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In his presidential address to the American Statistical Association in 1931, William Fielding Ogburn, an American sociologist important particularly in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, took as his theme the difference between statistics and art. His argument, articulated here and in a wide range of writings throughout his career, was that "statistics has been developed to give an exact picture of reality, while the picture that the artist draws is a distortion of reality" (Ogburn 1932: 1). He then went on to express his belief that emotion leads to distortion in our observations. "It is this distorting influence of emotion and wishes," he said, "that is more responsible for bad thinking than any lack of logic" (ibid.: 4). But statistics, he believed, could ameliorate the distorting effects of emotion on our empirical observations. There was a problem, however, because "the artist in us wants understanding rather than statistics. But understanding is hardly knowledge. . . . The tests of knowledge are reliability and accuracy, not understanding" (ibid.: 5).

Abstract
This publication meets a long-felt need to show the relevance of cybernetics for the social sciences (including psychology, sociology, and anthropology). User-friendly descriptions of the core concepts of cybernetics are provided, with examples of how they can be used in the social sciences. It is explained how cybernetics functions as a transdiscipline that unifies other disciplines and a metadiscipline that provides insights about how other disciplines function. An account of how cybernetics emerged as a distinct field is provided, following interdisciplinary meetings in the 1940s, convened to explore feedback and circular causality in biological and social systems. How encountering cybernetics transformed the author's thinking and his understanding of life in general, is also recounted.

"Mahoney's starting point is the problem of essentialism in social science. Essentialism--the belief that the members of a category possess hidden properties ("essences") that make them members of the category and that endow them with a certain nature--is appropriate for scientific categories ("atoms", for instance) but not for human ones ("revolutions," for instance). Despite this, much social science research takes place from within an essentialist orientation; those who reject this assumption goes so far in the other direction as to reject the idea of an external reality, independent of human beings, altogether

RESUMEN: El artículo tiene como objetivo revisar algunos aspectos del proceso de institucionalización de las ciencias sociales en Colombia, para ello aborda como en los procesos de maduración de estas se han dado condiciones de interdisciplinariedad, así como la manera en que las políticas públicas de ciencia y tecnología han presionado el acceso a determinas reglas; que si bien han generado procesos de internacionalización, también han puesto en crisis la autonomía respecto a lo que se considera conocimiento científico social. Por ello se termina con una reflexión sobre la necesidad de reflexionar continuar reflexionando sobre lo que se entiende como objetividad de las ciencias sociales frente a tal proceso de institucionalización. ; ABSTRACT: The objective of this article is to inspect some aspects about the institucionalization process of the Social Sciences in Colombia, for this it takes the way in how the processes of maduration of those have been given in interdisciplinarity conditions, just like the way how the public politics of science and technology have pushed the access to certain rules that have generated processes of internacionalization and that have placed in crisis the autonomy respect to what its considered social scientis knowledge. Finally, the article ends with a reflection about the need of take in consideration what its known like Social Science objectivity in front to the institucionalization process.

Cover -- The Realist Image in Social Science -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1 The Possibility of Realism -- 2 Epistemology and Levels of Discourse -- 3 Realism and Validity Claims -- 4 Causality, Acausality and the Implicate Order -- 5 Behaviour and Social Ontology -- 6 The Language of Social Analysis -- 7 The Prospects for Realism -- Appendix: The Philosophical Bogeyman -- References -- Index.

How might social theory, public understanding of science and science policy best inform one another?. What have been the key features of science-society relations in the modern world?. How are we to re-think science-society relations in the context of globalization, hybridity and changing patterns of governance?. This topical and unique book draws together the three key perspectives on science-society relations: public understanding of science, scientific and public governance, and social theory. The book presents a series of case studies (including the debates on genetically modified foods an

Résumé Les rapports que les chercheurs africains en sciences sociales entretiennent avec le passé et le présent de leurs sociétés postcoloniales ont mené à l'impasse puisque ces sociétés, aujourd'hui plus encore qu'hier, sont sous influence de l'impérialisme des images, des idées, des concepts et des idéologies qui colonisent leurs esprits au moyen de la violence symbolique des médias transnationaux ou globaux. Décoloniser les sciences sociales africaines reviendrait à rompre avec les dispositifs d'exercice de cette violence symbolique. Mais une rupture postcoloniale avec l'anthropologie coloniale paraît impossible quand on sait, par exemple, que cette forme de savoir est mobilisée aujourd'hui par des chercheurs africains comme une arme de guerre civile, sous prétexte de défendre des cultures et des patrimoines.

In this paper the results are given of an investigation into concepts from Economics, Organization Theory, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology. The goal of this investigation was to find out whether there is a set of concepts that may be considered to be basic to all these five social sciences. The set of concepts found will be modeled in terms of automata, thus providing a way of unifying the five fields in a general mathematical setting.

On décrit ici les impasses du particularisme en sciences sociales (contextualisme, narrativisme, casuistique, pragmatisme, rejet de la distinction fait/valeur). Le causalisme et le généralisme ne sont pas dépassés.

The challenge facing the social sciences in postrevolutionary Romania is examined. While the revolution destroyed communist economic & political structures, it did not develop a new infrastructure to replace them, which has aggravated old social problems & created new ones, eg, increased ethnic & social conflicts & increasing crime & feelings of insecurity. Social science can assist in the revitalization of Romania, but must also revitalize itself through the development of new theories & methodologies. Reorganization is underway, but is hampered by internal conflicts & financing difficulties. Research priorities for the social sciences are discussed. D. Generoli