Michael Haas (2)Besprekingen

The subtitle of this book is misleading. Its philosophical value is zero. The author has read Thomas Kuhn's work on scientific paradigms and explicitly declares that he intends to "move one step beyond Kuhn" (p. 4). He thinks he can identify Kuhnian paradigms in social science. He doesn't bother to define any criteria that such paradigms should meet, but the bar certainly couldn't be much lower since just about any half-baked theoretical idea seems to merit paradigmatic status. He even claims a few "paradigms" in his own name. It's safe to say that assembling a huge list of disparate theories and labeling them all paradigms does not qualify as a step beyond Kuhn.

In any case, the author could be forgiven for riding on Kuhn's coattails. It's easy enough to ignore his use of the word "paradigm" and just read it as "theory". But after finishing Kuhn he seems to have read an introduction to metaphysics, and his abuse of metaphysical vocabulary is far more annoying. His bizarre philosophical thesis is that "Attention to how mind acts on body or vice versa can alone advance our knowledge about politics and societies" (p. 9). So the "philosophical underpinnings" of social science are the basic theories of mind-matter metaphysics: materialism, idealism, interactionism, epiphenomenalism. In practice he classifies each "paradigm" based on its "materialist" and "idealist" components and their mutual influences. The "materialist" parts are the economic and social facts the theory considers, the "idealist" parts are the human thoughts and ideas it takes into account. The author meticulously notes which aspect is dominant in each "paradigm".

I'm not sure what results he expected from this futile exercise. Using concepts from mind-matter metaphysics to classify social theories is about as informative as classifying books by their color. The strange thing is that this seems like a well-written and thorough review of political theories if you just ignore the author's pseudo-philosophical musings. I don't doubt his credentials as a political scientist, but he seems to be completely ignorant of even the most basic questions in the philosophy of social science.

In short, this book is a review of political theories. It has nothing to do with philosophy.