Social science and human action or on hitting your head against the ceiling of language

Gunnar Olsson

pp. 287-307

in: Stephen Gale, Gunnar Olsson (eds), Philosophy in geography, Berlin, Springer, 1979

Abstract

This piece begins as an academic paper about what the social sciences are and it ends as a manifesto of what they ought to be. The message is thoroughly ideological, for ideology is defined as that ethical glue whereby is and ought are forged together into a coherent whole. In the first part, I shall provide a succinct but novel summary of a long and complicated argument recently developed elsewhere.¹ In the second, I shall explore some implications of those thoughts. In neither case shall I draw anything but a rough caricature. But that may be just as well, for it is usually easier to see the prominent features in a caricature than in a fascimile reproduction.