the lab's quarterly n. 1/2009

The Lab's Quarterly Il Trimestrale del Laboratorio

2009 / n. 1 / gennaio-marzo

Laboratorio di Ricerca Sociale

Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali, Università di Pisa

Direttore: Massimo Ampola Comitato scientifico: Roberto Faenza Paolo Bagnoli Mauro Grassi Antonio Thiery Franco Martorana Comitato di Redazione: Stefania Milella Luca Lischi Alfredo Givigliano Marco Chiuppesi Segretario di Redazione: Luca Corchia ISSN 2035-5548 © Laboratorio di Ricerca Sociale


The Lab's Quarterly Il Trimestrale del Laboratorio

2009 / n. 1 / gennaio-marzo

COMPLEXITY, VAGUENESS, FRACTALS AND FUZZY LOGIC: NEW PATHS FOR THE SOCIAL SEARCH

Massimo Ampola Complexity, vagueness, fractals and fuzzy logic 5 Marco Chiuppesi Indexes, Scales and Ideal Types – a Fuzzy Approach 17

Paolo Pasquinelli Some Aspect of the Quality in a Living Complex System. A Preliminary Approach: “The Lichen Symbiosis” 35

Talita Pistelli Mc Clelland

Vague tendences: a review of fuzzy set theory comparative studies 46

Luca Corchia Explicative models of complexity. The reconstructions of social evolution for Jürgen Habermas 54

Chiara Ferretti Paths Towards Addiction: a Fuzzy Model of Causal Relations 84

RECENSIONI

Elisabetta Buonasorte Essere e non essere. Soggettività virtuali tra unione e divisione (Annalisa Buccieri, Milano, FrancoAngeli, 2009) 94

Laboratorio di Ricerca Sociale


Si è tenuta a Napoli dal 1 al 5 Settembre 2008 la VII International Conference on Social Scienze Methodology nell’ambito di RC33 -

Logic and Methodology in Sociology.

Pubblichiamo le relazioni tenute da studiosi impegnati nel Labo-ratorio di Ricerca Sociale del Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali, ora, confluito nel Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali.

Section

“Complexity, vagueness, fractals and fuzzy logic: new paths for the social search”

COMPLEXITY, VAGUENESS, FRACTALS AND FUZZY LOGIC Prof. Massimo Ampola Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali Università di Pisa [email protected] +39 050 2212420

Abstract: The intrinsically complex nature of social world forces the researcher to equip

himself with a suitable perspective of investigation: this has to found herself on a logic built on endless degrees of truth, which allows the respect of the vagueness of the language and the conceptual categories of the actor and the observer. Within a rich in phenomenological perspectives systemic conception, as the theory of the autopoiesis, the inseparable relationship emerges among social system and observer: in this context the metaphor of the fractal introduces herself as suitable to represent the plural dimension and complexity of the conceptual constructions of the observer on which the social search has to built. Emerges,then, the necessity to propose a model of search founded upon the awareness of the conceptual nature of modeling the social systems, on the use of the logical fuzzy for this modelling, so that to be been able to formalize the structural variables in comparison to which the observer operates the distinction of the system from his environment, and determines the description as autopoiethical unity; founded upon the individualization of the structural variables of the social systems, on their measurement according to a system of fuzzy logic. From the representation of these data emerges the possibility to calculate the degree of approximation to a fractal of representation of the system through its structural variables, the possibility of individualization of actractors, and therefore the possibility to describe the behaviour of the system in relationship to possible future transitions of phase. The conceptual apparatus, methodologically founded and suitable to the complexity and vagueness of the reality for a social search of this type, it is already available, and rather it emerges as answered to a problem list in sociology, while the tools of mathematical-geometric analysis and logic are developing and there are not one univocal attribution of theirs yet. Keywords: Complexity,fuzzy,fractals,new model.

Index

1. 62. 73. 94. 115. 12References 15

The Lab’s Quarterly

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1

I have already underlined1 two points of view, concerning the constitution of the social reality, proceed through parallel lines in the contemporary scientific literature: the first one recognized the social world as a multidimensional network, where every relation expresses one dimension until defining the general set of the whole relations2; the second one considers the relation as a set of interactions between different points in the social space/time. It seems that the two approaches contain a common question: which is the hidden logic? Is it one logic or there are different types of logics? Therefore, is it possible for the researcher to operate only where descends field from other rational processes only or it is a question of data analysis?

As matter of fact, this last dichotomy was already has been widely debated3

inline with Parsons heritage (Alexander, 1982) or aligned with the mostly dimension microsocial (Collins, 1981); however it seems to us, however, that the multidimensional macro/micro continuum as object of the debate, even if it is part of macro dynamics of the social meaning or it deals with combined individual, the behaviours it has seen imperfect multidimensionality: more than continuum derived from the dimensional plurality (expressed by the net of the social relations contained in the net of the general ecosystem) the latter appears to us as a subject platform conditioned by the methodological (conceptual and difficulties procedural) produced from the common emerging (common experience with the field of natural sciences) of the complex and chaotic vision of the world.

There is a sort of re-foundative necessity of the “sociological reasoning”: if sociology has traditionally risen the problem with just a connective method, according to the "interpretation" (related to the experimental method) and then with the “understanding”4, today emerges the necessity that the procedural field

1 M. Ampola, The study of social reality as a relational network: about the context. Recent

developments and applications in Social Research Methodology, Sixth International Conference on Logic and Methodology,Amsterdam, Isbn 90-6706-176-x.

2 E. Morin, Introduzione al pensiero complesso, Sperling&Kupfer Editori, Milano, 1993. 3 J.C. Alexander, Theoretical Logic in Sociology. Vol. I: Positivism, Presuppositions and Current

Controversies, London-Henley, 1982; R. Collins, On the Microfoundations of Sociology, in «American Journal of Sociology», 86, 1981.

4 The explanation consists in establishing, by means of hypothesis, nexuses of legal causality that relates to the events of the physical world through rational activity and closely cognitive where the subject is strained to construct from the outside an object regarding which he experiments a radical diversity, used method by natural sciences. The knowledge consists in picking ` immediately' logons of sense, the whose fullness and authenticity are guaranteed by` the experience lived taking advantage itself of categories like those of meant, aim, value. Exist, therefore, conditions of validity also for socio-


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is formed with the modalities which of the research object offers for being known: a problem context’s determination. We consider that:

«a based modelling cannot be followed on the principle of linear causality; the same

structure and the meaning of thing is a social event changes, it becomes an emergent characteristic of the whole complex system, what confers meaning and characterizes the becoming of the dynamic relations in/out the same system. Also considering a series of concurring reasons and multiple effects, of latent causes and spurious correlations, the result of the analysis doesn't change: we are not more in the dominated universe by the necessary conditions and by those enough, we are inside the kingdom of the possibility, not in luhmannian terms, but in the terms of a structural impossibility of reduction of the complexity. The complex structure of the net makes to fall through every single dimension in the others, the single times and the single spaces report they interact them among them, as every other characterizing the dimensions.

It emerges not a simple sum, but a contextual place, builder and modifying, constantly built and modified: the reduction of this process to a simple empirical generalization not only provokes a loss of information regarding the specific dynamic of relations, but, at the same time the identification of equal and different among them entities. We cannot process the events with the tools furnished by the classical theory of the probability, the same concept of average would be a contradiction of what is affirmed till now; difficulty is not, nevertheless, purely formal, it becomes substantial when the reality is assumed as co-built on this series of complex interactions and not purely external.

So, in our framework, “all” it is net of relationships: the time, the places of relationships constitute the context of reality that dictates the cognitive procedures, that is frame and methodological meaning: deduction and induction, separately considered, are not able to furnish suitable answers anymore. Their role of perfect inferences, inside a dichotomy, falls when we move on different levels of reality, all equally fundamental ones and co-builders of the individual subject and his relations. The solution for this new defection could be furnished through and through the analogy; more precisely an analogy of proportionality, perfectly able to read in adequate way the complex fractal structure (therefore recursive and hologrammatic) the chaotic non linear dynamics, the multidimension of the reality, inside an architecture of net»5.

2.

The societies in their complexity and the social aggregates of shorter dimension exhibit even many commonly associate characteristics with the complex systems, but the great number of constitutive elements of the social systems and the greater number of possible meaningful relationships that connect them are not sufficient for qualifying these systems as complexes. We have historical sciences, even though various from those natural , for which the knowledge which they give life remains always an objective knowledge and, as such, scientific.

5 M. Ampola, The study of social reality as a relational network: about the context, cit.


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rather to consider the presence of irreversible phenomenons, dispellig structures that their structural integrities maintain despite the variation of same fundamental elements constituting them. In the dynamic complex systems studied in nature, the maintenance of the structural identity happens through dissipated trials of energy: in the field of existence, within which, as observatories, we can identify the human societies as systematic complexes, it is the information to circular and to allow the maintenance of the structural identity. This theory suggests some possible directions in which to look for deciding from what point of view we has to consider the social actors in the attempt to build a suitable modelling to the complexity of their social systems. We here remember the conceptual table related to the entropy as measure of the uncertainty in the knowledge of the condition of a system, as thermodynamic interpretation (uniformity, increasing function with passing time up to the undiversified state of equilibrium) both as theory of the communication, rich of analogical perspectives on condition that we remember how information is more meaningful as more unlikely (the statistically more probable message[maximum of entropy] is devoid of meaning).6

If we, however, set entropy as measure of knowledge of the system we can say that the maximum possible knowledge corresponds to the knowledge of the particular states among those possible in the same system: the probability of this state goes, then, from an infinitesimal value into the value one (corresponding to the reality).We must not forget, besides, that failing information (frequent condition) makes to grow the entropy as missed knowledge together with the complexity of the system.

There is a further factor of complexity to keep in mind in this circle, the fact that the social actors build themselves same models of the system within which they operate selecting their own actions according with presuppositions of adequacy to own representation of the same system: the complex social system presents itself, then, as conceptual construction of the observer-researcher, construction that is able not to coincide with the representations set of the social actors, so establishing a further element of complexity in the modelling of the social systems for the presence of autoreferred and resorting circuits.

It is always possible, also, to operate an analytical reduction, considering the social actors as “closed microsystems” and considering only the observable elements of their actions; nevertheless, also wanting to stay in an elementary analytical level, the same distinction between action and behaviour necessarily

6 In sociological terms it would be defined: “chaotic and dissonant”.


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requires to the researcher to build assumptions on the motivations, on the attributed meanings by the actor to his own context and to the actions of the other social actors, in a reflecting game that cannot be made to regress over and over again but it necessarily has to find a point of break-up.

3.

The social systems can be considered complex systems, observable through frame-models that take in account the emergent ownerships, the unpredictable of the micro-behaviours of the root-components, the possibility of systemic transitions toward different conditions, superior or inferior levels or dissolution.

In natural sciences the study of the complex systems uses mathematical modelling, based on the quantified results of examined and experimental situations; in this sense the so-called “science of the complexity” doesn't mark a discontinuity in comparison to the traditional scientific method; she differentiates only, by the traditional sciences, for the different way of considering the object of her own study, using the methods of scientific investigation and mathematical modelling to show that non explainable with certain levels of observation behaviours introduce some regularities, then they are susceptible of modelling and of scientific explanation if observed with other levels and with different mathematical tools. A complex modelling of the social systems doesn't, likewise, require for the observer to abandon his consolidated baggage of methods and tools of investigation; they must be put however to the service of a different vision of a different paradigm.

In the sector of the social sciences, with reference therefore to the social systems, we are in a so preliminary phase of this type of studies that also only the identification of one of these strange attractors would represent a considerable progress; the exit of this theoretical type from the condition of suggestive analogy and the entry in a territory of future developments (to be explored): the use in analogical key (analogy of proportionality) of the concept of complex system directly brings to structure a multidimensional matrix, where each structural identified variable by the observer represents a dimension.

The adequate representation of the system’s condition in comparison to every dimension depends on the ability of the observer to individualize the meaningful relationships among the social actors, and to identify the classes of interactions that structure every dimension of the model. The identification of the classes of


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meaningful interactions is made more difficult since they correspond to relative conceptual abstractions to discontinuous actions and never observable in their complex unity; nevertheless the social actors themselves operate some strategies of reduction of the complexity of their own representations of the social systems. In this sense, keeping in mind every methodological cautions suggested by the underlined in social psychology problems of auto-attribution, it is, however, possible to make reference to the attributed meanings by the social actors to their own role, to the operated crystallization by the classes of meaningful interactions in more or less structured institutional reality and, accordingly to the phenomenological postulations, to build their own model of social system, the own analogical multidimensional matrix, in a suitable way to the subjective intentions that compete to the construction of the social reality.

To proceed to this complex modelling is necessary to identify in which sphere to consider the nature of the interactions among actors. The proposal that appears deserving to be deepened is to consider their nature of communicative exchanges, or rather as deliberate actions of informative exchange. To the information it is possible to apply as both analyses of quantitative type and qualitative type. The two moments cannot separately be considered: the selection of the single classes of interaction to be included in the specific model happens on the basis of their qualitative analysis, while the plan of the system’s structure happens through their quantitative analysis. We have, also, to underline en passant the dialectical relationship among the two moments, where the quantity of the communicative exchanges weighs on the quality of the classes of interaction, and vice versa the quality of these classes contributes to determine its necessary quantitative profile for the subsistence of the social system in the datum level of organization.

In a modelling of the exposed type, in a multidimensional fractal matrix, as far as initially used in analogical key, the identification of attractors becomes possible in the dynamics of the system, for this way is possible to operate forecasts on the future conditions (not in the level of the single components of the system, that maintains the proper substantial approximation, but in the level of the general state of the system compared with the identified structural variables.7

7 We can note, moving from natural sciences field , P. Pasquinelli, in these Acts: (Some Aspect of the

Quality in a Living System. A Preliminary Approach: “The Lichen Symbiosis”): «My experience in Environmental Science and in Visual Arts, allows us to put attention to the macroscopical structures of the lichen Peltigera polidactila of which growth develops in fractal form. The fractal units are represented as trimarginate border of the small leaf even if unseptate. If we have to reduce the lichen to a geometric representation of fractal unit we must use an approximation by several irregular polygons (from triangle to hexagon) useful to rich the repetitive images».


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The presence in the model of punctual attractors would identify the possibility of evolution of the system toward a state of stasis, with the structural variables in stasis once reached the coordinates of the attractor. Strange type attractors would relatively identify instead combinations of stable values, with the possible transition of the system on diversified orbits which would mean qualitatively different combinations of conditions in comparison to the structural variables. The process here delineated is not devoid of difficulty, and we expect that once that we undertake the run of it we met new unexpected difficulties; nevertheless it is a path that we have to cover for grasping, perhaps, some panoramas of fractal complexity whereas we see only today the chaos.

4.

The exposed table opens different possibilities of application of the fuzzy logic to the construction of indicators and synthetic indexes. In this preliminary reflections, a second necessary passage will have to develop test of validity for the tools so built, so able to adequately compare with traditional indexes.

All indicators built on the base of additive scales can be made fuzzy: rather than to attribute the score of an individual on the single item of the scale as to his choice of a discreet value among the proposed ones, we can allow to position himself in comparison to a continuum and, through a special function of belonging, we obtain the degree of “consent” of the individual in comparison to the subtended dimension by the item of the scale.

For instance, in the typical item of a Likert scale, the answering X can point out his accord or disagreement in comparison to the affirmation object of the


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item, positioning himself on a level that is decoded with a numerical value (in the example in figure 1, a number among 1 and 5).

5

The different gotten scores by the same answering in comparison to the different items that the scale composes are added therefore (or we can made the average) and the resultant score characterizes its position in comparison to the synthetic index, that is hypothesized correlated with the position of the answering one in comparison to the latent variable. In the example in figure 1 the answering himself declares “rather of accord” on the first one and third item, receiving a score of 4 on every, and “completely of accord” with the second item, receiving a score of 5. The general score of X is therefore 13 (on a maximum possible 15) and the underlying assumption the use of the scalar tool is that this positioning is consistent with the positioning of his attitude in comparison to the continuous range of possible positions on the hypothetical continuum of the latent variable.

A fuzzyfication of the additive index attributes to every item of the scale a function of belonging, with the possibility, for different items of the same scale, to have diversified functions according to how much we believe that different


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positions taking on the comparison to the item contribute to the global position. It is as if for every items the belonging of the individual one was noticed to

the fuzzy unity : “people with opinions in accord in comparison to the latent variable”, and form and inclination of the functions of belonging realize than and as the single item contributes to the final synthetic index. This last can directly be express in turn as fuzzy value, inclusive among 0 and 1, express as average or as logical composition of the scores of the single items. In figure 2, the positions pointed out by the individual one on the continuum of consent/variance on the three available items make him attribute some scores (according to the relative functions of belonging) respectively of 0,82 0,35 and 0,87. The average of 0,68 of the three scores and the score of the synthetic index, correspondent to the relative position on the continuum 0-1, with the extreme values characterizing the absence or the full possession of the latent variable, and the intermediary positions are supposed correlated with the hypothetical continuum of the latent variable. In comparison to the discreet values standard scale this method would have the advantage to allow a not rigidly bound answer by preset positions (few/a lot/nothing….) and with the possibility to delineate the functions of belonging so that to realize for every items the way in which the same expression in natural language produces any removals from the real dimension that we intend to notice. The most critical moment in the elaboration of a similar tool is the definition of functions of belonging, that will a phase of accurate pre-test.

