Sociologies (May 2012)
Quelle posture les sciences sociales doivent-elles adopter vis-à-vis des sciences de la vie ?
Abstract
For Albert Ogien and Louis Quéré, social sciences are separated from life sciences by an almost uncrossable border. Therefore, they argue that the evocation of views borrowed from biology in sociology and anthropology is at best uninteresting and at worst misleading. They develop this argument by relying in particular on the non-falsification of social sciences by life sciences, on the weight of the social and the environment in human cognition and action, or on the irreducibility of the respective objects of these disciplines. Denying the existence of such boundary would imply, to them, the dissolution of social sciences in natural sciences. Some of the arguments in support of these theories are used to refute some basic form of naturalism. However, they do not invalidate the alternatives as those proposed by Laurence Kaufmann and Laurent Cordonier. Unlike what is suggested by these arguments, we may well defend the principle of epistemological autonomy of the social sciences, while challenging the existence of a clear boundary between disciplines. Moreover, the assumption of a boundary weakens social sciences, leading them to ignore a field of research in which they have the authority to intervene: that of the articulation of the knowledge they accumulate, independently and through their own methods, with those that life sciences collect on their side. In doing so, they let flourish in this field the most basic naturalism.
