Social Inquiry After Wittgenstein and Kuhn ― Leaving Everything As It Is

John G. Gunnell argues that a distinctive feature of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work after 1930 was his turn to a conception of philosophy as a form of social inquiry and that Thomas Kuhn's approach to the philosophy of science exemplified this conception. He further contends that their work addresses foundational issues in the social and human sciences and particularly the vision of social inquiry as an interpretive endeavor, as well as the distinctive cognitive and practical relationship between social inquiry and its subject matter.

Gunnell speaks directly to philosophers and practitioners of the social and human sciences. The issues he tackles include the demarcation between natural and social science; the nature of social phenomena; the concept and method of interpretation; the relationship between language and thought; the problem of knowledge of other minds; and the character of descriptive and normative judgments about practices that are the object of inquiry. Though Wittgenstein and Kuhn are often criticized as initiating a modern descent into relativism, this book shows that the true effect of their work was to undermine the basic assumptions of contemporary social and human science practice. It also problematized the authority of philosophy and other forms of social inquiry to specify the criteria for judging such matters as truth and justice. When Wittgenstein stated that "philosophy leaves everything as it is," he did not mean that philosophy would be left as it was or that philosophy would have no impact on what it studied, but rather that the activity of inquiry did not, simply by virtue of its performance, transform the object of inquiry.

John G. Gunnell is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Department of Political Science at the State University of New York at Albany. He is currently a research associate at the University of California, Davis. His most recent books include Political Theory and Social Science: Cutting Against the Grain and Imagining the American Polity: Political Science and the Discourse of Democracy.