Table Of ContentREVOLUTIONARY CHANGES IN UNDERSTANDING MAN AND SOCIETY
THEORY AND DECISION LIBRARY
General Editors: W. Leinfellner (Vienna) and O. Eberlein (Munich)
Series A: Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences
Series B: Mathematical and Statistical Methods
Series C: Game Theory, Mathematical Programming and Operations Research
Series D: System Theory, Knowledge Engineering and Problem Solving
SERIES A: PHILOSOPHY AND METHODOLOGY
OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
VOLUME 21
Series Editors: W. LeinfeUner (Technical University of Vienna), G. Eberlein (Technical
University of Munich); Editorial Board: R. Boudon (paris), M. Bunge (Montreal), J. S.
Coleman (Chicago), J. Elster (Oslo), J. Gotschl (Graz), L. Kern (Munich), I. Levi (New
York), R. Mattessich (Vancouver), D. J. Nida-Riimelin (Gottingen), A. Rapoport (Toronto),
A. Sen (Cambridge, U.S.A.), R. Tuomela (Helsinki), A. Tversky (Stanford).
Scope: This series deals with the foundations, the general methodology and the criteria,
goals and purpose of the social sciences. The emphasis in the Series A will be on well
argued, thoroughly analytical rather than advanced mathematical treatments. In this context,
particular attention will be paid to game and decision theory and general philosophical topics
from mathematics, psychology and economics, such as game theory, voting and welfare
theory, with applications to political science, sociology, law and ethics.
REVOLUTIONARY CHANGES
IN UNDERST ANDING
MAN AND SOCIETY
Scopes and Limits
edited by
Johann Gotschl
Uni1lersity ojGraz. Austria
....
,
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Revolutlonary changes In understandlng man and society : scopes and
llmlts / edlted by Johann Gotschl.
p. cm. -- (Theory and declslon library. Series A. Phllosophy
and _ethodology of the social sciences ; v. 21)
Includes lndexes.
ISBN 978-94-010-4165-2 ISBN 978-94-011-0369-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-0369-5
1. Social sclences--Phllosophy. 2. Anthropology--Phllosophy.
1. Gotschl. Johann. II. Series.
H61.R474 1995
300--dc20 95-21339
ISBN 978-94-010-4165-2
Printed on acid-free paper
AlI Rights Reserved
© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1995
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5
INTRODUcrION 7
J. Gotschl
PART I
CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES
IN ECONOMIC SCIENCE
THE ECONOMIC SCIENCE OF TODAY AND FACTS: 25
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SOME CHARACTERISTIC
FEATURES
M. Allais
TECHNICAL CHANGE WITHOUT HUMANS: INNOVATION 39
IN THE NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMIC THEORY
G. Rosegger
PART II
DISCOVERY, CREATIVITY, COGNITION AND
COMPUTATION: BASIC STRUCTURES
THE THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY 55
H. A. Simon
UNDERSTANDING CREATIVITY 75
M.A.Boden
THE ROLE OF SIMULATION MODELS IN THE 83
COGNITIVE SCIENCES
A. Carsetti
THE MIND AND COMPUTATION 93
J. R. Searle
2
PART III
TOWARDS A SCIENCE OF MAN AND SOCIETY:
PHILOSOPHICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL
FOUNDATIONS
SELF-ORGANIZATION: NEW FOUNDATIONS 109
TOW ARDS A "GENERAL THEORY OF REALITY"
J. Gotschl
TOWARDS A SCIENCE OF MAN 129
O. Schwemmer
PART IV
RATIONALITY, COMPLEXITY AND UNCERTAINTY:
NEW INTERRELATIONS
THE NEW THEORY OF EVOLUTION -A THEORY 149
OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES
W. Leinfellner
RISK IN UTILITY THEORY, IN BUSINESS AND IN 191
THE WORLD OF FEAR AND HOPE
O. Hagen
RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY: A CRITICAL LOOK 211
AT ITS FOUNDATIONS
M.Bunge
COMPLEXITY, THE CONCEPT OF UNCERTAINTY 229
AND BOUNDED RATIONALITY OF MAN
B. Munier
SECURITY. ON THE REASONS FOR THE SINKING 243
ACCEPTANCE OF RISK
H. Liibbe
3
PART V
AESTHETICAL AND ETHICAL PATTERNS
NATURE AS A WORK OF ART 255
P. Feyerabend
ETHICS IN SCIENCE -SUBSTANCE OR RHETORIC? 269
J. Mittelstrass
NAME INDEX 279
SUBJECT INDEX 285
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deep appreciation to Werner Leinfellner. He
contributed substantially in giving this book its fundamental orientation. I
also want to thank Elisabeth Leinfellner, who gave us some help and advice
in preparing some texts. Wolfgang Schinagl, our research assistant, created
the camera-ready type version. Gunther A. Hofler read and corrected the
texts. Angelika Hober and Birgit Rauch, the Institute secretaries, provided
invaluable services in preparing the material for print. Rebecca WeIland and
Angelika Peaston did a lot of translation work. My thanks go to those named
here and to the authors and publisher for all their cooperation in helping us
to complete this book.
