.0007
OpenAlexW2293953042
ISBN9780198295716
LanguageEN
Citations received8

IN A PAPER of great insight, though sadly posthumous, Bernert (1983) noted a long-standing uncertainty among sociologists in regard to the concept of causation and its use in their work. ‘Uncritical adulation’ in the later nineteenth century gave way to ‘complete rejection’ in the early twentieth, followed in turn, in the years after the Second World War, by ‘pragmatic utilization’—a position that, one might add, has itself been subject to rising criticism in the period since Bernert’s review. These vicissitudes in the ‘career of a concept’ have to be understood, as Bernert shows, in the context not only of the development of sociology itself but of larger scientific and philosophical debates. In this chapter I seek, much in the spirit of Bernert’s contribution, to draw attention to some results of statisticians being increasingly involved in such debates, and further to consider the reception in, and potential for, sociology of the new understandings of causation that have thus emerged.

Aesthetics · Causation · Context (archaeology) · Criticism · Epistemology · Period (music) · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · History · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science

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