Another road to be crossed is the construction of indexes of proximity for a theoric typical construction, processed as asymptotic and sub-normal fuzzy unity.8 In the case of multidimensional resolution of this construction, the survey of the scores to be composed in the synthetic index can be conducted according similar formalities. Example: index of bureaucracy of Hall: I suppose that the latent variable subtended by every dimension of the construction latent variable is continuous; I notice her on the base of a fuzzy indicator, with function of affiliation that never reaches 1. The logical or mathematical composition of the dimensional indicators in the synthetic index allows to measure the distance of the empirical cases from the construction, respected in her utopian nature and of logical connection that has in Weber. We can explore, besides, the process of building of multiple typicalnesses of belonging in which is possible to determine the different degrees of belonging for an element to the different categories in a non-exclusive way. It would be a sort of fuzzy clustering in which, rather than to

8 In this area we consider particularly fruitful the fractal methodology, as explanatory contribution to

the identity of the statistical properties (strong identity of all the functions of distribution or middle identity middle, of averages and variables of the initial series and the subsets) but we must not neglect the frequent analogical uses in the field of the communicative trials.


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be built afterwards as optimization of a target function, the criterions of belonging to the clusters are built in advance on the theoretical recordings of the observer. Built indexes according to these methodologies are shown more suitable to seize the proper vagueness of the world of the social actors in comparison with the traditional organizations of types, similarly pre-emptive builds but that allow an exclusive affiliation of the elements to the types.

In the example figure 3 the universe of the elements is suddivided in four mutually exclusive types, with the belonging element X to the type A1 and the belonging element Y to the type B2

In the fuzzy example figure 4, the types A1, A2, B1 and B2 have vague borders and the elements X and Y belong in different measure to more of a type. In the underlying table, the affiliations to the different fuzzy types of the elements X and Y.


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In this case a relative function of belonging must be associated to every type that allows to determine the degree of affiliation to it of a generic element; we must process with precision therefore the dimension or the connected dimensions with logical or mathematical operating, which organize the types’s organization (the fundamenta divisionis).

References Ampola M. (2004), The study of social reality as a relational network: about the context, Recent

developments and applications in Social Research Methodology, Sixth International Conference o Logic and Methodology, Amsterdam, Isbn 90-6706-176-x.

Blalock H. M. (1985), Cross-Level Analyses, in «The Collection and Analysis of Community Data», Blau P.M. (1960), Structural effects, «American Sociological Review». Blau P.M. (1976), Structural Sociology and Network Analysis: an Overview, in Marsden P., N. Lin (eds),

Social Structure and Network Analysis, Sage, London. Blien U. – Wiedenbeck M. – Arminger G. (1994), Reconciling Macro and Micro prospectives by

Multilevel Models: an application to regional wage differences, in Borg J. – Mahler P. (eds), Trends and Prospectives in Empirical Social Research, New York.

Bongaarts J. – Watkins S.C. (1996), Social Interactions and Contemporary Fertility Transitions, in «Population & Development Review», 22, 4.

Borra S. – Racioppi F. (1995), Modelli di analisi per dati complessi: l’integrazione tra micro e macro nella ricerca multilevel, Convegno SIS, Rende.

Bryk A.S. – Raudenbush S.W. (1992), Hierarchical Linear Models for Social and Behavioural Sciences, Sage Publ., Newbury Park.

Campbell E.Q. – Alexander C.N. (1966), Structural effects and interpersonal relationships, in «American Journal of Sociology».

Chiuppesi M., (2007) Complessità e vaghezza, frattali e logica fuzzy: nuovi sentieri per la ricerca sociale, Pisa University Press, ISBN: 978-88-8492-480-3.

Courgeau D. – Baccaini B. (1998), Multilvel analysis in the social sciences, in «Population», 10. Goldstein H. (1995), Multilevel Statistical Model, Edward Arnold, London. Harder T. – Pappi F.U. (1969), Multiple-level regression analysis of survey and ecological data, in

«Social Science Information», 2. Hox J.J. (1995), Applied Multilevel Analysis, TT-Publikaties, Amsterdam. Kohler H.P. – Behrman J.R. – Watkins S.C., (1999), The Structure of Social Networks and Fertility

Decisions: Evidence from Nyanza District, Max Planck-Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, WP5.

Kreft I. – De Leeuw J. (1998), Introducing Multlevel Modeling, Sage Publ., London. Iversen G.R. (1991), Contextual Analysis, Sage, Newbury Park. Laumann E.O., F.U. Pappi (1976), Networks of Collective Action: a Perspective on Community Influence

Systems, Academic Press, New York. Loriaux M. (1972), L’analyse causale face aux effets d’interaction: réexamen de la méthode de

dépendence, in «Revue Francaise de Sociologie».


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Marsden P. – Friedkin N. (1993), Network studies of social influence, in «Sociological Methods & Research», 22.

Micheli G. A. (1996), Né micro né macro. Appunti per una analisi multi-level, in Micheli G.A. e P. Man-fredi (eds), Matematica delle popolazioni, F. Angeli, Milano.

Micheli G. A. – G. Rivellini (1999), Social Networks and Elder People. An analytical tool for a policy issue, Workshop on Social Interactions and Demographic Behaviour, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock.

Mills M. (1999), Social interaction and the emergence of innovative demographic behaviour: exploration of theory and methodology, Workshop on Social Interactions and Demographic Behaviour, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock.

Montgomery M.R. – Casterline J.B. (1998), Social Networks and the Diffusion of Fertility Control, Population Council, WP 119.

Opdenakker M.C. – van Damme J., – Leuwen K.U. (1999), The importance of identifying levels in multilevel analysis: an illustration of ignoring top of intermediate levels in school effectiveness research, http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/

Pasquinelli P. (2008), Some Aspect of the Quality in a Living System. A Preliminary Approach: “The Lichen Symbiosis”, 7th RC33 Conference, Acts, Napoli.

Rivellini G. – Zaccarin S. (1999), Comportamenti riproduttivi: biografie individuali e contesto in ottica multilevel, in De Sandre P. – Pinnelli A. – Santini A. (eds.), Nuzialità e fecondità in trasformazione, percorsi e fattori del cambiamento, Il Mulino, Bologna.

Snijders A.B. – Bosker R.J. (1999), Multilevel Analysis, Sage Publication, London.

INDEXES, SCALES AND IDEAL TYPES – A FUZZY APPROACH

Marco Chiuppesi Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali Università di Pisa [email protected] +39 050 2212420

Abstract

In this paper I will propose the use of fuzzy logic for the creation of indexes of proximity between empirical objects and ideal-typical conceptual constructs.

After having briefly introduced what fuzzy logic and fuzzy set theory are, I will discuss several interpretations of the concept of ideal type, as imagined by Max Weber and later used in social research as a heuristic tool. Then I will focus on the importance of ideal types for the development of indexes in social research.

After having delineated the main points about construction and use of fuzzy ideal-typical indexes, I will exemplify with data from the classic Hall (1963) research about bureaucratic organizations.

Keywords: Ideal types, fuzzy, bureaucracy

Index

1. Fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic 182. Ideal type: history of a concept 183. Indexes and ideal types: traditional approach 224. Indexes and ideal types: a fuzzy approach 255. Conclusions 32References 33 1. Fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic


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Fuzzy set theory was proposed by Lotfi A. Zadeh (1965). In this theory, a fuzzy set is defined as a class with a continuum of degrees of membership. There is a clear difference between fuzzy and traditional set theory, where in the latter an object has only the two options – to belong or not to belong to a given set. Every fuzzy set can be described by its membership function, used to calculate the membership degree for each object of the set. As traditional set theory and logic are reciprocally translatable, so fuzzy set theory corresponds to fuzzy logic. In fuzzy logic, a proposition can have a truth degree between “true” and “false” (between 0 and 1, using Boolean algebra). In fuzzy logic the truth-values "true" and "false", 0 and 1, become the extreme points of a continuous interval. Various elements of traditional logic have their fuzzy logic counterparts – operators, quantifiers, modifiers – just like there are fuzzy set operations corresponding to traditional set operations – union, intersection, and so on.

With his fuzzy set theory Zadeh created an instrument for the formalization of vague concepts; so, his theory is used to deal with operations on vaguely defined classes, on sets with uncertain boundaries. This makes fuzzy logic an instrument with a great utility for classifications, given the vague boundaries in so many conceptual operations and in natural languages used for their expression. Fuzzy logic proved to be especially useful in dealing with the complex path leading from theory to the empirical level (Ampola 2000).

2. Ideal type: history of a concept

Weber introduces the concept of ideal type in 1904, in the editorial for the review Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik:

«An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points

of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified thought construct. In its conceptual purity, this mental construct cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality. It is a utopia. Historical research faces the task of determining in each individual case, the extent to which this ideal-construct approximates to or diverges from reality [...]» (Weber 1922a)


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Weber presents this concept again in the introduction to Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, posthumous publication (Weber 1922b).

The elaboration of ideal type as a proper heuristic instrument must be set in the context of Weber’s methodological reflection, oriented towards the definition of the status of historical-social sciences, and as a part of the wider debate about method in human sciences. Building his ideal-typical instrument, Weber builds a syntheses of positivism and historicism. On one side he rejects the attempt of positivism to build sociology as a nomothetic discipline; he also rejects the psychologistic foundations and the heavy individualization of the historical fact, adopted by historicism.

On the other side, Weber accepts the positivistic conception of sociology as a science based upon empirical verification, and he maintains historicistic tension towards interpretation, Verstehen.

Capecchi (1966) distinguish three different ways in which Weber uses the term ideal type; the three ways lead to different concepts, defined as follow by Capecchi:

• idealtipo storico non astratto (Historical, non-abstract ideal type) • idealtipo generalizzabile non astratto (generalizable, non-abstract ideal

type) • idealtipo astratto (abstract ideal type)

Raymond Aron (1967; see also Coser 1977, 224) also shows how Weber uses the term ideal type in three different acceptations, corresponding to three different levels of abstraction:

• ideal types of historical individualities • abstract elements of historical and social reality • rationalizing reconstructions of particular kinds of behaviour.

The first kind of ideal type corresponds to the use by Weber of terms like

“protestant ethic", “modern capitalism”, conceptual abstractions of historical and cultural specific phenomena. The second kind of ideal type is related to abstract elements of social reality, elements that are not connected to a specific historical and cultural context: in this sense, the use by Weber of concepts like “bureaucracy”, “feudalism”.

The third meaning of ideal type is related to phenomena like rational behaviours of individuals, concepts usually found in economical theories. Of these three different meanings, the more relevant for elaborating social research methods is the second, the one called “generalizable, non-abstract ideal type” by


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Capecchi. Bailey (1994) considers it a precious tool to deal with quantitative classifications based upon the distance of empirical cases form ideal types, for example in the field of formalized comparative methods. In the following of this paper I will use the term ideal type following this meaning.

Bailey considers ideal type as a sort of “perfect specimen”, having every characteristic or relevant dimension of the type and showing extreme clearness on every characteristic; he uses an example from numismatic (the example is of course etymologically adequate, considering that the term type comes from a latin term meaning coin): having selected relevant dimensions for the level of wear on coins, the ideal type of a given coin is the one - even if non existent in reality – that shows optimum level on every dimension, and can be used as a ruler to value empirical cases. Given ten binary proprieties, ideal type is the sample possessing all ten (of course, in the hypothesis that there are no inverse correlations between proprieties).

This conception of ideal type as inductively derived from empirical cases is in some way challenged, for example by Kuckartz (1991). Weber himself used tipologies emerging from empirical data, coming from statistical data too; for example, in his field researches in 1890 and 1908. Types built in this way are a different thing from ideal types, lacking the ideal-typical characteristic of “homogeneous structures of ideas”. The difference between the comparative imposition of an ideal-typical construct to reality and sintetic use of an empirical type deducted from reality corresponds to the difference between a neo-kantian approach and a phenomenological one. Clearly the ideal-typical construct, accentuating tracts of reality as found by an observer, must have an empirical coupling: the reality, upon whose knowledge ideal-typical construction is based, is in some way given.

The meanings of ideal type commonly used in social research highlight the intensional enrichment of a starting concept, its unilateral accentuating, usually without deepening the synthetic nature that the ideal type has for Weber.

I think that in this way there is the risk to lose the complexity of meaningful relations between the dimensions relevant for the determining of the same ideal type. It can be useful and correct to consider ideal type as a “perfect specimen”, showing every relevant dimension in the highest degree, with the caveat to consider as relevant dimensions not the quantities, directly observed, of some variable; but the modes of qualities and the intensity of relations that it has with other qualities.


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One thing is deriving the ideal type of an object, like the coin in Bailey's example, imagining to bring to the maximum level every characteristic used for the definition of the level of wear of the coin. Another thing is to derive the ideal type of an historical or social reality, where in addition to the typical features we have different relations – of different kinds and degrees – between characteristics.

Given the weberian definition of ideal type, is clear how it's possible to operate a plurality of typifications of a phenomenon, accentuating some characteristics or some other ones, or hypothesizing different relations between relevant characteristics, so obtaining conceptual canvases – some of whom, although different one from one other, may be intrinsically coherent, respecting the requisite of unitariety of conceptual canvas, as formulated by Weber. What should drive the social researcher in adopting a specific ideal type instead of another one?

This problematic field has been evidenced by Smelser (1976): he stressed out how a common critic of typical concepts as ideal types is their “subjectivity”, their being the product of intuitions and perceptions of the social researcher, without any guarantee that other researcher (or even the same one under different circumstances) would build the same classification. For Smelser this misconception arises from considering the researcher a source of uncontrollable variations, polluting in some way the process of classification building and its application to empirical cases.

What should be the selection and validation criteria for an ideal-typical construct, in order to ensure its scientificity? First of all, every researcher has an implicit foundation on its own values. Moreover, being ideal type an heuristic construct, it will be necessary to consider its efficacy for the knowledge of cultural phenomena (Weber 1922); even if this criterion could lead to the risk of ad hoc justifications.

On what base can be asserted the efficacy for knowledge? I think that a criterion to value it can emerge from the object of study: historical and social phenomena are the product of human actions, rationally oriented on the base of intelligible purposes from the observer, whom has the necessity to build an ideal typification around these purposes. Weber writes about Kausaladaequanz, adequacy of purposes, with the meaning of the existence of empirical relations between various proprieties composing the conceptual space of ideal type, on one side, and social reality as observed, on the other side. Weber uses the term Sinnadequanz, with the meaning of sense adequacy: the subjective interpretation


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of a course of action as typical from the point of view of its components and the relations between them.

This definition seems to tie the criterion of sense adequacy to the third meaning of ideal type, rationalizing reconstruction of courses of behaviour, but also ideal types in the second meaning – abstract elements of historical reality – are at last structured by sense adequacy. On the phenomenological field, Alfred Schütz strengthens this position asserting that ideal types as built by social scientists about the meaningful contests of actors operating in vital worlds must be verified against causal adequacy – i.e., it must be verified if they are conforming with what is known about past experiences – and against meaning adequacy – i.e., it must be verified if they are consistent with everything else is known about social actor.

3. Indexes and ideal types: traditional approach

If we are dealing with an ideal-typical construct, validated following our theory of interest, we can decide to make a comparative quantitative use of it, measuring distance of empirical cases from the ideal type, or to measure – using dimensions taken from the ideal-typical construct – the reciprocal position of cases.

The first step of a traditional approach will be extracting from the ideal-typical definition the analysis unit, i.e. to determine at which level of conceptual abstraction ladder the social nexus object of the ideal type is positioned. This is necessary because the comparative procedure has sense if conducted between aggregates of the same level. The second step will be to determine relevant dimensions of ideal-typical definition, and to build indicators about different dimensions.

Once identified relevant dimensions of the ideal type, the following step will be to build an indictor for each dimension.

Once the dimensional concepts have been transformed in variables, with the use of operative definitions, it will be possible to build an index that – combining scores of single cases on different indicators – gives a synthetic indication of the position of each case about the general ideal-typical concept.

Going on in a traditional fashion, and leaving apart for the moment details about the construction of indicators and operative definitions, it will be possible to obtain an additive index of this kind:


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IND

1 = a

1+ b

1+c

1+…+n

1

With i

1…n

1 the state of case n.1 about variables corresponding to previously

identified dimensions, and IND1

the synthetic score associated to the same case.

Of course it's possible to associate weighting factors and normalization techniques to the scores on different variables, in order to obtain comparable values even if obtained with different techniques, and whose weight on the composition of the index is proportioned to the weight of each dimension in the determination of the broader ideal-typical concept.

So, on the base of operative definitions associated to indicators, it is possible to obtain for each empirical case the scores about indicators and the possible synthetic score of IND index. Let's take as an example the ideal type of bureaucracy, used by Weber (2922b). A traditional and classic way to operationalize the ideal type of bureaucracy is the one by Hall (1963); on the base of weberian text and on an analysis of secondary literature, Hall identifies six relevant dimensions of bureaucracy (my abbreviations):

• AUT) hierarchy of authority • DIV) division of labour • REG) system of rules about rights and duties • PRO) procedural specifications for work situations • IMP) distinction between the office (place, tools, documents) and who keeps

the job: impersonality of relations; • COM) the need of a specific preparation for each role: technical competence.

Hall goes on building six indicators related to these six dimensions; each indicator is derived from the sum of scores on different 5-positions Likert scales, obtained submitting test batteries to members of the organizations under study (managers and workers). The score of each worker on each dimension is obtained by sum of every item on the same dimension; for each organization Hall calculates the average score on each dimension.

Hall didn't build a synthetic index, being his approach oriented to emphasizing every dimension instead of obtaining a one-dimensional score.

At the end of data analysis, he has the score for every organization on every dimension. Studies subsequent to Hall's one evidenced the correlation level


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between dimensions, clustering them in two different sets inversely related – AUT, DIV, REG, PRO on one side (bureaucratization) and IMP, COM on the other (professionalism). This approach shows the heuristic utility of the ideal-typical instrument, in the circular path that goes from theories to data and back to theory. Even if subsequent studies (Pugh et al., 1968; Samuel, Mannheim, 1970) showed how the concept of bureaucracy can be dimensioned in different ways, it remains the fundamental importance of a complex conceptual construct, explicitly built as an abstraction with which confront empirical recurrences.

