Sociological Knowledge: The Double Error of Scientism

Abstract

One of the issues that has always been discussed when addressing the problem of scientific knowledge in sociology concerns the very tools suitable for knowledge and the consequent technical needs of the researcher: in one term, methodology. We have already had occasion to explain in previous studies (Corposanto 2022 a, Corposanto 2022 b) the proposal of an inclusive sociology, epistemologically tolerant, without any claim to be exhaustive in its space-time arguments (which, moreover, as is clear from particle physics, are themselves social constructions lacking the requirements of objectivity and truth in themselves). A sociology, however, that is open to the versatility of knowledge and the certainty of the absence of linearity in conclusions, to the awareness that there is no true paradigm that does not at the same time presuppose a possible error, and finally that the gaze, albeit fleeting, on the social world must nevertheless try to make the maximum effort to be credible, even before being plausible. While starting from an ineliminable and - perhaps - the only certainty in the necessary premises: that of the complexity, of things, of the scenarios, of the approaches required and of the analysis of the relationships between things and event. In this contribution we will clarify why a scientist approach to sociological knowledge is doubly mistaken.