INTRODUCTION
JOHANN GOTSCHL
Over the last decades, social philosophers, economists. sociologists, utility
and game theorists, biologists, mathematicians, moral philosophers and
philosophers have created totally new concepts and methods of
understanding the function and role of humans in their modern societies.
The years between 1953 and 1990 brought drastic changes in the scientific
foundations and dynamic of today's society. A burst of entirely new,
revolutionary ideas, similar to those which heralded the beginning of the
twentieth century in physics, dominates the picture.
This book also discusses the ongoing refutation of old concepts in the
social sciences. Some of them are: the traditional concepts ofrationality, for
example, based on maximization of interests, the linearity of axiomatic
methods, methodological individualism, and the concept of a static society.
Today the revolutionary change from a static view of our society to an
evolutionary one reverberates through all social sciences and will dominate
the twenty-first century. In an uncertain and risky world where cooperation
and teamwork is getting more and more important, one cannot any longer
call the maximization of one's own expectations of utility or interests
"rational" .
This book presents a variety of new models which are future building
blocks of a new science of humans in their societies and environments. The
articles focus on recent advances in all these new disciplines. They also
show their consequences for humans in their present societies, the new
philosophical foundations, the new methods and the social, technological,
and scientific advances. Both the criticism and refutation of traditional
concepts and the construction of new models and theories give us new
insights into the complex functions and structure, into the scopes and limits
of our modern mass societies.
The fourteen articles, two of them written by nobelists, then, present
extensions. critiques of alternatives, and foundational aspects of these new
disciplines. The book shows how a cooperation of social scientists,
philosophers, mathematicians, and economists can help us to make sense of
the complex and very often counterintuitive and chaotic world we live in.
7
J. Gotschl (ed.), Revolutionary Changes in Understanding Man and Society, 7-22.
© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
8 JOHANN OOTSCHL
CHAPTER I: CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES IN ECONOMIC SCIENCE
M. Allais: The Economic Science of Today and Facts:
A Critical Analysis of some Characteristic Features
When M. Allais received his nobel prize in 1988, his fellow nobelist P.
Samuelson wrote about him: "Allais is an inexhaustible source of major
discoveries in economics". One such discovery certainly is Allais' new risk
theory which has already radically altered today's social sciences from linear
deterministic to non linear, indeterministic ones. In the present article,
Allais delineates the changing methodology of today's social sciences after
the invasion of stochastic and nonlinear methods.
In a time where many philosophers, including philosophers of science and
New-Age philosophers, and some adherents of chaos theory as well, are fond
of drawing hasty conclusions, for example, that in today's scientific practice
"Anything goes", Allais rebukes their arguments. He presents the essentials
of the new social sciences' methodology, which, according to Allais, begins
with empirical regularities. They serve as the basis of any knowledge and
any statistical forecast. In a next step, scientific models and theories erect
statistical and stochastical hypotheses about these regularities and use them
to test empirically alI derivations from these hypotheses. A theory is devoid
of any scientific interest when neither the hypotheses nor their implications
can be confronted with the empirical world. Merely logical or mathematical
deductions are worthless; the Golden Rule of all socially-oriented disciplines
is to submit theoretical results to experiments and data.
Randomness, uncertainty and risk make it impossible for social theories to
claim absolute truth. Hence, the goal of social scientists is not falsification,
as Popper proposed, but to choose from existing models the "better" one.
The better model wilI always be the one which is better confirmed by the
facts and which, for a given degree of approximation, will provide the
simplest representation of the observed data.
The social and moral purpose of economic activity, which has not yet been
achieved, is to satisfy the unlimited needs of all societies using only limited
resources, available in the form of labor, natural resources, production, and
knowledge. This has to be done in an "efficient" or ethically sound way. The
potential instability of contemporary economy rests on disequilibria that
nobody is capable of mastering. Allais discusses the reasons why our present
economic science is unable to face up to today's societal. economic and
environmental difficulties.
He believes that today a new theory of human beings in their society is
hampered by the growing opposition to new ideas, instigated by the tyranny