It should be noted that correlations between some of the dimensions were observed at the level of empirical cases, because each dimension is studied in an autonomous way, being presupposed a huge margin of semantical autonomy. When the ideal type have been operativized, it has been divided in relevant dimensions, extracting the relation between dimensions from theoretical background and verifying it afterwards, at the moment of data analysis.

For how good it may be, the procedure just described leads to lose from sight what I think are two fundamental aspects of weberian ideal type, aspects that once obliterated lower its utility as a way to investigate social reality.

The first aspect is being ideal type an utopic construct, not to be found in concrete historical-social reality. Using indicators of different dimensions built in traditional ways (for example Hall using Likert scales) there is the possibility that some empirical case obtains maximum score on each indicator, obtaining the maximum theorical score and being so a “perfect specimen”. This is especially true on comparative studies with small N, where the dimensional score is given by an “expert judge” or by a restricted number of evaluators. At this point, if we meant to build an index of the proximity of empirical cases to the ideal type, the theoretical maximum score can characterize identity of empirical case and ideal type – and this would be in contradiction with the utopic nature of ideal type – or we would have an index measuring the “maximum possible proximity” between an empirical case and ideal type, without any possibility to measure or define the residual distance from ideal type to the perfect specimen.

The second aspect is being ideal type an unitary conceptual frame, in which concrete phenomena are accentuated and connected. The connection cannot be considered as a mere juxtaposition, instead it needs the determination of logical relations between phenomena of which – once their presence in the ideal-typical construct is determined – must be in some way decided kind and degree of relation with other phenomena that take part in the same ideal-typical construct. With the traditional way presence and degree of a dimensional variable are


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determined, for each dimension, without putting in evidence the kind of relations between dimensions if not their contemporaneous presence – this from a logical point of view configures each dimension as necessary, but not sufficient. A retrospective analysis of the correlation degree between ideal type dimensions doesn't fill this gap; it can lead to the realization of a new ideal type, more coherent and less structured, but connected to a different concept than the one identified from the beginning ideal type.

4. Indexes and ideal types: a fuzzy approach

If the ideal-typical constructs is a logical composition of variables (or of secondary concepts, themselves composition of indicators), it is possible to employ fuzzy logic to obtain an operative definition, translatable in natural language.

For example, let's define an hypothetical ideal type T as characterized by “the necessary presence of much i and a sufficiently high degree of j, in tendential absence of k”. A case that, with respect to i, j, k variables conforms to the logical composition given in the operative definition, can be considered an empirical type associable to T ideal type. It's possible to operationalize in fuzzy terms the three dimensions measured by i, j, k variables, defining membership functions associating each case to a membership degree for the corresponding linguistic variable, on the base of the value measured in operative field. If our research method consists in obtaining dimensional indicators by questionnaires whose items are used to build scales or scalograms, as in quantitative sociology; if our research consists in scores given by a judge panel or by the researcher himself, method more suitable to politological and historiographical comparation, in any case it is possible to use fuzzy membership functions to convert the scores of single dimensions in values belonging to the continuum 0-1.


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The use of an hyperbolical membership functions with an asymptote on 1 (fig. 1) allows us to obtain a subnormal fuzzy distribution, whose maximum membership degree can tend to 1, without ever reaching the full membership: so, no empirical case can be considered fully corresponding to the ideal type, even with respect to the single dimension taken into account – respecting so the meaning of ideal type as non-empirical (utopic) construct. The same result can be obtained also with suitably inclined linear functions; in the case in example, y=(0,9*x). The choice of the kind of function must of course be done following explicit assumptions about the trend of the latent variable hidden below the dimension.

At this point, if our research design in addition to determining dimensional indexes also provides for their composition, we can use proper fuzzy connectives


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corresponding to logical connectives in ideal-typical definition we formalized: in this way it is possible to obtain, for empirical cases, the determination of their synthetic degree of membership to the set of which the ideal type represents the perfect specimen, reference sample for the comparative procedure. Going back to the example, we can see how to obtain an index of correspondence to an ideal type T defined and formalized as characterized by “the necessary presence of much i and a sufficiently high degree of j, in tendential absence of k”. The first step, as we have seen, is to obtain the membership of cases to fuzzy sets corresponding to dimensions i, j, k, with relative fuzzy membership functions. Moreover, it will be necessary to transform indicators in corresponding fuzzy variables allowing quantification of linguistic terms as “much”, “enough”, “a few”:

(1) indT = much i AND (enough j AND few k). Assuming for simplicity that i, j, and k fuzzy variables all have the same

shape, we could do an example of formalization for membership functions of linguistic determinations of fuzzy variable i:

Few i: for 0≤x≤0,2 y=5*x


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for 0,2<x≤0,4 y=5*(0,4-x) for x>0,4 y=0

Enough i: for x<0,3 y=0

for 0,3<x≤0,5 y=5*(x-0,2) for 0,5<x≤0,7 y=5*(0,4-x) for x>0,7 y=0

Much i :

for x<0,6 y=0 for x≥0,6 y=2,5*(x-0,6)

Let's take an hypothetical c obtaining the following dimensional (normalized) scores:

ic=0,7 j

c=0,6 k

c=0,2

we will obtain the following membership values for linguistic variables just

defined:

The results on table 1 can be summarized as follows: the c case belongs to the

set of elements with “much”i with a membership of 0,25; with a membership of 0,5 to the set of elements with “enough” j, and with a membership of 1 to the set of elements with “few” k. Its final score on ideal-typic index indT, as in (1), will so be given by

IndT

c = 0,25 AND (0,5 AND 1) = 0,25

An alternative to the definition of linguistic variables as a fuzzy sets series, a

topic that I will not explore in this paper, is the use of linguistic modifiers to be


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applied to the membership function; as an example, it can be used the following function:

much i = i^2 raising i to the 2nd power as a dilatation of the fuzzy set. In case of ideal-typical bureaucratic, build – conforming to Hall (1963) – as a

synthesis of logically necessary dimensions, a sinthetic index of dimensional indicators already transformed in fuzzy variables can be build using AND conjunction:

(2) BUR = a AND b AND c AND d AND e AND f The operator AND, in its more used fuzzy form – the one producing as result

the minimum of connected values (min), produces as well a large loss of information, giving the same result for quite different combinations of values.

Let's consider for example these two hypotetical distributions with the corresponding synthetic value obtained with a (min) function:

The first distribution describes an hypothetical c case, obtaining high scores on every dimensional indicator but the first; the second distribution describes another hypothetical case d, obtaining relatively low scores on every indicator.

Using the (min) function as a fuzzy AND operator for both distributions gives us the same result for the BUR index. This shows us the necessity for methodological attentions using this kind of operator to compose synthetic indexes formalizing ideal types (in the meaning of Bailey 1994).

Logical composition with min-max like connectives is used to study sufficient and necessary conditions in comparative qualitative analysis on small-n sets by Ragin (2000), and the use of this kind of connectives is starting to spread in social sciences. From the example in table 2 we see a typical situation where the number of variables taken into account is such that the loss of information obtained using min-max connectives can be considered excessive. When only the


30

highest or the lowest between the values of various dimensions characterizes the synthetic index, without the participation of every other value, we can consider insufficient the level of representation of relationships between dimensions; and this kind of representation is specific of an ideal-typical concept.

Kvist (1999; 2003; 2006; 2007) developed an application of Ragin's fQCA approach to ideal typical constructs. He considers cases as configuration of aspects, and uses fuzzy composition of these proprierties to reduce the property space to only the relevant configurations. Then, when (fuzzy) scores are assigned to cases on dimensions, it can be stated how cases are more or less similar to ideal typical configurations of aspects. The kind of tool I am proposing is quite different from Kvist's one, even if they share the purpose to use the ideal typical concept in a fuzzy way. Kvist, as Ragin, apart form negation (NOT) considers logical expressions of the causal relationships of necessity (intersection, AND) and sufficiency (union, OR), and he employs the min-max operators to deal with these kind of connections between dimensions. While union and intersection (along with negation) can be combined to express every kind of logical relation, I think that other functions should be explored for their fuzzy formalization apart from minimum and maximum. The use of minimum and maximum versions of intersection and union in fields different than small-N analysis, or when dealing with concepts characterized by a relevant number of dimensions, they could lead to the kind of information loss that I exemplified on table 2, and this - especially on diversity-oriented researches - could be an undesidered outcome. In the technical literature about fuzzy logic we find families of function for each one of these operators – respectively, T-norms for union and S-norms (or T-conorms) for intersection, so one of the next steps I intend to pursue is the evaluing of different formalizations for the use of these operators in fuzzy applications for social sciences.

Kvist stresses out how the fuzzy composition of dimensional variables allows to build a synthesis that goes beyond the mere juxtaposition of independent aspects of the phenomenon, and I completely agree. The synthetic procedure can be applied to data coming from superior level analysis units, instead of single cases. Let's go back to the classical Hall (1963) study, where the analysis unit is the single organization and the dimensional score is given by the mean of the scores of single respondents on 5-points Likert scales. Scores range from 10 to 50 for each dimension except the one about authority hierarchy (here AUT), ranging from 12 to 60. Moreover, in the original study, lower scores corresponds


31

to a higher level of bureaucraticity. As an example, I take Hall's first and last case:

Normalizing values on a 0-1 range and inverting polarity, so that 1 corresponds to the presence of the variable (highest bureaucraticity) and 0 to its absence, we obtain the following values:

Values so transformed can be used as membership degrees to fuzzy sets corresponding to each dimension. As shown on formula 2), the fuzzy synthetic index BUR could be obtained connecting each dimension with AND, that is to say BUR = min{AUT, DIV, REG, PRO, IMP, COM}. This approach presupposes the starting hypotheses of homogeneous behaviour for the latent continuous variable below each dimension, the indicator build to measure its presence in empirical cases, and the fuzzy conceptual constructs used to describe this indicators in linguistic terms.

If there are reasons to suppose a lack of this homogeneity, it is possible to use proper modifiers to transform the indicator scores: these are the membership functions already presented in Fig. 1 and 2, acting as modifiers being applied to values already comprised in the unitary interval.

My hypotheses is that Hall indicators, here normalized, are not homogeneous to the fuzzy ideal-typical conceptual construct, as long as i consider it keeping in mind the part of Weber's definition referring to its “utopicity”. So, I consider necessary to apply a membership function to the values obtained on different dimensions, allowing us to express the proximity of each case to an hypothetical ideal type showing on an unreachable level the propriety underscored by the dimension. Choosing an asymptotical or otherwise subnormal function makes theoretically impossible for empirical cases to obtain full scores on a dimension, keeping the utopicity of the ideal-typical construct. In the example, the dimensional score at the level of each case (where each case corresponds to an


32

organization) is obtained by the mean of a series of responses on 5-points scales; so it's quite hard to obtain the maximum possible score (1 on the normalized scale) because it would mean that every respondent gave the same extreme individual score; however, it's a theoretical hypotheses that cannot be excluded.

So I go on applying the linear subnormal membership function showed on fig.2, y=(0,9*x). The meaning of this operation is to make correspond, on each dimension, the score with the membership value on a corresponding fuzzy set, formalized expression of each dimension; the new synthetic index is

BUR2 = min{AUT2, DIV2, REG2, PRO2, IMP2, COM2} (or, that is the same, BUR2 = BUR*0,9)

Each case can be characterized on the base of its own dimension on an n-dimensional space, with n being the number of dimensions on which the ideal-typical concept has been sliced; the analysis in this way could be conducted with clustering methods. However it seems well founded the approach to the construction of a synthetic index allowing to characterize comparatively the distance of each case to the ideal-typical conceptual construct, respecting the utopic and logical connective nature of this kind of construct.

5. Conclusions

With the method described on this paper, and here applied on hypothetical data, it's possible to build fuzzy indexes of proximity to an ideal type. Using the example of the bureaucratic ideal type, with data from Hall 1963, I wanted to show how ideal-typical constructs of non-synthetic and non-utopic nature can be formalized in fuzzy terms to be subsequently synthesized with proper connectives. I focused on the need for methodological cautions for the possible information loss make possible by fuzzy synthetic indexes when applied to ideal-typical constructs, like Hall's one, when every dimension is logically necessary. In the situation, yet to be explored, where dimensions have logical relations more complex that simultaneous necessity, the approach I presented will allow to operationalize relevant dimensions in fuzzy variables, and will allow a


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recomposition in fuzzy indexes able to respect both the synthetic and the utopic nature of ideal type as Weber described and used it.

The method I am presenting requests the researcher to make explicit choices: about the fuzzy formalization of ideal-typical construct, about the choice of membership functions and of modifiers, and about the choice of fuzzy connectives. These choices must be properly explained, but cannot be discarded as “subjectivistic”: they only give a formal dress to choices that would otherwise remain implicit and unproblematized by the social researcher.

References Ampola M. (2000), From the theory to the empirical level: hypothesis of fuzzy logic, in:

Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Logic and Methodology, TT-Publikaties, Colony (Bulletin of sociological methodology, 68).

Aron R. (1967) Les étapes de la pensée sociologique, Gallimard, Paris. Bailey K. D. (1994) Typologies and taxonomies: An Introduction to Classification Techniques,

Sage, Thousand Oaks. Bryman A. (1988) Quantity and Quality in Social Research, Routledge, New York. Capecchi V. (1966) Typologies in Relation to Mathematical Models, Ikon, 58, supplement, 1-

62. Corbetta P. (1999) Metodologia e tecnica della ricerca sociale, Il Mulino, Bologna. Coser A. L. (1977) Masters of Sociological Thought, Waveland, New York. Hall R. H. (1961) An empirical study of bureaucratic dimensions and their relation to other

organizational characteristics, Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus. Hall R. H. (1963) The Concept of Bureaucracy: An Empirical Assessment, The American

Journal of Sociology, Vol. 69, 1, 32-40. Islam N. (1988) From Ideal Type to Pure Type - Weber's Transition from History to Sociology,

in: Karl Marx and Max Weber: Perspectives on Theory and Domination, Islam N., Jahangir B.K. & Khan S.I, (Eds), Center for Advanced Research in Social Sciences, University of Dhaka, 93-110.

Kosko B. (1993) Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic, Hyperion. Kvist J. (1999) Welfare Reform in the Nordic Countries in the 1990s: Using Fuzzy-Set Theory

to Assess Conformity to Ideal-Types, in: Journal of European Social Policy, 9(3), 231-252. Kvist J. (2003) Conceptualisation, Configuration, and Categorisation – Diversity, Ideal Types

and Fuzzy Sets in Comparative Welfare State Research, in: COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2003-15)

Kvist J. (2006) Measuring the Welfare State – Concepts, Ideal Types and Fuzzy Sets in Comparative Studies, in: COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2006-40)

Kvist J. (2007) Fuzzy set ideal type analysis, in: Journal of Business Research, 60(5), 474-481 Kuckartz U. (1991) Ideal Types or Empirical Types: the Case of Max Webers Empirical

Research, Bulletin de Methodologie Sociologique, 31, 44-53. Marradi A. (1993) Classificazioni, Tipologie, Tassonomie, in: Enciclopedia delle Scienze Socia-

li, vol. II, Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 22-30. Marradi A. (2000) La tipologia da Aristotele alle scienze umane moderne, in: AA. VV., Una fa-

coltà nel Mediterraneo, Giuffré, Milano, 183-201. Pugh D. S., Hickson D. J., Hinings C. R. & Turner C. (1968) Dimensions of Organization

Structure, in: Administrative Science Quarterly, 13, No. 1, 65-105.


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Ragin, C. C. (1987) The Comparative Method. Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Ragin, C. C. (2000) Fuzzy-set social science, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Samuel, Y., Mannheim, B. F. (1970) A Multidimensional Approach Toward a Typology of

Bureaucracy, in: Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 2 , pp. 216-228. Smelser, N. J. (1976) Comparative Methods in the Social Sciences, Prentice-Halls, Englewood

Cliffs. Weber, M. (1922a) Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, Mohr, Tübingen. Weber, M. (1922b) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Gundriß der verstehenden Soziologie, Mohr,

Tübingen. Zadeh, A. L. (1965) Fuzzy Sets, in Information and Control 8, 338-359.

SOME ASPECT OF THE QUALITY IN A LIVING COMPLEX SYSTEM. A PRELIMINARY APPROACH: “THE LICHEN SYMBIOSIS” Paolo Pasquinelli Abstract

This paper aims at explaining what perspectives could arise by a qualitative evaluation of some biological organisms in symbiosis which represents a complex living system. The aspect of the quality was not much studied by the academic world until 1980. Recently a group of multidisciplinary advanced scientists have used this qualitative concept to apply it to the environment. We propose an example of co-operation in the vegetal kingdom, as the "Lichen symbiosis", which is considered as a high stable association useful to measure that quality effect through the energy point of view. We attempt at encouraging studies and the applications in the new analysis of the quality using the incipient derivation. Then we introduce an interesting fractal view applied to a specific lichen. Keywords: lichen symbiosis, photosynthesis, quality evaluation, fractals.

Index Introduction 36

1. A Type of Symbiosis 372. Graphical Representation of the Symbiosis 383. The Photosynthesis: An Essential Condition for the Lichen Symbiotic Life 394. Performances Useful to Develop a Natural Lichen Symbiosis 405. The Qualitative Approach 416. Fractal approach 437. Conclusions and Future Work 44

Acknowledgements 45References 45


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Introduction

Since 1983 the studies of the Energy Fluxes were used to improve the applications in scientific, economic and social fields according to the qualitative theoretical approach. (1).

