In English (but not some other languages), "science" suffers a peculiar semantic narrowing. It seems to apply more comfortably to the natural world, and only by analogy to some of the more systematic and empirically based of the human sciences. It connotes a sometimes narrow kind of systematicity: the canons of empirical method; an often less-than reflective acceptance of received theoretical categories and paradigms; formal reasoning disengaged from human and natural consequences; technical control without adequate ethical reflection; an elision of means and ends; narrow functionalism, instrumentalism and techno-rationalism; a pragmatism to the neglect broader view of consequences; and conservative risk aversion. These are some of the occupational hazards of activities that name themselves sciences-social, natural, or applied. In studying the social setting, however, it's not good enough just to have a rigorous empirical methodology without a critical eye to alternative interests and paradigmatic frames of reference, and without a view to the human-transformational potentials of knowledge work.
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