Rethinking Social Science

When Bahá'ís in Latin America tell contemporary social scientists about Bahá’u’lláh’s basic, overriding principle of the “Oneness of Humanity”, the response is usually that it is impossible. Why? In a nutshell, because present–day social science is based on theories of social conflict, not of social cooperation. They admit of division in diversity and unity in uniformity, but not of unity in diversity.

Contemporary social sciences in Latin America are based on a complex theoretical structure whose roots can be found in the 17th century and beyond, many of whose basic assumptions are taken for granted by most without daring or knowing how to question them. When someone states one of its platitudes, everyone seems to agree, but I think that deep down inside, they wish they could believe otherwise.

For example, I have spoken publicly a few times on "Capitalism, Socialism, and then what? Contributions to the search for new social and economic alternatives". This is potentially a very polemical presentation, as it questions some of the most deeply–seated assumptions in economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, etc. Nevertheless, several people have come up to me afterwards and thanked me for having put into words for them things that they had always felt intuitively, but had either been unable or lacked the courage to articulate to others.

So as a Bahá'í studying social sciences, what I think needs to be done is the following. On the one hand, we need to 'deconstruct' the old theoretical apparatus by showing its methodological and conceptual flaws. What I have come up with so far is that many of the 'proofs' that are used to support these assumptions are actually nothing more than analogies based on theories from other disciplines (mostly physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology) and applied to human society. Thus you get such pseudo-scientific aberrations as 'social Darwinism', 'social dialectics', etc.). This in itself is considered by many to be an epistemologically unsound practice.

One of the sources of this problem seems to be the fact that it is difficult to find a referent or datum that is common to all societies, on which to base solid social theory. So social scientists will borrow a referent or 'datum' from another discipline as a starting point for mostly philosophical speculations about how it might apply to the workings of society. This occurred while those ‘other’ sciences were still working under philosophical assumptions that were a spin-off from Newtonian physics: determinism, reductionism, mechanicism, materialism, etc.

Later on, when many or all of these original theories were falsified by the 'new physics', 'new biology', 'systems theory', 'systemic psychology', etc., the social spin-offs based on the former were not modified accordingly. The result is a set of false analogies based on erroneous theories from other fields that have already evolved beyond the point they were when those analogies were taken, leaving in their wake a set of deterministic, reductionistic, mechanistic, materialistic social theories in a time that no longer holds these types worldviews (cosmologies) to be tenable.

So a new breed of social scientists needs to be able to show where these other disciplines have evolved to in comparison to where they were when the analogies were taken, and suggest new analogies based on those new theories, which open up a whole new worldview that is neither deterministic, reductionistic, mechanistic, nor materialistic, but precisely the contrary. This would not produce social scientific 'proofs' per se, but rather be a way to strengthen the deconstruction of old theories and open up peoples minds to new possibilities.

Next we need new social theories to replace the old ones. This is not as easy as it might seem, because theories are established through induction, not deduction, for which there are not hard and fast rules. In fact, throughout the history of science, most theories have been thought up initially through intuitive processes (the “Eureka!” principle) and only later were worked out methodically. What theories are actually come up with has much to do with the filters and prejudices that either blind or enlighten the theoretician. This means that in order to renew the social sciences, we must be able to see society through new filters, very different from the ones we learn to see through when we study social science. How to break out of this vicious circle?

One way would be to take Bahá’í social principles (such as unity in diversity or socio–political evolution), and express them in the form of hypotheses that can then be worked on both empirically and philosophically, to gradually develop a new 'social construct' that is capable of taking the place of the old one that was 'deconstructed'. This would then make it possible to base novel policy proposals on these new theoretical structures, leading hopefully to solid interventions that would move the world purposefully towards what Baha'u'llah has prescribed for society.

If this theoretical groundwork is not solidly established first, I am afraid that few social scientists and policy makers will take Bahá'í social principles seriously. This can be done initially by taking referents from many different human groups, both historically and geographically, including taking the Bahá’í world community itself as a datum, which is what the Universal House of Justice invited the world to do in its statement “The Promise of World Peace”.

One area of endeavor that is of interest to me as a student of social sciences and as a Bahá'í, is the following. In the course of my studies, I have discovered that there are 3 fundamental issues that Latin American social scientists do not seem to be dealing with, but which are highlighted as essential in several messages of the Universal House of Justice to the United Nations or the world. These are:

(1) Human nature, which Latin American social sciences in general define very much according to what the Universal House of Justice answers to in the Promise of World Peace (homo economicus, rational animal, social Darwinism, etc.).
(2) The nature of society, which is defined in terms of the dynamics of conflict, as discussed in various Bahá’í documents, which I understand to be the very antithesis of the principle of the oneness of humanity.
(3) The issue of power. Conflict is based on an old-world concept of power, as dealt with in part VI of Global Prosperity, which is the sine-qua-non of modernist and possibly even postmodernist political studies.

I feel that if we could deal with these issues head-on, publicly and academically, it would make a real difference in the long run, as everything else in anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, etc. seems to be hinged on these 3 basic issues. One way of going about it would be as follows. First, compile Bahá’í references dealing specifically with each of these topics. Second, find out who is working on these subjects, and compile what they have written. This should include finding out what is being said by those who defend the old ways of thinking. Finally, once this groundwork has been done, establish and test out new hypotheses as described above.