The necessity to introduce new economic qualitative parameters, which could have importance over the complicated industrial systems, created interest in many other disciplinary fields, one of which more interesting is the Ecology.

A Conference "Advances in Energy Studies: Energy Flows in Ecology and Economy" (2), was held in November 1998 in Portovenere (Italy). This event signed, maybe for the first time, the start of an important phase of comparing theories without any preconceived opinion, useful to give information of the studies produced from Thermodynamics to Environmental Dynamics, from Engineering to Social Sciences and more. This fact encouraged the developments of more correct industrial growth models. The presence of H.T. Odum, one of the most important scientists of that conference (without mentioning him as the “father” of those sciences) stimulated us to promote more advanced studies in environmental applications. After that Odum opened in 1994 the field of the Emergy (3), many scientists produced interesting works concerning their applications in Biology, Economy, Mathematics, Thermodynamics and Philosophy. It is our opinion that we have never observed, from that period, a similar great progression and diffusion of that matter.

In the recent history (even if "in itinere") of living complex systems, we can appreciate very important developments concerning the Quality concept, often "neglected" or, even worse, "overpowering" so far, in spite of the Quantitative evaluation regulated by very consolidated principles and formula easy to sustain in the Academic world. Recently an Italian researcher, C. Giannantoni proposed several papers to Biologists, the last two of which are “The Introduction to the Mathematics of the Generative Processes” (4) and “The Principle of the Maximum Power Emergy, as the base for Thermodynamics’ Quality” (5).

Well nowadays, the arguments concerning Emergy, already introduced by Odum, show to be ready to receive improvements moving to the rational approach or better to stimulate attempts at generating a new type of Maths: "The Incipient Differential Calculus”. This fact invites us to reconsider the assessment of the Quality (6). At this point it is important to consider that, without an accurate description of any model of “complex living system”, even if perfectible in run time, all of that could be wrong. Over all the incipient differential calculus


37

take in account of some aspects like the Co-production, the Interaction and the Feed-back on the dynamic evolution of the generative processes. In conclusion, the Qualitative question leads us to think that the more the pathways of the living systems are known, the more there is a major approximation for that qualitative plus-value useful to better represent the calculation applied in the measurements of the Emergy.

The definition of Emergy: Emergy = Available energy of one kind previously required directly and indirectly to make a product or service (H.T.Odum) (7).

If we want to adapt this definition to the lichen symbiosis we can consider that “one kind” must be change into “solar energy”.

The Units of Emergy are: sejoule (Joule of solar energy) Consequently, the adoption of Giannantoni’s new mathematics for the analysis

of the complex systems allows us to insert the qualitative evaluation into the quantitative calculation with the purpose to appreciate it in the presence of some dynamic aspects typical of living systems. That analysis contains the concept of the incipient derivation or (a-priori derivation) to substitute the “a-posteriori derivation”. This fact consents us to carry, into a dynamic state, some rules of Emergetic Algebra to which Math's complexity texts refer.

To get a feel to those previous considerations we remember what G. Monastra wrote in 2000 on the book “The Origin of the Life”: “Probably we need new innovative analysis methods and especially a new type of mathematics will be necessary to explain more living structures” (8).

1. A Type of Symbiosis Among the examples considered as fundamental to knowledge and to validate

the content of the previous considerations we chosen two keywords which can well respond at the need opportunity: “Symbiosis” and “Photosynthesis”.

For a Biologist who reads these words is easy to find a correspondence from the keys and Lichens. In fact the Lichen Symbiosis is a representation of the good co-operation of two organisms fungus and alga (mycobiont and phycobiont) forming a complex dynamic system where the photosynthesis is the best condition indispensable to the growth and survival of these two partners (9).


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The lichen and its structures are represented in Fig.1 where we can distinguish

a vegetative tissue also called "Thallus" (vegetative growth) and many spherical structures (Apothecia) useful for the sexual reproduction Apothecia contain the spores for the diffusion of the Species around the environmental substrates (land or barks). The yellow-green color is due to the photo-symbiotic alga Trebouxia.

2. Graphical Representation of the Symbiosis The lichen symbiosis, already described in its naturalist definition, can be

represented like a graphical image of a social system where two partners collaborate in obliged way to live utilizing the external solar energy and other appropriates input as reported in Fig.2.

The representation in Fig.2, very schematic, shows how the life conditions of

two organisms (fungus and alga) depend on the following physic elements: sunlight, water, air and substrate. To well understand this living system we must


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consider that each of these components is measurable alike by physics units and by complicated thermodynamic input-output fluxes of energy. What remains undeterminable and difficult to knowledge are the "living state" and the "behavioural adaptation" that represent the achievement, the maintenance and the preservation of the biodiversities. Therefore, using an expression adaptable to the Social Sciences, we courageously can represent the symbiosis as an example of "natural welfare" developed since the first appearance "pioneer community" of vegetal life in the Heart Planet.

It is very complicated to explain how the collaboration between two organisms, unicellular alga and ascomyces fungus, both set at the lower levels of the evolution pyramid, reach the success when, on the contrary, human systems at a major level, do not co-operate or sometimes they have the tendency to eliminate themselves (i.e. the tribal ethnic struggles inside the same group of population).

3. The Photosynthesis: An Essential Condition for the Lichen Symbiotic Life

If we consider the Photosynthesis as the evolutionary process, based by the use of solar energy, fundamental for developing and surviving of the Heart Planet, this requires to pay attention to the mechanisms that the vegetal living systems have organized as a consequence of this enormous availability energy. This adaptability shows an excellent capacity to maintain the biodiversity of the Species, to enhance themselves, when compared to what Humans are able to destroy in the environment. The alternance of light and dark is also an opportunity of the development of the photosynthetic organisms. In fact, as is well known, the photosynthetic process consists in two phases -light and dark (also called independent by light) - where Carbohydrates and Oxygen are synthesized from Carbon Dioxide and Water in many complicated enzymatic steps (10).

From the sociological point of view, it is not hazardous to define the lichen symbiosis as mutuality relationship or better altruistic-auto conservation due to the generosity to feed themselves (symbiotic organisms) and other living creatures. The organisms that exercise solidarism to perform a constructive association like the symbiosis also show to have a major resistance to the stress. Of course these two partners, even if each of the two maintains its peculiarity well distinguished, are able to develop a great solidarism. It is our opinion that


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this condition seems owed by a great number of information contained in their DNA which suggests a mechanism of adaptability to a social aggregation more useful for two than one single organism.

The cellular components and their structures, especially Tylacoids with

Chlorophylls are able to activate the photosynthesis (10) which consents to give carbohydrates to the fungus and to produce Oxygen to add to the atmosphere gases. In different way, the fungus gives mineral salts to the alga by hyphae absorption from the substrate. All of that is completed when the conditions of light and humidity are fitting to maintain their activities.

If we consider the case when the two organisms are in activity, and if we admit that the air (gaseous components) and the substrate are constants which do not interfere in the process analysis, we can conclude that variables of the system are the light and the water represented in different value. In last synthesis it is evident that the fungus can live also in absence of light, on the contrary the alga needs both light and water to have a good activation.

4. Performances Useful to Develop a Natural Lichen Symbiosis

Giving a value to the environmental needs of the partners of the symbiosis and simplifying the analysis of this state, we can decide to discriminate the importance and the dependence of the lichen viability in function of the two parameters light and water.


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If we consider the parameters (light and water) in Tab.1, we can deduct that

the alga is the predominant organism in the symbiosis. Similarly the water is the chemical-physical the most important component of which alga and fungus need. In fact in microclimate scenarios of potential high-dryness and elevated temperature of the air, the symbiotic functions have a great decreasing on the metabolism. Then they reach a steady state of growth, even if the global radiation on the upper lichen surface was excellent to activate the photosynthesis. As soon as the humidity condition will come suitable, the photosynthesis restarts immediately. This fact opens, so we think, an interesting chapter: the intermittence functions on the living organisms (in this case we call "intermittence" the restart of the activities dependent by photoperiod and relative humidity). All of that gives us the confirmation, in addition to what already known, that the water is "Mater vitae". At this point, coming back to the main topic of this paper "The value of the Quality", it is necessary to put a question and to give a suggestion for the answer:

Q.: What can we consider as the best aspect, as far as the quality of the

symbiosis is concerned, to be dealt with the incipient differential calculus? A.: The answer is very complicated, so we limit to suggest: "The

Photosynthesis"

5. The Qualitative Approach

With reference to the living aspect of the energy transformation by the photosynthetic organisms it is necessary to deconstruct the complex system in more simple pathways useful to choice the way very interesting for a Thermodynamically (11) and Emergetic point of view.

The photosynthetic process presents, at a cellular level, fluxes of charges (electrons and protons). This condition is typical for those irreversible transformations which originate many qualitative and precious levels of growth. To have an evaluation of those energetic fluxes some researchers use the methodology QEM (Quality Equivalent Methodology), considered as being valid


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to solve the problem of the quality of the energy (12). This method consists in the application of a very complicated system of linear equations to describe the complexity of the energy fluxes in ecology and economy fluxes. The solution of these equations depends on the determination of the quality factor ß (vector) for each type of energy and also by the vector Φ which represents the coefficient of the efficiency fitting for each process of the studied system.

Every process of the lichen symbiosis must necessarily be well known to have acceptable results in energetic balance.

Because of this paper only represents a preliminary approach, we propose a simplified study which attempts at introducing the arbitrary efficiencies between the partners of the lichen symbiosis. In fact we describe one of the steps of that methodology concerning the efficiency: “Quality-Adjusted Process Efficiencies”. In this particular case we consider the solar efficiency to produce the biomass of the lichen equal to 1.as the arbitrary unit of reference (13). It is then possible to propose that subject in the following Table 2.

It is evident that the irreversible processes of the lichen symbiosis, shown in

Tab.2, have different efficiencies from i.e.: (water function of alga for the photosynthesis) and (water function of fungus for solute transfer). Overall this fact is important if we take into account of the fitting of input and output that the energy quality can bring. That quality is represented by the choices derived from the information contained on the DNA of each vegetal cell committed to the photosynthesis.

Again in tab.2, the different value between the arbitrary efficiency of the alga Φ=0.96 and the fungus Φ=0.89 put in evidence the two ways of the use of the energy feed. Consequently the difference of two data of this parameter (Φ) differs of 7% in efficiency. This allows us to think that the major ability of the symbiosis resides in the photosynthesis process. Of course, from the physiological point of view, the photosynthesis contains a much more high complexity than the simple ions transfer (14). Obviously if we must calculate the absorbed energy without consider the qualitative aspect, the alga could be an


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advantage in Emergy of a rate (0.96/0.89) = 1.08. So we like to consider the quality of this living system as an advantage which could increase and favourite so much the developing symbiosis.

Where Em (f) and Em (a) represent the inter-active fluxes of Emergy

necessary to the growth of the fungus and the alga respectively. If Φ (f, a) is the expression of the efficiency of the interaction system, so Em Symbiosis is the final product of the Emergy process. Necessarily, in this pathway, the constant equivalence of the input-output of the whole system must be respected.

6. Fractal approach My experience in Environmental Science and in Visual Arts, allows us to put

attention to the macroscopical structures of the lichen Peltigera polidactila (Fig. 4) of which growth develops in fractal form. The fractal units are represented as trimarginate border of the small leaf even if unseptate (Fig. 5).

If we have to reduce the lichen to a geometric representation of fractal unit we

must use an approximation by several irregular polygons (from triangle to hexagon) useful to rich the repetitive images.


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In Fig.6 we used the method of "box counting" which consists to cover the set

by geometric elements. If we adpt the equilater triangle as the geometrical unit to calculate the dimension of the fractal we have a simple situation similar to the " Koch snowflake" where the dimension of the fractal is d=log 4/log 3 equal to 1.26. Very complicated and not easy to solve is the case of the lichen growth surface where it is impossible to cover only by a monofractal system. In fact we are in the presence of a multiscaling fractal quantity which imposes to know the boundaries of each part of the set. In a good approximation it could be similar to a little more d>1.26 which will be better assessed soon.

7. Conclusions and Future Work

In this paper we pointed out that the major expression of the intrinsic quality of the living systems consists in the survival processes useful for the diffusion and maintenance of the biodiversities. The Lichen Symbiosis is one of the examples where the quality expressions can emerge through the photosynthesis and the choice of the social aggregation (10). The incipient differential calculus can give a value to the qualitative aspects of the dynamic living systems. Also the comparison of the efficiencies of each process enables us to have an idea of how the solar energy is harmoniously distributed and utilized by the vegetal kingdom.

It is our intention to develop very soon a second step, where we will attempt at representing some examples of symbiotic socialization between human and animal Species.


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Acknowledgements

The author appreciated the encoragements and comments of Eng.Corrado Giannantoni (ENEA Casaccia) on the earlier draft of this paper.

Also the author wants to thank Fabrizio Puccini of the “Gruppo Micologico Livornese” for the support on the optical microscopy at the “Museum of Natural History of the Mediterraneum” in Livorno, Italy.

References

1) Patterson M.G. 1983.“Estimation of the Quality of Energy Sources and Uses”, Energy Policy 11.4 346-359

2) “Advances in Energy studies. Energy Flows in Ecology and Economy”. VI European Week of Scientific Culture (22nd-28th, November 1998). Editor in chief Sergio Ulgiati.

3) Odum H.T. “Ecological and General Systems. An Introduction to System Ecology. 1994.University Press Colorado.

4) C. Giannantoni. “Introduzione alla Matematica dei Processi Generativi”. Biologi Italiani, an-no XXXVII n.6. Giugno 2006. Ecodinamica pgg. 47-57.

5) C. Giannantoni. "Il Principio della massima potenza Emergetica come base per una Termodi-namica della Qualità”. Edizioni Serigraf 2006, Pescara.

6) C. Giannantoni. “Armonia delle Scienze. La leggerezza della qualità”. Edizioni Serigraf 2007, Pescara.

7) Odum H.T. “Environmental Accounting. Emergy and Decision Making”. 1996 John Wiley, N.Y. 370 pp.

8) Monastra G. 2000. “Le origini della vita” Ed. Il Cerchio. Itacalibri, Ravenna. 9) P.Pasquinelli, F. Puccini et al. “Biodiversità dei licheni nel Parco di Migliarino San Rossore,

Massaciuccoli” book in press. 2008. 10) Lheninger. A.L. Principles of Biochemistry, Worth Publisher pg. 1013. 1993. 11) U.Mastromatteo, P.Pasquinelli, A.Giorgetti.“Thermodynamics, Information and

Complexity, in Artificial and Living Systems”, International Journal of Ecodynamics. Vol.2. N.1 (2007) 39-47.

12) M,G.Patterson “Understanding Energy. Quality in Ecological and Economic Systems. A Brief explanation of QEM. VI European Week of Scientific Culture (22nd-28th, November 1998). Editor in chief Sergio Ulgiati. pg. 257-274

13) M,G.Patterson “What is Energy Efficiency? Concepts, Indicators and Methodological, Issue”. 1996 Energy Policy 24:5 377-390.

14) Gérard Guyot. “Physics of the Environment and Climate” Willey-Praxis Publishing Ltd, 1998.

VAGUE TENDENCES: A REVIEW OF FUZZY SET THEORY COMPARATIVE STUDIES

Talita Pistelli Mc Clelland

Abstract

Since its first formalization by Zadeh in 1965, fuzzy set theory has been applied in many academic fields. However, the development of social research methods and data analysis techniques based upon fuzzy set theory it’s only a recent endeavour. After expressing some hypotheses about the causes of this delay, in this relation I will discuss the situation of sociological methodology applications of fuzzy set theory, showing the main tendencies about fuzzy comparative analisys methods. A critical review of relevant scientific papers and publications will highlight the attainments and critical points of these research methods, and their adequacy to different sociological branches.

Keywords: comparative studies,tendences,critical point.


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Come noto, la teoria degli insiemi fuzzy ha avuto la sua prima formalizzazione ad opera di Lofti Zadeh nel 1965. Con essa, i tradizionali insiemi cantoriani cui un elemento appartiene o non appartiene divengono casi particolari di una insie-mistica che consente appartenenze parziali, sfumate. A questa teoria degli insiemi corrisponde una logica nella quale una proposizione non è più limitata alle possi-bilità della verità o della falsità, gli 0 ed 1 dell'algebra booleana, ma può avere un grado di verità intermedio, compreso nell'intervallo tra verità e falsità, tra 0 ed 1.

Dalla sua formulazione, superati i fraintendimenti che la volevano una sorta di teoria della probabilità sotto mentite spoglie, la teoria degli insiemi fuzzy ha avu-to molteplici applicazioni nei settori più disparati.

Inizialmente si è trattato principalmente di applicazioni ingegneristiche, in vir-tù dell'efficienza dei sistemi fuzzy nella gestione di sistemi di controllo sulla base di semplici regole immediatamente traducibili in linguaggio naturale (e nella fa-cilità di derivazione di sistemi esperti fuzzy; vedi Kosko 1993, pp. 185-234.

Tuttavia nell'ambito delle scienze umane la logica fuzzy ha trovato applicazio-ni solo da pochi anni, nonostante le trattazioni filosofiche sulle logiche polivalen-ti avessero messo in luce ben prima della trattazione di Zadeh le implicazioni di un superamento del principio del terzo escluso per la trattazione formale di va-ghezza e ambiguità (Russell, Black), caratteristiche innegabilmente proprie dei sistemi umani e delle loro rappresentazioni. I motivi di questo ritardo potrebbero essere imputabili alla prevalenza in sociologia di modelli di ricerca e analisi dei dati basati sull'impiego di metodi statistico-matematici, e sulla relativa minore in-fluenza di quegli approcci metodologici che privilegiano metodi a carattere logi-co. Non è un caso che uno dei settori nei quali l'impiego della logica fuzzy si è affermato con più forza è quello delle analisi comparative su insiemi di numero-sità ridotta, tipicamente meno adatte ai metodi statistici campionari e più inclini ad una problematizzazione logica dei nessi di causazione.

