Jeremy wrote:
Science is merely systematic study...
I appreciate your de-essentializing science. But rather than invoke divergent uses of the term (many instances of which are sloppy at best), you might consider an operationalization of science as variable along many dimensions, including its generality, simplicity, validity, testability, and originality. The more of each of these that an idea (or person, organization, etc.) is, the more scientific it is. (1)
... If you want to be a scientist, that is fine though, don't be surprised if it ends up as much of a dead-end as the 'pure sociology' of the late 60's.
The dead-ended nonsense of the 1960s is no critique of science. It wasn't particularly scientific, nor was it pure sociology - a phrase whose (mis)use I can't ignore. Ward's (1903) book _Pure Sociology_ was a social critique based on evolution; it was arguably sociological, but not purely so. Simmel used the phrase decades later, but his work was almost entirely phenomenological, focusing exclusively on aspects of individuals qua individuals. The phrase is contemporaneously used by (and to describe the work of) several dozen scholars worldwide. Their (our) work is a revolutionary *reaction* to 60s dead-endedness, not an extension of it. (2) -eg (1) Donald Black. 1995. "The Epistemology of Pure Sociology". Law and Social Inquiry 20:829-870 (2) Note various works by M.P. Baumgartner, James Tucker, Mark Cooney, Joseph Michalski, Marian Borg, Allen Horwitz, Marcus Kondkar, Calvin Morrill, Roberta Senechal de la Roche, James Tucker, and myself. See also Donald Black. 1979. "A strategy of pure sociology". Pages 149-168 in Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology, edited by Scott G. McNall. New York: St. Martin's Press. /and/ Donald Black. 2000. "Dreams of Pure Sociology." Sociological Theory 18(3):343-367.