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This is http://www.essayz.com/a9001062.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %THEORY PARADIGM SOCIAL PERSONAL SCIENCE METHOD 900106 To be able to promote both personal and communal integrity in balanced ways social scientists need a theory of the foundations for social science which transcends exclusive limitation to the methods of thoroughly objective and exclusively quantitative sciences. The social sciences cannot be helpfully rooted primarily in objective procedures, and at the same time succeed in promoting both personal and communal integrity in balanced ways; for by their nature the social sciences are essentially reflexive, they reflect upon the behavior of members of the same species as the scientists who are conducting the study. It is impossible to conduct a study of the behavior of any contrasting human culture, without at the same time reflecting on how it contrasts to one's own culture; it is the differences which are going to be most apparent, and the differences which must be transcended in order to arrive at any kind of sympathetic understanding. If one seeks to eliminate sympathy from the study of people, it will be impossible to come to any meaningful understanding of the people who are being studied; their thought processes, motivations, fears, desires, other emotions, etc. are bound to be beyond the reach of an unsympathetic scholar. Only within the context of a sympathetic study will it become possible to honestly understand the contrasting and similar behavior patterns. If one begins with the ultimate belief that the study of human beings should be entirely mechanistic and objective, and without sympathy; then that belief is a hypothesis which is not subject to verification by any experimental procedure. Such a belief is an idol which is worshiped with all the natural consequences of worshipping an idol; i.e., disintegrative idolatry. To be integrative social scientists must transcend the limitations of the exclusively objective and quantitative paradigm of the exact sciences; in order to be open to hypotheses which will provide the theoretical framework within which to understand human behavior in integrative ways. Social scientists will not be able to develop an integrative theory in terms of which to promote the growth of both personal and communal integrity--if they do not transcend the paradigm of the exact sciences. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================