Per le applicazioni della logica fuzzy alle scienze sociali, e in particolare nel-l'ambito delle applicazioni a metodi di tipo comparativistico, è particolarmente importante l'opera di Charles Ragin, che ha esteso un suo precedente metodo di analisi qualitativa comparativa (QCA, Qualitative Comparatve Analysis; vedi Ragin 1987) impiegando la logica fuzzy ed ottenendo un nuovo metodo (fs/QCA, fuzzy sets/Qualitative Comparative Analysis) adatto soprattutto all'analisi di casi con N piccolo.

Questo metodo fuzzy, anche se anticipato in un articolo del 1998 (Ragin,

1988) è esposto compiutamente nell'opera del 2000 Fuzzy-set social science.


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L'interesse attorno a questo approccio è accresciuto dalla disponibilità di un software specifico, omonimo rispetto alla tecnica, per la gestione di matrici di da-ti; a partire dal 2000 molti ricercatori hanno applicato la fs/QCA e quindi pro-blemi metodologici più genericamente inerenti l'impiego della logica fuzzy (ad esempio, le procedure di attribuzione dei gradi di appartenenza) sono stati discus-si nel contesto di questo approccio.

Tipicamente, una analisi basata su fs/QCA inizia con la definizione del conte-sto di applicazione, identificando a che livello di astrazione si pongano le unità di analisi e quale arco temporale venga preso in considerazione. Alla definizione del contesto segue la scelta dei casi, momento di importanza cruciale e che necessita di essere teoricamente sostantivato per evitare l'esclusione di casi rilevanti o l'in-clusione di casi irrilevanti ai fini della procedura comparativa.

Parallelamente o in seguito alla scelta dei casi devono essere identificate le va-riabili che compongono il modello del fenomeno oggetto di studio, vanno fatte delle ipotesi su quali variabili siano dipendenti e quali indipendenti, e ciascuna di esse va fatta corrispondere a una appropriata funzione di appartenenza. Le fun-zioni di appartenenza permetteranno di assegnare ad ogni caso il punteggio rela-tivo alla specifica variabile.

A questo punto la procedura di Ragin prevede la conduzione di appropriati test per l'identificazione delle variabili che corrispondono a condizioni necessarie ed a condizioni sufficienti (in senso logico).

Più specificatamente, col necessity test si raggruppano i casi che abbiano un simile punteggio sulla variabile dipendente (quindi che hanno un simile valore di appartenenza al relativo insieme fuzzy) e si controlla per i raggruppamenti di casi quali sono le variabili indipendenti che hanno punteggi simili: queste saranno da un punto di vista logico le condizioni necessarie.

Per converso, col sufficiency test si raggruppano i casi che hanno un simile punteggio fuzzy sulle variabili indipendenti, e si controlla se i gruppi di casi han-no simili valori di appartenenza alla variabile dipendente.

Fatto questo diventa possibile l'attribuzione di un punteggio di sufficienza e un punteggio di necessità, mediante la combinazione logica dei punteggi delle va-riabili riconosciute come sufficienti e di quelle riconosciute come necessarie.

Il modello di partenza può essere così corretto per tenere conto dei risultati del percorso di analisi comparativa.


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Molti saggi prodotti seguendo il metodo comparativo di Ragin sono raccolti tra i working papers dell'associazione COMPASSS (COMParative methods for the Advancement of Systematic cross-case analysis and Small-n Studies: Metodi comparativi per l'avanzamento dell'analisi tra casi e degli studi su N piccoli).

Possiamo identificare tre tipologie principali di saggi:

1. quelli che affrontano principalmente questioni di carattere metodologi-co;

2. quelli che affrontano aspetti tecnici secondari dell'analisi fs/QCA, 3. quelli che espongono analisi comparative condotte con la fs/QCA.

Tra i working papers del primo tipo, quelli che affrontano questioni di interes-

se prevalentemente metodologico, troviamo ad esempio Goertz-Mahoney 2003, che si concentra sull'utilizzo della logica fuzzy per la formalizzazione di teorie a due livelli, Goertz 2003, sui criteri per stabilire l'importanza delle cause necessa-rie e sufficienti; e Goertz-Levy 2004, sul ruolo delle condizioni necessarie nelle spiegazioni causali. A questa tipologia di contributi appartiene anche Ragin 2007, che affronta l'importante tema della calibrazione degli strumenti di misura-zione nell'ambito delle scienze sociali.

Tra i papers orientati ad aspetti tecnici secondari dell'analisi fs/QCA, troviamo Schneider-Grofman 2006, che descrive le maniere migliori per presentare grafi-camente i risutati di analisi condotte con questo metodo; o Wagemann-Schneider 2007, sugli accorgimenti per impostare correttamente una ricerca basata su fs/QCA (e su QCA).

Infine, uno sguardo ai working papers dedicati ad esporre i risultati di analisi comparative condotte con la fs/QCA. Anche se questa tipologia di studi non af-fronta direttamente tematiche metodologiche, è comunque indirettamente di inte-resse metodologico perchè consente di osservare sia gli eventuali adattamenti allo strumento resi necessari dalle peculiarità dei vari oggetti di studio, sia le pratiche comparative concretamente poste in essere dai ricercatori.

Tra i papers che espongono ricerche comparative condotte con la fs/Qca ad esempio troviamo Moury 2003 che analizza le differenze nella natura degli ac-cordi di coalizione tra partiti politici in diversi paesi europei; Skaaning 2005, che utilizza diversi metodi – tra i quali la fs/QCA – per analizzare le differenze nel tasso di rispetto per i diritti civili nei paesi post-comunisti; Jackson 2006, che confronta le diverse legislazioni in merito alla rappresentanza dei dipendenti nei consigli di amministrazione aziendali.


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Alcuni degli studi comparativi condotti con questa metodologia riguardano l'evoluzione e la comparazione dei welfare states o più generalmente le politiche di welfare nelle democrazie occidentali: così ad esempio Vis, 2006, che confron-ta le ristrutturazioni del welfare in 16 paesi a capitalismo avanzato.

In Gjølberg 2007 la fs/QCA viene invece impiegata per strutturare la compa-razione tra le performance in termini di responsabilità sociale aziendale (CSR: Corporate Social Responsibility) valutata a livello nazionale.

Naturalmente, in un campo recente come l'applicazione della teoria degli in-siemi fuzzy agli studi comparativi, non mancano approcci originali di singoli studiosi, al di fuori del metodo sviluppato da Ragin. Così Jon Kvist ha approfon-dito in maniera specifica la possibilità di formalizzazioni fuzzy di costrutti com-parativi di tipo idealtipico (Kvist 1999; 2000; 2003; 2006) applicando questo ap-proccio alle modifiche nelle politiche di welfare dei paesi del nord-europa negli anni '90. Da studi come quello di Kvist emerge la flessibilità della teoria degli in-siemi fuzzy nel formalizzare insiemi concettuali di natura differente.

I tre tipi di contributi che ho identificati nei working papers dell'associazione COMPASSS sono identificabili anche nella produzione scientifica comparativi-stica più ampia, destinata principalmente alle riviste di settore o alla discussione in sede di conferenze. Così per esempio alla prima categoria, quella che affronta direttamente questioni a carattere metodologico, possiamo ricondurre Vom Hau 2003, che utilizza sia analisi fuzzy sia metodi statistici tradizionali per studiare le variazioni istituzionali in America latina nel diciottesimo e diciannovesimo seco-lo; oppure alla terza categoria, quella degli studi comparativistici veri e propri, troviamo Rudd 2002, sulla sostenibilità delle pratiche di pesca nei paesi tropicali.

Il Laboratorio di Ricerche Sociali dell'Università di Pisa ha nel corso degli an-ni rivolto un'attenzione costante alle implicazioni sociologiche della logica e del-la teoria degli insiemi fuzzy, cercando di integrare questo strumento in un para-digma più generale nel cui contesto la complessità dei sistemi sociali trovasse trattazione adeguata. Diretti dal Prof. Ampola - che sistematizza il proprio ap-proccio complesso all'argomento ad es. in Ampola, 2000 – ed entro la cornice te-orica da lui predisposta diversi collaboratori hanno approfondito questioni tecni-che e metodologiche inerenti all'applicazione della fuzzy, con risultati che posso-no essere di interesse anche per le possibili applicazioni nel campo delle ricerche a carattere comparativo.

Così ad esempio in Givigliano 1999a e Givigliano 1999b è stata indagata l'a-deguatezza della logica fuzzy per la trattazione dei concetti di verità, appartenen-za, dimostrabilità, in un senso epistemologico più ampio e nel contesto del pro-


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gramma scientifico della sociologia; in particolare il superamento del principio del terzo escluso viene da lui evidenziato come criterio cardine per qualsiasi con-cettualizzazione sociologica complessa, nella quale cioè la multidimensionalità della rappresentazione sociale da parte dell'osservatore sia basata a sua volta sulle rappresentazioni significative degli attori sociali (secondo quel principio che Mo-rin chiama di ologrammaticità).

In Chiuppesi 2007 (rielaborazione di una dissertazione del 2000) l'importanza della natura rappresentazionale dei costrutti sociologici viene ulteriormente ap-profondita: l'impiego della logica fuzzy nella ricerca sociale viene qui contestua-lizzato nell'ambito di un approccio che cerca di conciliare le cautele metodologi-che della prospettiva fenomenologica e costruttivista con gli spunti scientifici provenienti dalla teoria della complessità.

Nella riflessione dei vari collaboratori del Laboratorio di Ricerche Sociali del-l'università di Pisa che si sono dedicati all'approfondimento di logica e teoria de-gli insiemi fuzzy è possibile individuare un elemento comune, un fulcro della ri-flessione collettiva nel concetto stesso di concetto che uscendo dalla sua tradizio-nale rappresentazione insiemistica cantoriana viene concepito come costrutto dai confini vaghi e sfumati, e nel caso dei concetti posti in essere da parte degli os-servatori sociali – caratterizzato da una esplicita natura frattale, nel senso in cui esso esplicitamente riconosce la propria natura di astrazione basata su una plura-lità di concetti di primo livello costruiti dai singoli attori sociali e colti analitica-mente dall'osservatore stesso. E' in questa chiave che la logica fuzzy viene rico-nosciuta come adeguata alla formalizzazione di modelli, indici e indicatori messi in opera dal ricercatore nel tentativo di mantenere al massimo livello il rispetto delle pretese di senso degli attori sociali, dai quali proviene per così dire la mate-ria prima dei costrutti concettuali di secondo livello oggetto di riflessione socio-logica.

Questo tipo di approccio, declinato nel contesto degli studi a carattere compa-rativo che è oggetto della presente trattazione, implica una accentuazione del ca-rattere artificiale dei dati che vengono sottoposti alla procedura di comparazione – l'atto comparativo è una operazione di manipolazione concettuale condotta su altri concetti, che devono essere giustificati per la loro utilità euristica come nel caso di quelli a carattere idealtipico o per la correttezza delle procedure di rileva-zione e misurazione, come nel caso dei dati politologici o sociometrici. In questo senso la teoria degli insiemi fuzzy è adatta sotto un profilo strettamente tecnico, come nel caso del suo impiego nelle procedure fs/QCA (o, in altro ambito, negli algoritmi di fuzzy clustering) ma anche sotto un profilo epistemologico, in quan-


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to adeguata alla trattazione dei margini di vaghezza di questi costrutti concettuali non derivanti dall'incertezza dello strumento di misura ma dalla loro natura stessa di concetti intrinsecamente vaghi nella loro declinazione individuale (fosse anche solo perché fenomenologicamente accessibili esclusivamente in maniera riflessa) e tanto più in quella di secondo livello operata dal ricercatore sociale. Questo ap-proccio appare complementare a quello attualmente dominante nel contesto delle ricerche comparativistiche basate su logica fuzzy, che dedica una certa attenzione a problematiche tecniche come la calibrazione dello strumento comparativo o l'operativizzazione dei concetti di partenza ma pare non dare risalto eccessivo al-la problematizzazione del livello ontologico di pertinenza dei costrutti intorno ai quali il ricercatore si trova a condurre la propria analisi. Concludendo: anche se tardivamente rispetto ad altri campi, la logica fuzzy ha trovato interessanti appli-cazioni nell'ambito della ricerca sociale. La particolare diffusione nell'ambito del-le ricerche comparative ha permesso l'accumulo di un primo corpus di pubblica-zioni utili per identificare i punti di maggiore interesse metodologico di questo tipo di approcci, come la consistenza logica dei modelli di causazione, i margini di arbitrarietà del ricercatore nella fase di operativizzazione delle variabili. Gli strumenti fuzzy si dimostrano così in prospettiva adeguati al sostegno di model-lizzazioni complesse dei sistemi sociali, direzione ancora poco esplorata ma che appare già assai promettente. References

Massimo Ampola, 2000, “From the theory to the empirical level: hypothesis of fuzzy logic”, in

Atti of Fifth International Conference on Logic and Methodology, Colony, TT-Publikaties (Bulletin of sociological methodology, n.68).

Marco Chiuppesi, 2007, Complessità e vaghezza, frattali e logica fuzzy: nuovi sentieri per la ricerca sociale, Edizioni Plus, Pisa. Alfredo Givigliano, 1999a, Teorema di Gödel, Logica Fuzzy, Pensiero Complesso: una lettura

metodologica, Quaderni del C.S.S. “A. Grandi”, Livorno Alfredo Givigliano, 1999b, “Dal Teorema di Gödel alla Logica Fuzzy nella ricerca sociale: un

approccio complesso”, in Lab's Quarterly, Journal on line del Laboratorio di Ricerche Socia-li dell'Università di Pisa. Ivi anche versione inglese: “From Gödel's Theorem to Fuzzy Logic in the Methodology of Social Research: a complex approach”.

Maria Gjølberg, 2007, The Origin of Corporate Social Responisbility: Global Forces or National Legacies?, COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2007-47)

Gary Goertz, James Mahoney, 2003, Two-level theories and fuzzy logic, COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2003-6)

Gary Goertz, 2003, Assessing the importance of necessary or sufficient conditions in fuzzy-set social science, COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2003-7)


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Gary Goertz, Jack S. Levy, 2004, Causal Explanations, Necessary conditions, and Case Studies, COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2004-22)

Frank M. Haege, 2005, Constructivism, Fuzzy Sets and (Very) Small-N: Revisiting the Conditions for Communicative Action, COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2005-33)

Gregory Jackson, 2006, Employee Representation in the Board Compared: A Fuzzy Sets Analysis of Corporate Governance, Unionism, and Political Institutions, COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2006-36)

Bart Kosko, 1993, Fuzzy Thinking: The new Science of Fuzzy Logic, Hyperion Ed. it. 1995, Il fuzzy pensiero, Milano, Baldini e Castoldi. Jon Kvist, 1999, "Welfare Reform in the Nordic Countries in the 1990s: Using Fuzzy-Set

Theory to Assess Conformity to Ideal-Types", in Journal of European Social Policy, N.9(3), pp. 231-252.

Jon Kvist, 2000, "Idealtyper og fuzzy mængdelære i komparative studier - nordisk familiepolitik i 1990erne som eksempel", in Dansk Sociologi, n.11(3), pp. 71-94.

Jon Kvist, 2006, Measuring the Welfare State – Concepts, Ideal Types and Fuzzy Sets in Comparative Studies, COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2006-40)

Catherine Moury, 2003, Use of Fuzzy set in an explanatory research: a study on the characteristics of coalition agreement, COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2003-12).

Charles C. Ragin, 1987, The Comparative Method. Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies, Berkeley/ Los Angeles/ London: University of California Press.

Charles C. Ragin, 1998, “Comparative Methodology, Fuzzy Sets, and the Study of Sufficient Causes”, in APSA-CP: Newsletter of the Comparative Politics Section of the APSA, n. 9(1) pp. 18-22.

Charles C. Ragin, 2000, Fuzzy set social science, Chicago, University of Chicago press Charles C. Ragin, 2007, Fuzzy Sets: Calibration Versus Measurement, COMPASSS Working

papers (WP 2007-44) Murray Rudd, 2002, Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Fishery Sustainability - a Fuzzy

Qualitative Comparative Analysis of International Tropical Artisanal Fisheries, intervento alla IASCP 2002 Conference, Harare, Zimbabwe.

Carsten Q. Schneider, Bernard Grofman, 2006, It might look like a regression equation... but it's not! An intuitive approach to the presentation of QCA and fs/QCA results

Svend-Erik Skaaning, 2005, The Respect for Civil Liberties in Post-Communist Countries: A Multi-Methodological Test of Structural Explanations, COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2005-34)

Barbara Vis, 2006, States of welfare or states of workfare? A fuzzy-set ideal type analysis of major welfare state restructuring in sixteen advanced capitalist democracies, 1985-2002, COMPASSS Working papers (WP 2006-42)

Matthias Vom Hau, Explaining the Great Reversal in Spanish America: Fuzzy-Set Analysis Versus Statistical Analysis, intervento al 2nd ECPR General Conference, Section "Methodological Advances in Comparative Research: Concepts, Techniques, Applications", Panel "Fuzzy Sets in Comparative Research: Applications", Marburg, Germany

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EXPLICATIVE MODELS OF COMPLEXITY. THE RECONSTRUCTIONS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION FOR JÜRGEN HABERMAS Luca Corchia Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali Università di Pisa [email protected] +39 050 2212420 Abstract

Habermas introduces the concept of “reconstructive science” with a double purpose: to place the “general theory of society” between philosophy and social science and re-establish the rift between the “great theorization” and the “empirical research”.

