Douglas Yao

Professor Logan

Ethno 30

12 March 2018

Essay #2

Interpretive social science is the realm of thought that social science is different from the

natural sciences in that it relies on a set of tools other than empirical evidence in order to make

conclusions about the world. These tools require subjective interpretations. In this essay, I

outline what I believe to be the goals of interpretive social science and posit that subjectiveness

is an intrinsic limitation of interpretive social science that is antithetical to its main purpose as a

social science. I end by saying that interpretive social science is still useful for helping us think

about certain questions about the world.

The goal of all sciences is to study and understand the true nature of things. In the case of

natural sciences, the goal is to study the material world. The purpose of social science is to study

people and societies. Although natural sciences and social sciences differ in the things they aim

to study, their ultimate purpose is still to pursue some sort of objective truth, whether that truth

be about how physical objects behave in physics for example, or about how societies of people

interact with each other in sociology. The fact that interpretive social science relies on subjective

tools makes it inherently incompatible with the goals of science. Empiricism is a crucial aspect

of science that is our only way of gaining knowledge of the world in an objective fashion.

Without objectiveness, “truth” can mean different things to different people, and different people

can draw different conclusion based on the subjective tools they use to study the world. Thus, no
particular viewpoint or conclusion can be deemed more valid that any other viewpoint or

conclusion, since everything is subjective.

Therefore, I do not believe that interpretive social science can be used as a tool to study

the world, so it should not be called a science. However, interpretive social science is still a

useful tool like philosophy in that it can help us think about questions that are impossible or very

difficult to answer using science. For example: why does music exist? Why do we enjoy music?

Why do certain forms of music sound better than others? Although there may exist a scientific

biological explanation as to why we originally conceived of music and enjoy it, the question at

hand is so broad and complicated that it is likely impossible to study using scientific means. As

to why certain forms of music sound better than others, we have known since ancient times that

combinations of tones whose frequencies form simple ratios are consonant, whereas tones whose

frequencies form complicated ratios are dissonant. However, as to why tones with frequencies

that form simple ratios sound good to us still remains a complete mystery, and in fact different

cultures often have different ways to define what sounds good. Interpretive social science can be

useful to try to answer these “why” questions, since inherently there will be some amount of

subjectivity in any answer to these questions. In fact, when asked enough times, any “why”

question will ultimately lead to some sort of philosophical and non-scientific discussion. Take

the following contrived example: I scraped my knee. Why did I scrape my knee? Because I

slipped on a patch of ice. Why did I slip on the ice? Because ice is slippery. Why is ice slippery?

Because my weight caused the top layer of ice to melt, which formed a layer of water that caused

me to slip? Why did my weight cause the top layer of ice to melt? Because water has the unique

property that it expands when it freezes, so the pressure of my weight on the ice tries to undo the

expansion and creates heat that causes it to melt. Why does water expand when it freezes?
Because that’s just how water is. Why are things the way they are? These questions because

impossible to answer using science, in which case subjective tools such as philosophy and

interpretive social science become necessary to answer them.