The model of “rational reconstructions” represents the main thread of the surveys about the “structures” of the life-world (“culture”, “society” and “personality”) and their respective “functions” (cultural reproductions, social integrations and socialization). For this propose, the dialectics between “symbolic representation” of “the structures subordinated to all worlds of life” (“internal relationships”) and the “material reproduction” of the social systems in their complex (“external relationships” between social systems and environment) has to be considered. This model finds an application, above all, in the “theory of the social evolution”, starting from the reconstruction of the necessary conditions for a phylogeny of the socio-cultural-life forms (the “hominization”) until an analysis of the development of “social formations”, which Habermas subdivides into primitive, traditional, modern and contemporary formations.

This paper is an attempt, primarily, to formalize the model of “reconstruction of the logic of development” of “social formations” summed up by Habermas through the differentiation between vital world and social systems (and, within them, through the “rationalization of the life-world” and the “growth in complexity of the social systems”). Secondly, it tries to offer some methodological clarifications about the “explanation of the dynamics” of “historical processes” and, in particular, about the “theoretical meaning” of the evolutional theory’s propositions. Even if the German sociologist considers that the “ex-post rational reconstructions” and “the models system/environment” cannot have a complete “historiographical application”, these certainly act as a general premise in the argumentative structure of the “historical explanation”. Keywords: new model, complexity, social evolution

Index

Introduction The Lesson of the Classics: the General Theory of Society 551. The Theory of Social Evolution 572. Social Science and Historiography 71Basic Bibliography 80


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Introduction THE LESSON OF THE CLASSICS: THE GENERAL THEORY OF SOCIETY

Jürgen Habermas has devoted more than thirty years of his studies to social science, in order to define, through the reconstruction of its traditions of thought, a “theorical framework” which serves as orientation for “programs of historical-social programs”.

As well as the classics of the sociological thought, he has faced the “problems of society as a whole”, explaining the “propositions”, “methods” and “aims” as indispensable pre-requisites for a research which widens the disciplinary borders of the philosophical reflection on one side, and of the historical research on the other side. Within the long itinerary of his formation, this program represents a sort of main thread in the analysis of “cultural systems”, “social systems”, “personality systems” and, above all, in the “theory of the social evolution”, from the reconstruction of the necessary conditions for the anthropological genesis of the socio-cultural living forms – the “hominization” – until the examination of the logic and dynamics of the development of the “social formations”, that Habermas subdivides in primitive, traditional, modern and contemporary formations. Considering these as the cognitive basis, it is unavoidable to question whether Habermas really achieves, in his itineraries through the “history of ideas”, the logical coherence and the depth of research which are necessary to “systematize” the researches in social science into a unitary theorical framework.

Within the general reconstruction of Habermas’ work, the present paper focuses on the propositions of the explicative model of the theory of social evolution and on the particular relationships between sociology and historiography. But primarily, we also have to point out more precisely the object of interest of his writings, considering that, according to Habermas, the debates within the social science deal with the cognitive statute, but first of all with the “objectual sphere” and at least they concern the choice of methodologies and techniques of research in order to approach data, describe them, advance hypotheses, develop analyses and control their results in relation to the scientific community. In his opinion, the “objectual sphere” is then at the highest level of abstraction: namely a theory of society which reconstructs the “constitutive components” of the social formations and the “processes-mechanisms” of their “reproduction”, namely “statics” and dynamics of the social phenomena.


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The reference to the constitutive aspects of society is confirmed in the Interview with Hans Peter Krüger (1989). Habermas replies to the request of outlining a geographical map of his theory and affirms: «Every theory of society must have ambition to explain how a society works, and through what it is reproduced»1. In this way, he goes back to the research about the classics in the sociological thought that - starting from A. Comte, H. Spencer and K. Marx until P. Sorokin and T. Parsons, through F. Tönnies, E. Durkheim, M. Weber – has maintained the idea of building models in order to describe the structural elements of social formations and the logics of development of human evolution, re-organizing the material of historical researches from a synchronic (or structural) and a diachronic (or genetic) point of view. The reference to the classics brings about the attention to the logics of research and to the interdisciplinary horizon opened by their perspective on social phenomena, in opposition to the reductionistic attempts to bring back social science to specialist spheres, such as economic sciences for production, exchange and use of wealth, political science for constitution and maintaining processes, crises of power and public opinion, sociology for social integration and anomic crisis in groups and institutions, psychology for the “individuation” and “socialization” of generations, cultural science for the genesis and the transmission of the canonical forms of knowledge and for heresies.

Habermas faces the definition of “conceptual framework” of the “theory of society”, starting from the reflection on an “unclear relationship” between the “theory of action” and the “systemic action”. In other words, starting from the preliminary question on how conceptual strategies are orientated, social science can integrate in a “unitary model”, redefining the “theory of action” in terms of “theory of communicative action” and assuming, even if a reduced dimension, the neo-functionalist positions of the “systemic theory”2. This approach, redefined on the model of “rational reconstructions” represents the thread of the reflections about the “structures” of the life-world, cultural reproduction, social integration and socialization, also considering the connections between the “structures subjected to all worlds of life” and their “symbolic reproduction” and “material reproduction”3.

1 J. Habermas, it. transl. Intervista con Hans Peter Krüger, in Id., NR, cit., p. 90. 2 J. Habermas, it. transl. Seconda considerazione intermedia: sistema e mondo vitale, in Id., TKH, cit.,

p. 697. 3 J. Habermas, it. transl. Seconda considerazione intermedia: sistema e mondo vitale, in Id., TKH, cit.,

p. 739.


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1. The Theory of Social Evolution

The processes of social reproduction had been reconstructed in a specialist way by E. Husserl’s phenomenology and Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, referring to the actualization of cultural traditions, Mead’s symbolic interactionism and Weber’s comprehensive sociology with respect to the coordination of social actions, and at least S. Freud’s psychoanalysis and J. Piaget’s, L. Kolberg’s, and R. Selman’s cognitive psychology, the social psychology in relation to the processes of socialization. Without omitting the original contributions given by A. Schütz’, T. Lückmann’s and P. Berger’s social phenomenology, A. Cicourel’s ethno-methodology and I. Goffman’s dramaturgy4. The “theory of communicative acting” aims at making a synthesis of all these different traditions. The “structures of the life-world” regenerate in the processes of cultural reproduction, social integration and socialization, but social systems also have to produce material resources, rule the internal functioning and control the environment and its boundaries; Marx defined this process as “metabolism between society and nature”5. Through the concept of society on “two levels”, Habermas goes back to T. Parsons’6 and N. Luhmann’s7 works.

In the propositions of the social evolution, he specifies the integration of both “explicative models” in the analysis of the “systemic crises” of social formations provoked by “environmental challenges” and/or “internal contradictions” which fall upon the reproduction of the structures of the life-world and whose resolution

4 J. Habermas, it. transl. Scienze sociale ricostruttive e scienze sociali comprendenti, in Id., MB, cit., pp.

29-30. 5 J. Habermas, it. transl. Azioni, atti linguistici, interazioni mediate linguisticamente e mondo vitale, in

Id., Il pensiero post-metafisico (NMD), Bari-Roma, Laterza, 1991, p. 102. 6 J. Habermas, Talcott Parsons – Konstruktionsprobleme der Theoriekonstruktion, in J. Matthes,

Lebenswelt und soziale Probleme. Frankfurt a.M. – New York, Campus, pp. 28-48; Id., it. transl. Talcott Parsons: problemi di costruzione della teoria della società, in Id., TKH, cit., pp. 811-950.

7 J. Habermas, it. transl. Teoria della società o tecnologia sociale?, in Id., Teoria della società o tecno-logia sociale (TGS), Etas Kompass Libri, Milano 1973, pp. 95-195; Id., it. transl. Un concetto sociologico di crisi, in Id., La crisi di razionalità nel capitalismo maturo (LPS), Bari, Laterza, 1975, pp. 5-9; Id., it. transl. Confronto di teorie in sociologia, in Id., LSW2, cit., pp. 359-360; Id., J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico (ZRHM), Milano, Etas Libri, 1979, pp. 154-157, 175-179; Id., it. transl. Excursus sulla appropriazione dell’eredità della filosofia del soggetto da parte della teoria dei sistemi di Luhmann, in Id., Il discorso filosofico della modernità. Dodici lezioni (PDM), Bari-Roma, Laterza, 1987, pp. 366-383; Id., it. transl. Sulla logica dei problemi di legittimazione, in Id., LPS, cit., pp. 105-123, 141-157; Id., Diritto e morale. Lezione seconda. L’idea dello Stato di dirit-to, in Id., Morale, diritto, politica (MDP), Torino, Einaudi, 1986, pp. 45-78, Id., it. transl. Sociologie del diritto e filosofie della giustizia, in Id., Fatti e norme. Contributi a una teoria discorsiva del diritto e della democrazia (FG), Milano, Guerini e Associati, 1996, pp. 61-67.


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requires “innovative answers”8. As we shall mention, Habermas connects the «functionalist analysis of changes in structure and function, clarifying genetic questions»9. The theory of social systems worked out by “neo-functionalism” is not able to explain, within the process of “functional differentiation” which characterizes social evolution, the genesis of “organization principles” which solve out the systemic challenges, because it precludes the reconstruction of “learning process” arising from the life-world. This problem had already been raised by the “old master of functionalism”, S. N. Eisenstadt10.

The connection between the “theory of action” – Habermas’ approach to indicate the reconstructions of “formal pragmatics” in the sphere of social theory – and the “theory of systems” represents “the most important problem for a theoretical construction of social components in the theories of cultural reproduction, of social interaction and socialization11. A “conceptual and not banal connection” between both paradigms is, above all, at the bottom of the study on social changing12. Indeed, even if the problem that dominates the researches is the reconstruction of structures and changing of the life-world, he considers that this study “receives its right place online within a history of the system”, only accessible for a functionalistic analysis»13.

In the perspective of the comparison with the systemic theory, he interprets Marx.

During the Seventies, Habermas tried to make coincide the research program about social evolution with a “reconstruction of historical materialism”14, addressing more attention to the results of the sciences consigned to the “oblivion of middle-class knowledge”15. During the Fifties, he had already taken into account the heritage of “history of philosophy” of occidental Marxism of the Second International and the Soviet canon, the Diamat, according to the news studies opened with the discover of the “young Marx”16. On the other hand, in

8 J. Habermas, it. transl. Un concetto sociologico di crisi, in Id., LPS, cit., p. 7. 9 J. Habermas, it. transl. Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 182. 10 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 186. 11 J. Habermas, it. transl. Talcott Parsons: problemi di costruzione della teoria della società, in TKH,

cit, p. 813. 12 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed evoluzione, in ZRHM, cit., p. 183. 13 J. Habermas, it. transl. Il mutamento di paradigma in Mead e Durkheim, in TKH, cit, p. 696. 14 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., Dialettica della Ra-

zionalizzazione (DR2), Milano, Unicopli, 19942, p. 151. 15 J. Habermas, it. transl. Dialettica della razionalizzazione, in DR2, cit., p. 224. 16 J. Habermas, Marx in Perspektiven, in «Merkur», IX, 1955, pp. 1180-1183; Id., it. transl. Sulla di-

scussione filosofica intorno a Marx e al marxismo, in, DR2, cit., pp. 23-107; it. transl. Tra filosofia e scienza: il marxismo come critica, in Id., Prassi politica e teoria critica della società (TP), Bologna, Il Mulino, 1973, pp. 301-366; Metacritica di Marx a Hegel: la sintesi mediante il lavoro sociale, in Id., Co-noscenza e interesse (EI2), Roma-Bari, Laterza, 19832, pp. 27-45.


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the essays contained in For reconstruction of Historical Materialism (1976), Habermas “takes seriously” Marx’ and Engels’ “theoretic attempt”, defining the first “thesis” of his research program: «Thesis I: Historical materialism should not be considered as a heuristics, neither as history, neither as an objective of history, neither as an objectivistic theory of history, neither as a retrospective glance at an analysis of capitalism done more than a hundred years ago, but as an alternative solution to take into account in relation to the statement nowadays dominating about a theory of social evolution»17. This “reconstruction” leads Habermas to re-define the propositions of historical materialism relating to the “concept of social work”, the “theorem structure/superstructure”, the “dialectics between productive forces and reproduction relationships” and the “definition of social formation”.

In his Theory of communicative acting (1981), Habermas repeats argumentations that he had already exposed in his collection of writings For the reconstruction of historical materialism (1976), without qualifying the “theory of development” with the expression “formulated materialistically”. Now he takes about a “partial overlapping” among “parallel theorical strategies”18. In each case, the attempt – considering the meaning of the word “reconstruction” in Habermas’ proceedings, was then criticized in English-speaking and Latin countries, even if his studies founded their collocation in a continuity with the “critical theory”, in particular with the “problem of modernity” in M. Weber’s interpretation of Hegel-Marxism.

It is meaningful that Weber’s consideration towards Habermas’ Theory, then at the end of ten-year researches carried out at Max Planck Institut in Starnberg, does not find a confirmation in previous writings. Only at the end of the Seventies, Habermas presents, in classical sociology, Erfurt sociologist’s works as “the most important attempt” to formulate a model of stages of development of the socio-cultural evolution intended as a “logically reconstructed process”. This displacement can be explain through the fact that exactly in those years the studies of S. Kalberg, W. Schluchter, F. H. Tenbruck, R. N. Bellah e R. Döbert, K. Eder and others were published. Here the dominating perspective of the philosophical debates in the Twenties about Weber’s Sociology of Religion goes back to investigate the “theory of rationalization”, after being shelved for long time by a deeper investigation in Economy and society19.

17 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., DR2, cit., pp. 152. 18 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sistema e mondo vitale, in Id., TKH, cit, p. 769. 19 J. Habermas, it. transl. La teoria della razionalizzazione di Max Weber, in Id., TKH, cit., pp. 229-230,

289-291.


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If Marx’ interpretation is influenced by Habermas’ critics to neo-functionalism and the comparison with the “production paradigm” of “philosophy of praxis”20, the new interpretation of Weber’s analysis of “occidental rationalization” must be re-conducted to the model of reconstructive science employed by psychology to explain the ontogenetic development. He presented the idea of an “homology”, relatively tight between filogenesis and ontogenesis21, which could find a confirmation in Mead’s inter-actionism, in the Ego-psychoanalysis and psychology and above all in genetic structuralism by Piaget, Kohlberg, Selman, Flavell and others – a group of studies which represents the last of four “traditions of thought”, from which Habermas draws “enduring conceptual themes”, next to Parson’s and Luhmann’s systemic neo-functionalist theory, the “historical materialism” of “lay versions” which avoid fideisms of scientism and philosophy of history and Weberian sociology in the “more carefully universalistic” interpretation suggested in the Seventies. The concepts and hypotheses of the psychology of development represent, indeed, a “model” for the redefinition of social science from a “reconstructive perspective”.

In his anthropological reflections, Habermas maintains that social science must prepare a theoretical frame which permits not only to reconstruct the “socio-cultural evolutional mechanisms”, but also to define properly what is meant with the expression “principle” in the “history of genre”22 – a proposition that our author finds confirmed in Parson’s Systems of societies (1966)23.

We must anticipate that, following Lévy-Strauss’ and many other anthropologists’ studies, Habermas finds that the “gap between man and other animal species” must be found in the “familiarization of man” – “the evolutive innovation” which makes the “genesis of the social primitive formation” possible, around the “parental structures”. If on a “sub-human level”, the “biological reproduction” represents a “conditional center” of the genesis of the “nexus of solidarity” among the members of a species, as E. Durkheim24 and S. Freud25 supposed, “the unity of relationship” is the factor for the diffusion of “social solidarity”. Family skips the “hierarchical one-dimensional order”, according to which every animal is assigned transitively only one status,

20 J. Habermas, it. transl. Excursus sull’obsolescenza del paradigma della produzione, in Id., PDM, cit., pp. 77-85.

21 J. Habermas, it. transl. Introduzione: il materialismo storico e lo sviluppo di …, in Id., ZRHM, p. 12. 22 J. Habermas, it. transl. Introduzione: approcci alla problematica della razionalità, in Id., TKH, cit.,

p. 224. 23 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sviluppo della morale e identità dell’io, in Id., ZRHM, cit., pp. 142-143. 24 J. Habermas, it. transl. Il mutamento di paradigma in Mead e Durkheim, in Id., TKH, p. 604. 25 J. Habermas, it. transl. Psicoanalisi e teoria della società. Nietzsche e la … in Id., EI2, cit., pp. 271-

272.


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allowing the “male adult member” of the group to connect, assuming the “paternal role” (the “structural family unit”), the status within the “system of women and children” of the reproduction of social ties to the status in the “male system of economy based on hunting and war”26.

Habermas presents this anthropological hypothesis as the “Second Thesis for the reconstruction of historical materialism”: «The specifically human living way can be sufficiently characterized if hunting economy in the organization conditions of the family is taken into account. Production and socialization as equally important for human genre. The family structure of society which reigns as the appropriation of external natural as the integration of internal nature is fundamental27. Habermas does not specify any possible “external” or “sociological conditions” which, in the socio-cognitive process of co-generation of the “social world” and “subjective world”, determined the passage from the “biological entity of family” to “parental structures”. He is interested in the necessary assumptions – the “logic of development” – so that the “abstracted cognitive competences”, the “rules of social acting” and “subjective identity” (necessary conditions for the reproduction of “every” social formation) arise from the interactions based on an “instinctual ground” and “symbolically mediated” of groups of hominids. Habermas follows Mead’s and Durkheim’s28 perspective about the transformation of the linguistic medium in its relationships with the cognition and interaction structures. Indeed, the new cognitive and relational competences allow, through “communicative acts”, the production of a “knowledge culturally accumulated” (cultural transmission), the satisfaction of “generalized expectations of behaviour”, conveniently to the context (social integration) and the constitution of steady “personality structures” (socialization). The critical literature neglects the fact that the theory of communicative acting is not a moral doctrine, but a reconstruction of the ontogenesis and filogenesis of competences29.

Once reconstructed the necessary conditions to the constitution of human societies, Habermas works out a “rational model” which comprehends both “evolutional challenges” and the “logics of development of the possible innovative solution”. As we have already explained before, integrating the “systemic theory” and the “action theory”, he presumes that the “social

26 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., DR2, cit., pp. 153-154.

27 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in DR2, cit., p. 154. 28 J. Habermas, it. transl. Il mutamento di paradigma in Mead e Durkheim, in Id., TKH, cit, pp. 548-

669. 29 J. Habermas, it. transl. Coscienza morale e agire comunicativo, in Id., MB, cit., pp. 123-204.


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evolution” follows a “double differentiation” which produces, on the one side, the “differentiation” between life-world and the social sub-systems”, and, on the other side, the formation of “two different logics of development” – the “growth of complexity of social systems” and the “rationalization of the life-world”: “I understand social evolution as a second grade differentiation process: system and life-world differ from one another, as the first’s complexity and the second’s rationality grow more and more, not only respectively as system and as life-world – at the same time they get different from one another»30.

Within the “theory of social evolution”, Habermas assumes some hypotheses of “theory of systems” – following Marx, Spencer, Durkheim, Parsons and at least Luhmann. The beginning of the functionalistic analysis deals with the “adaptive problems” that a social system must solve within the sphere of “material reproduction”, where some “evolutive challenges” arise which generate “impulses” to “differentiation”. The “evolutive logic” can be described, above all, as a “growth of social complexity”31. Habermas remembers that since Durkheim’s Division of Labour (1893), functionalism has focused on the concept of differentiation, whose explicative importance is not to be re-conducted to mere socio-economical criteria. This differentiation is, above all, a segmented and/or functional differentiation of social structures to which forms of “social integration” in relationship to the type of “social solidarity” (mechanical/organic) and different forms of “personal identities” (collective/individual) are correlated. What is here interesting is the centrality dedicated to “labour” – as development engine in the material reproduction of genre – which characterizes the evolutive theory since Marx’ praxis philosophy until Spencer’s organicism32 and contemporary functionalism33. In this tradition the possibility in favour of the analysis of the “capacities of direction and control” of systems consists of re-elaborating the “internal complexity” towards environmental challenges with the differentiation and re-unification of partial systems functionally specified34.

In this reconstruction it results that from a first evolutive level – “primitive societies” – where only the “repetition of similar and homogeneous segments” is present – familiar structures – following the social development, “a system of different organs, each of them having got a specific task”, has generated, and these organs are “built up themselves by different parts”, which are “reciprocally

30 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sistema e mondo vitale, in Id., TKH, cit., p. 749. 31 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sistema e mondo vitale, in Id., TKH, cit, p. 769. 32 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sistema e mondo vitale, in Id., TKH, cit, pp. 698-699. 33 J. Habermas, it. transl. Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 147. 34 J. Habermas, it. transl. Confronto di teorie in sociologia, in Id., LSW2, cit., pp. 347-350.


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coordinated and subordinated around the same central organ” – the State – which “depends on them” and “exerts a moderating action on the rest of the organism”35. If, passing from primitive societies to “traditional societies”, a different relationship among the structures of material reproduction – “segmented” vs. “functional” – emerges, “modern societies” must face a differentiation between no more “centralized” but “decentralized” social structures, which find their balance point in the “complementary relationship between the ‘State administration’, regulated and legitimated by a rational-legal power and the capitalistic trade economy”36.

In this introduction it is not possible to sum up the “scheme” about the mechanisms of systemic differentiation and the medium of regulation, nor to explain in detail the long reflections about the single social formations:

SOCIAL FORMATIONS DIFFERENTIATION AND

INTEGRATION OF SYSTEMIC MECHANISMS

Equalitarian Similar unities. Not economic exchange Primitive

societies Stratified Structural differentiation Not political power Traditional societies Not similar unities. Political power

Modern societies Functional differentiation Economic exchange and political power

Tab. 1. Mechanisms of systemic differentiation

Habermas joins the theorical convention, common in the sociology of

changing, of distinguishing between primitive equalitary and stratified societies, traditional and modern societies based on mechanisms which raise the levels of possible increases of complexity37. On the other side, the “criteria of systemic differentiation” applied also by Habermas in the reconstruction of the theory of social evolution does not suits, as from a functionalistic point a view, it must be made a distinction between “grades of complexity”, but not between “evolutive levels”38. Functionalism is able to describe the process of functional differentiation which determines the formation of new social structures, but cannot explain the genesis mechanism – has no value of explanatio39. Besides, the differentiation processes can be “clues” of an evolutive process, but also

35 J. Habermas, it. transl. Introduzione: approcci alla problematica della razionalità, in Id., TKH, cit., p. 192.

36 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sistema e mondo vitale, in Id., TKH, cit, pp. 766-767. 37 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sistema e mondo vitale, in Id., TKH, cit., pp. 749-750. 38 J. Habermas, it. transl. Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., ZRHM, cit., pp. 146-147. 39 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., pp. 179-180.


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“causes” of a “movement in evolutive directions without escape”40. The complexity can be explained only examining the mechanisms of learning which develop within the principle of social organization and those which, face the environmental challenges or internal insoluble contradiction allow innovative answers41.

Habermas faces “genetic questions” bringing up the limitations between “old” and “new” sociological functionalism, introducing a comparison between biological and social evolution, and indicating the conditions which make possible to investigate. Here it suffices to underline that the restoration of the evolutionism in social science is due to contemporary biology, whose model of organic changing does not explain exhaustively the logic of development of human beings: «A sociologist who makes coincide the social development with the growth of complexity, acts as a biologist who describes the natural evolution of species in the concepts of morphological differentiation. An explanation of evolution must goes back to the inventories of behaviour of species and mutation mechanisms. Similarly, we should distinguish, on a level of social evolution, between the solution to control problems and the mechanisms of learning»42. Besides, biologists explain “the learning of species” through the process of “genetic mutation” – a sort of mistake in the transmission of genetic information which creates the “deviant phenotypes”, which are selected under the selective spur of the environment, making the stabilizing of a population in the new environmental conditions possible43. As it is impossible to transpose such model to social changing, a “mechanism of equivalent variation” must be pointed out: the processes of cultural learning.

Three aspects space out the genetic mutation in the human sub-species from learning on a cultural level: a) the evolutive learning process completes not only through the changing of genetic patrimony, but also through the changing of a potential of knowledge; b) on this level the distinction between phenotype and genotype loses any meaning. The inter-subjectively shared and transmitted knowledge is a constitutive part of the social system and is not owned by isolated people; c) who, indeed, constitute themselves as people just by means of socialization. Natural evolution brings among the member of the species a more

40 J. Habermas, it. transl. Confronto di teorie in sociologia, in Id., LSW2, cit., p. 350. 41 J. Habermas, it. transl. Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 147. 42 J. Habermas, it. transl. Confronto di teorie in sociologia, in Id., LSW2, cit., p. 350. 43 J. Habermas, it. transl.Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., ZRHM, p. 143.


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or less homogeneous repertoire of behaviours, while social learning provokes an accelerated diversification of behaviour »44.

Only reconstructing learning mechanisms and processes, we can explain why some societies – even few of them – have been able to find solutions to problems of direction and control and why they have developed exactly those solutions, which have made possible a functional differentiation and a new balance in organizational structures. Then a distinction must be made between a “whole of (equivalent) solutions” of a “systemic locatable problem”, on the one hand, which must be investigated in functionalistic terms, and the “learning processes” on the other hand, which can explain why some systems widen their capability of problem solving and others fail face the same problems45.

When learning problems are investigated, it must be clear which forms of knowledge are relevant for the evolution and what is the learning subject.

On the cultural level, the life-world represents a “handed down” and “linguistically organized reserve” of “interpretative”, “evaluative” and “expressive” models, through which experiences are “pragmatically organized” in learning schemes and “semantically formulated” in “inter-subjectively common notions” and in “daily communications and specialist discourses”46. The concept of culture offered by Habermas, that we cannot examine in this work, has the merit of illuminating “implicit knowledge”, behind “processes of comprehension and agreement”, showing how the “background of linguistic knowledge and common sense” takes shape, and how a “cultural tradition of experts” lies over, retroacting and elaborating “visions of the world” (mythology, theology and metaphysics) and “forms of specialist knowledge” (science and techniques, moral and law, aesthetics and arts).

Facing “systemic challenges”, which get into crisis the adaptive and integrative functions of society, the available forms of knowledge are the “potentials of solution” which allow to “imagine and carry out” new principles of social organization. On one side, integrative functions of comprehension, legitimation, socialization in “symbolic reproduction – Habermas expresses this sphere with the concept of life-world; on the other side, adaptive functions of innovation, direction and control of complexity in the “material reproduction” – Habermas summarizes this sphere by the use of the concept “social system”. Every innovation rises from a “new level of learning”.

44 J. Habermas, it. transl. Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., ZRHM, p. 144. 45 J. Habermas, it. transl. Confronto di teorie in sociologia, in Id., LWS2, cit., p. 352. 46 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sistema e Mondo vitale, in Id., TKH, cit., p. 712.


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At this point, Habermas redefines Marx’ “dialectics between productive forces and production relationships”, questioning that the process of social evolution must be intended in a “technical sense”, as if technical-scientific knowledge was a bound between both “productive forces” and “forms of social integration”: «The fundamental assumption of historical materialism, that the growth of productive forces (and relative increase of productivity of social work) represents the learning mechanism, which helps us to explain the passing to new social formations, is not maintainable empirically»47. The growth of cognitive potential and its conversion into technologies which develop the material reproduction can explain the birth of certain systemic problems, but it cannot be explained how this arisen problems can be solved. The introduction of new forms of social integration, i.e. the substitution of the relational system with the state of passing from the primitive society to traditional societies, does not require a technologically valuable knowledge, which can be actuated according to the rules of instrumental knowledge (a widening of control on the external nature), but the widening of the practical-moral knowledge, that can embody new interaction structures48. Only in this sense, according to Habermas, it can be defended the principle that a social system doesn’t end and new production relationships does not take over before the material conditions for their existence take shape within the old society.

The dialectics between systemic challenge and forms of knowledge is reformulated as the 4th Thesis for reconstruction of historical materialism: «When systemic problems arise and they cannot be solved through the method of the dominating production anymore, the existing form for social integration is in danger. An endogenous mechanism of learning foresees the accumulation of a cognitive-technical potential, that can be used to solve problems which generate such crisis. But this knowledge can be given form in order to allow the deployment of productive forces only if the evolutional step towards an institutional framework and a new form of social integration has been made. This step can only be explained on the basis of different learning processes, the pratical-moral ones»49.

It is interesting that Habermas neglects here the “aesthetical- expressive knowledge”, that knowledge which raises the problem of “authentic

47 J. Habermas, it. transl. Confronto di teorie in sociologia, in Id., LWS2, cit., p. 357. 48 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., DR2, cit., pp. 156-

157. 49 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., DR2, cit., pp. 157-

158.


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interpretation of needs” on the side of individuals in “existential discourses” and “aesthetical critic”. On the other side, in the Theory of Communicative Action, he supports that the “selectivity” of modern societies towards the “complex of aesthetical-practical rationality” is due to the “scarce effect” of art in the “formation of social structures”50.

As far as the imputed subject, Habermas affirms that learning neither can be ascribed only to “individuals” nor to “society”. If it is true that individuals learn – the “learning mechanisms fall within the exclusive prerogatives of the human organism” – they acquire the competences within the symbolic relationships of social groups and cultural traditions. Furthermore, he affirms that the learning processes which find their access to the interpretation system of cultural tradition reproduce themselves through the mediation of “social movements” or in “exemplary processes”51. Knowledge acquired “in a first time” by individuals or marginal groups is then shared at a “collective level” and changes into a reserve of knowledge, a cognitive potential of adaptation or integration, which is socially usable52.

Introducing the “nexus between ideas and interests”, he shows the “limits of comprehending sociology” and of the “culturalistic concept of the life-world” and he restores – “materialistically” – the study of the functions of culture within the social theory. Habermas is convinced that all societies based on classes with a political or economic ground are featured by the problem of “legitimation” or “critics” exercised by culture, and, in particular, of the relationship between the reproduction of cultural knowledge and control strategies exercised by “power” and “money”. Cultural traditions are not only the expression of ideas, values and needs of social groups they are created by, elaborated and transmitted in the sequence of generations. They also meet the need of cultural legitimation of the “material interests” of a group – rank or class – in relation to the interests of other groups, assuring the “non-problematical reproduction” of social formations which institutionalize the differentiated participation to political power, the unequal distribution of economical wealth, the selective acknowledgement of social prestige and dignity of cultural identities. In such a context of analysis, Habermas’ reflections about the strategy of “manipulation of consensus” and about the formation of “ideological conceptions of the world” have to find their collocation.

50 J. Habermas, it. transl. La teoria della razionalizzazione di Max Weber, in Id., TKH, cit., p. 341. 51 J. Habermas, it. transl. La teoria della razionalizzazione di Max Weber, in Id., TKH, cit., p. 259. 52 J. Habermas, it. transl. Confronto di teorie in sociologia, in Id., LSW2, cit., p. 350.


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In the definition of the “concept of social formation”, he reconfirms that the “deployment of productive forces” is important, but it is not the main dimension of a theory of social evolution which intends to periodize the development. If we want to find a definition, the Marxist tradition’s solution of identifying the social formation starting from the “way of production” wouldn’t be adequate53.

Habermas prefers, indeed, to connote the social formation on the basis of “very abstract regulamentations” that he defines “principles of organization”, whose “institutional nucleus” builds up the engine of “material” and “symbolical reproduction”54. He summarizes the concept of “principle of organization”: «With this term I intend those innovations which are produced by steps of learning which can be reconstructed according to an evolutional logics and establish a level of learning always new of society. […] they are structural models ordered according to an evolutional logic, which denote new structural conditions of possible learning processes. The principle of organization of a society circumscribes spheres of variation, and in particular it establishes within what structures possible changes of the system of institutions and interpretations are possible; to what extent the capabilities existing in the productive forces can be socially used, and to what extent such productive forces can be stimulated; and then how much the activity of control, and so the systemic complexity of a society can be powered55».

This revisionist perspective – expressed in other works in an identical way56 – is the first part of the 5th Thesis for the reconstruction of historical materialism: «A social formation is not to be defined through a determined way of production (or even through the particular economic structure of a society), but through a principle of organization. Every principle of organization establishes a level of learning, i.e. the structural conditions of the possibility of learning technical-cognitive and practical-moral processes»57.

The “process of rationalization” does not only concern the “progress of productive forces” in the solution of “technical tasks” and in the “choice of strategies”, but also the “moral conceptions” of cultural traditions and “moral consciences” of the individuals which are institutionalized in structural nucleus of social integration.

53 J. Habermas, it. transl. Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., ZRHM, cit., pp. 122-126. 54 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., pp. 183-184. 55 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., DR2, cit., pp. 158-

159. 56 J. Habermas, it. transl. Confronto di teorie in sociologia, in Id., LWS2, cit., p. 353. 57 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., DR2, cit., pp. 157-

158.


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Habermas declares to follow Max Weber’s studies, where the “process of rationalization” can be intended as a “historical-universal process” which proceeds on two levels: the “cultural level” of the “differentiation of new forms of knowledge” (and of “levels of learning”) and the “social level” of the “translation of cultural knowledge” into a “process of modernization” which institutionalizes” “conducts of personal life” and “forms of associated forms of life” (the vital dispositions and social subsystems): «This theory is based on the assumption that the processes of onthogenetical learning anticipate the push of social evolution in some way, so that social systems can, as soon as their structurally limited control capability gets over-stimulated by non-avoidable problems, they can, in some cases, resort to superabundant capabilities of individual learning, available also collectively through images of the world, and then use them for the institutionalization of new levels of learning»58.

Once the sociological model focuses on the abstract concept as the “principles of organization”, the “theorem structure-superstructure” is no more intended in a “reductionistic” sense. Habermas affirms indeed that at each evolutional stage, the relationships of production “crystallize” around a different” institutional nucleus”, defining specific forms of social integration. The function of regulating the access to production means and then the distribution of social wealth is assumed by parental systems in primitive societies and by State institutions in the great ancient civilizations59. Only with capitalistic-liberal societies, economy becomes a central element of the entire society as the “capital” acquires the function, through the medium of private law, of defining the class relationships, and not only the function of “internal regulation” within the market. Also in this case «the basic assimilation to economic structure is misleading, because not even in capitalistic societies the basic sphere coincides with the economic system»60.

Habermas marks out a reasonable series of social formations, each of them is featured by a different principle of organization made possible by the institutionalization of higher levels of technical and practical learning, which present a own “logic of irreversible and necessary development” – higher and higher structural stages of development – while their “development dynamics” – the historical way of achieving such stages – remain “contingent” and “conditioned” according to the different events of the social systems.

SOCIAL FORMATIONS PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION

58 J. Habermas, it. transl.Confronto di teorie in sociologia, in Id., LWS2, cit., p. 352. 59 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., DR2, cit., p. 155. 60 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sistema e mondo vitale, in Id., TKH, cit, p. 769.


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1. Primitive societies Equalitarian Stratified Parental structure

Ancient reigns 2. Traditional societies Great empires Feudalism

State organization

Mercantilism 3. Modern societies Liberal capitalism Organized capitalism

Complementary relationship State/Market

Table 2. Development of the organization principles of social formations

Habermas summarizes the reflections about “waves of evolution” of “social development” as the 3rd Thesis for the reconstruction of historical materialism: “The different ways of production joined in a complex build up the economical structure of a society. This society crystallizes each time around an institutional nucleus (family relationships, state, market, etc.) and fixes the form of social integration. The theorem structure-superstructure must explain the waves of social evolution. This affirms that a) the systemic problems which, in determined circumstances require evolutional innovations, appear in the basic sphere of society and can be analyzed as disturbs of social reproduction; and that b) an evolutional innovation to which it is given raise always consists of a modification of the economical structure and of the relative form of social integration61. In this “critical phase” of trespassing to a new level the “theorem of the superstructure” is valid, according to which productive forces and production relationships acquire a direction role and constitute the basis which determine the whole society62.

The problem deals with the nexus between the increase of systemic complexity of societies in relation to the problems of material reproduction and the adequacy of rationalization processes in the socialization of the new generations, in the coordination of social institutions and the formation of cultural traditions. When systemic problems arise in a society, and these problems “transcend” the capabilities of integration of the organization principle in force (familiar, political or economical), the social system must develop new production relationships in order to solve out the difficulties of reproduction in an evolutionally effective way, and these relationships imply the recourse to a practical-moral knowledge, endowed with a own logic of development, and previously accumulated (although socially still unused). Its institutionalization makes possible and furthers the development of a new technical-organizative

61 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., DR2, cit., p. 156. 62 J. Habermas, it. transl. Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 118.


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knowledge, and also a widening of productive forces and the complex system-environment. Only with learning processes we can explain why some social systems develop in an evolutional sense, finding solutions to the problems of regulation and control, while others fail face these challenges63. These reflections can be found in the second part of the Vth Thesis for the reconstruction of historical materialism: “In the explanation of the trespassing from a social formation to another (for example, the origin of the State or capitalism) we must: a) go back to systemic problems which transcend the capability of control of the ancient social formation, and b) resort to an evolutional learning process which generates the new principle of organization. A society can learn, evolving, as it allows to solve out systemic problems face which the available capability of control fails, maximizing and using institutionally the capabilities of individual learning in excess. The first step here consists of establishing a new form of integration, which then permits to potentiate the productive forces and to widen the complexity of the system»64.

2. Social Science and Historiography

The debated theme of the relationship between social science and historiographical studies has been object of Habermas’ reflection since the middle of the Sixties, as different passages taken from On the Logic of the Social Sciences (1967)65 and Knowledge and Human Interests (1969)66prove. But only since the middle of the Seventies he has been completing the framework of relationships between “historiography” and “social science”, as the programmatical essay History and evolution” (1976)67 attests and the Second intermediate consideration: System and life-world (1981)68 and then Actions, linguistic acts, interactions mediated linguistically and life-world (1988)69 precise.

63 J. Habermas, it. transl. Confronto di teorie in sociologia, in Id., LSW2, cit., p. 350. 64 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., DR2, cit., pp. 157-

158. 65 J. Habermas, it. transl. Il dualismo tra scienze della natura e scienze della cultura, in Id., LWS, cit.,

pp. 31-86; Id., it. transl. La problematica della comprensione del senso …, in Id., LWS, cit., pp. 149-153, 220-253.

66 J. Habermas, it. transl. La teoria del comprendere dell’espressione di Dilthey, in Id., EI2, cit., pp. 142-162; Id., it. transl. L’autoriflessione delle scienze dello spirito, in Id., EI2, cit., pp. 163-186.

67 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit, pp. 154-183, 192-197. 68 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sistema e mondo vitale, in TKH, cit., pp. 704-744. 69 J. Habermas, it. transl. Azioni, atti linguistici, interazioni mediate linguisticamente …, in NMD, cit,

pp. 82-97.


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Tracing the nodal points of the debate between “nomological sciences” and “ideographical sciences”, Habermas realized that the necessity of concepts and comparative perspectives – essential aspects of today’s renewed historiography – was stronger than the rigid methodological dualism canonized by Neokantism70. The junction of both field of knowledge has been experimented with success, so that some scientists have talked about “sociologization of history”71. The “mutual functionality” in human knowledge was also due to the impulse given to “compared research” since the Fifties by American academicals institutions – see Reports 54 and 64 of the Social Science Research Council, by European institutions and by works about “history of society” by M. Bloch, L. Febvre, F. Braudel in the Annales, by R. Bendix, P. Lepsius, C.W. Mills, H.U. Wehler, W. Cahnman and A. Boskoff, E. Schulin and F.G. Maier, O. Hintze, B. More and many other researchers that, following the trail of “Weberian studies” and “Marxist historiography”, worked out an “approach” whose results were assumed by Habermas as “partial theories” in many passages of the “theory of social evolution”.

The German scientist underlines that this direction of research appears critical towards “traditional historiography”, gaining a wider space-time perspective and a sensibility for phenomena that had been, until those days, completely or partially neglected: «history as social science moves away from the political history of State and capital actions, framed in a history of ideas, and leads to a social and economical history, where the history of cultures is also integrated»72. Habermas also points out the “centrality of collective actors” and the “use of aggregated quantitative indicators” in a progressive displacement of weights, without that the narrative application of sociological instruments denies the idea of historiography.

While “sociology of history” enriches and does not damage historiography, Habermas affirms that other instruments of social science, the “rational ex-post reconstructions” of the theory of action and the “models system/environment” of the systemic theory, cannot, contrarily, have full” historiograhical application”73. The reconstructions of the development logics of social formations and the narrative representations of historical events are, indeed, two forms of knowledge

70 J. Habermas, it. transl. Il dualismo tra scienze della natura e scienze della cultura, in Id., LWS, cit., p.

31. 71 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit, pp. 154-155. 72 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit, p. 165. 73 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., pp. 154-155.


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which represent complementary but different ways of studying society and their terms of cooperation lead the matter to explanations on historical research.

Retracing critically the epistemological discussions of the Fifties/Sixties on the Theses expressed by K. Popper, G. Hempel, E. Nagel, H. Oppenheim, Habermas focuses first of all the problem if “historical explanations” can be “causal explanations”. The reflections move round the extensibility of the so-called Covering Law Model and to the critics – that he only partially shares – to “positivism” made by the “idealistic philosophy of history” (R. Collingwood and W. Dray) and by “analytical philosophy of language” (A. Danto). But generally his writings remain indefinite and require many efforts of interpretation74.

Habermas introduces the casual problem distinguishing the “descriptive” and the “explicative” function in historiographical research. If descriptions are “assertions” which reproduce a particular “context of observation”, explanations are “arguments” which deduce the genesis of past events and the prevision of the future ones through the nexus between the elements of the context and the law which directs the production of the specific historical events75. The Covering Law Model, in its classical form, affirms that the “explanans” is composed by a series of “existential statements” about “initial” or “contextual conditions” of the beginning of phenomena and “theorical statements” about their “general laws”. The different types of statements are the “premises” of the “casual explanation”: starting from the “general” or “universal laws” and from the “initial conditions” it is possible to “infer” a “single” statement which expresses the “conclusion” about the object of “prevision” (explanandum)76.

In the course of the epistemological reflexions, the studies about the “logics of science” have led the “Neopositivism” to more cautious cognitive proposals but, for Habermas, the whole debate about the theme of historical explanation versus scientific explanation would remain mortgaged by the limited conceptions of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science77. For the co-operators of the Encyclopedia, as for the first Positivists-, the historical-social phenomena

74 J. Habermas, it. transl. Il dualismo tra scienze della natura e scienze della cultura, in LWS, cit., pp. 45-52; Id., it. transl. Comprensione del senso nelle scienze dell’azione, in Id., LWS, cit., pp. 161-221; Id., it. transl. La logica della ricerca di Charles S. Peirce, in Id., EI2, cit., pp. 91-112; Id., it. transl. L’autoriflessione delle scienze della natura, in Id., EI2, cit., pp. 113-141; Id., it. transl., L’autofraintendimento scientistico della metapsicologia, in Id., EI2, cit., pp. 255-256; Id., it. transl. lim. Discorso e verità, in Id., LWS2, cit., pp. 319-343; Id., it. transl. Charles S. Peirce sulla comunicazione, in Id., TuK, cit., p. 17-21; Id., it. transl. La teoria della razionalizzazione di Max Weber, in Id., TKH, cit., pp. 285, 291, 295, 319.

75 J. Habermas, it. transl. Poscritto del 1973, in Id., EI2,cit., p. 317. 76 J. Habermas, it. transl. Il dualismo tra scienze della natura e scienze della cultura, in Id., LWS, cit.,

pp. 40-41. 77 J. Habermas, it. transl. Comprensione del senso nelle scienze dell’azione, in Id., LWS, cit., p. 242.


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represented a research sphere in a “rear position” in relation to the natural ones, and while they cherished a hope about the development of social science, they had great doubts about the same possibility in relation to a “theoretical knowledge” abut history. Habermas reminds that Popper tempered the “unity of science” with the idea of “different functions of scientifical theories” about natural and social phenomena and in relation to historical studies. While “morphological sciences” are interested in researching hypotheses whose explicative content – always growing – is fortified by results of “conditioned prognoses”, the “generalization” doesn’t fall, “in prima facie”, within the possibilities of history. With the expression “explanation sketch”, Hempel pointed out more punctually that historians interested in the “explanation of specific events” do not work out “complete” explanations, but “explanations in rough draft” which do not include “general laws” but imply them in an “implicit” and “pre-reflexive” way78. Nagel himself refused a sharp separation between natural sciences and historical sciences, observing that if historical investigation deals with what is “singular”, we must not suppose a different logical structure of scientific and historical explanation, for these lasts make a wide use of “general laws”, even if “implicitly”79. Definitely, the supporters of the Covering Law Model are not interested in the fact that the “general law” are assumed as a background which is not thematized by the historical explanation, [22] not even that the “initial conditions” of events are hardly reconstructable, in consequence of the time distance and the impossibility to re-propose them, ‘in laboratory’. Also the history of the Logics of the scientific discovery follows the unique cognitive model: “in spite of the restrictions of their model, Popper, Hempel and Nagel firmly believe that the historian’s job, as far as it follows the requirements of investigation or not, such as the criteria of a literary exposition, ends with a casual explanation of events and circumstances, where the sussumption to general laws is valid as explanation scheme80.

From this point of view, Popper’s specification that the historical explanation only describes “state of things” in determined space-time regions does not modify the problem, because its control always deals with the use of initial conditions and general laws. The statistical translation of E. Nagel’s model does not even change the state of the debate. According to Nagel, apart from the logics

78 J. Habermas, it. transl. Il dualismo tra scienze della natura e scienze della cultura, in Id., LWS, cit., p. 41.




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of explanation, the incompleteness of the “necessary conditions” and the impossibility of indicating the “sufficient conditions” of events forbid a relationship of “logic deduction” between conditions and conclusions. What appears as “general law” of historical explanations cannot be a “category” statute, namely it cannot belong to the explanations as “major conditions” in “deduction procedures”. On the other side, as Hempel affirmed – if “adequate fundaments” for the explanation of the explanandum are not available, the event can be “inferred” starting from statements which define the explanans, then replacing, as condition for the “law”, a “statistical-probabilistic assertion”: «E. Nagel, in agree with Hempel, focuses the attention on the fact that historical explanations do not imply the assumption of laws at all; the condition through which we get to conclusions about the cause, usually has the form of a statistical generalization as it follows: in determined circumstances, we can expect a determined behaviour with more or less probability. The historian must then be satisfied with probabilistic explanations»81.

Habermas affirms that re-considering the conditions of historical explanations not as “universal” but as “probabilistic” hides some objections raised by R. Collingwood and W. Dray about the possibility that historical explanations can satisfy the condition of a sussumption to “general law”.

Unfortunately, Habermas’ reflections are fragmentary and this introduction only allows us to list the stages of the investigation that leads him to believe that the “empirical generalization” of historical explanations cannot be assumed as an “inference criteria” for the “formation of historical laws”.

According to some references of his writings, we can summarize the following line of reasoning: a) the historical explanation does not permit the “complete description” of events, because the historian can only indication the “sufficient conditions” which gives birth to a certain event in general; he can only go back to a series of “necessary conditions” to the genesis of past events; b) the historian is within a margin of uncertainty, not only for the unavoidable “provincialism” in relation to the future, but also for the “arbitrarity” of the narrative system of reference where historical events are comprehended and explained. To this respect, Habermas confirms that every historical explanation does not represent the beginning of a work in progress in an un-ended series, on principle, of “possible explanations”82; c) the narration fixes some relationships between the




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events of a determined “general situation”, selecting the “possible series of necessary conditions”, starting from a “knowledge background” without “ pretentions of empirical validity”, but which is the object of investigation – “even if only globally”83; d) the basic choices of the direction to take in the research of “necessary conditions” and about the moment when it is reasonable to end it depend on the “historian’s judgment”, according to his expectations and the “logics of control” valid in the historiographical tradition. Habermas reminds that also Popper, trying to keep together his solution to the “Kant’s problem” and the reflections of “post-positivism”, introduced the concept of “metaphysical programs of investigation”84.

Elsewhere, Habermas had fixed a parallel between the role of “paradigms” in scientific explanations and the role of “general interpretations” in historical explanations85. The “type gap” from the “particular to the universal” is not problematic if it happens in the context of a system of reference recognized as adequate by all participants to the discussion: a community of investigators establishes and works in empirical conditions and proceeds contemporarily in the research of consensus on “meta-theoretical” problems linked to pre-scientific experience [24] accumulated in the language of common sense. Since the Sixties, Habermas has been sharing Th. S. Kuhn’s idea that systems of reference – which specify the conditions of validity of argumentation of theoretic assertions can be accepted – derive from primary experience of daily life86.

Habermas points out that the answer about the “meaning of a historical event” is strictly predefined by the questions that the interpretation frameworks permits to develop. The “sense of history” is not a “data it self” and the collocation of the event A1 in the narration, namely the history which tells A1, depends on the choice of the interpretative hypotheses. A same event will have a different meaning according to the decisions assumed by the historian, first of all, in relation to its belonging (or not) to the narrative plot and secondly according to the relationships he establishes between that event and groups of following events. As it is not possible to put any pre-arranged limit to the number of different possible perspectives, that means that every historical narration is in certain measure conventional, and its sense «depends in any case on the hermeneutical starting situation of the narrator»87.


84 J. Habermas, it. transl. Il dualismo tra scienze della natura e scienze della cultura, in Id., LWS, cit., pp. 44-45.

85 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 199. 86 J. Habermas, it. transl. L’autoriflessione delle scienze della natura, in Id., EI2, cit., p. 131n. 87 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 161.


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Habermas points out that the “continuity of history” is also a product of narration. Certainly, the continuity of the related events underlines on the “unifying force of existential nexus”, where events have already acquired their meaning for the contemporaries, before historiography arrives. On the other side, it may not be ignored that selecting the interpretation framework, the historian chooses the beginning and the end of the story and what must be considered as a “period”, where the relevant events are conceived as elements of a “unique nexus generated narratively”88. The historian establishes also, as with Weber, some “relations to the value” which orient the attribution of meaning in the cognitive research. There are some “normative aspects” that Habermas expresses with the concept of “contemporarity of history” and therewith he tries to stimulate the conscience that «any application imply an unavoidable actualization of the past on the base of expectations and concerns of the present»89.

But contrarily to H. M. Baumgartner’s critic about the historian’s “autonomous donation of form”, Habermas believes that the historian finds a own objectual already-built sphere, and more precisely, already narratively pre-build90. In historiographical works, historians set themselves in the background of previous knowledges handed down in individual and collective memories whose “continuity” overcomes the distance between the interpreter and his/her objectual sphere91.

Habermas’ theory of social evolution represents an attempt of defining the fundamental problems of a general model of “rules for possible solutions to problems” which indicates on the one side the “evolutive challenges”, and on the other side the “logics of development” of “innovative solutions” through which social formations overcome crises or fail. So he investigates the necessary conditions to the genesis of the “social principles of objectual organization” in “institutional complexes”, starting from cultural resources, namely the “logics of development” of “pragmatic competences”, without which we could not even imagine the individual conceptions, behaviours and attitudes which, spread in collective sphere, are the human capital of innovative processes. In such sense, reconstructive social science must indicate and test “universal hypotheses”92.

The atypical character of the assertions about social evolutions derives, for Habermas, firstly from the fact that, while “nomological sciences” allow to infer some “conditioned previsions” about events which happen in the future93, the

88 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., pp. 159-160. 89 J. Habermas, it. transl. Comprensione del senso nelle scienze dell’azione, in Id., LWS, cit., p. 238. 90 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 198. 91 J. Habermas, it. transl. Comprensione del senso nelle scienze dell’azione, in Id., LWS, cit., p. 232. 92 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 194. 93 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 160.


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“rational ex-post reconstructions cannot exclude that “in the future” some structures of conscience – different from the known ones – become accessible94. As social theory develops a model ex-post, separating such structures by the changing processes of empirical substrata95, we must not suppose the “unicity of sense”, the “continuity”, the necessity or “irreversibility of the historical course”96. If the idea that the development logics is not predefined and that “everything could have been different” is valid for the past – nothing worries him more than seeing the theory of social evolution confused with a philosophy of history -, in the “diagnosis of the problems of the future”, Habermas pays attention to the “structural possibilities” which have not been yet institutionalized and, perhaps, will never be97.

Even if the “casual explanation” of history has not been explained, he writes that history has the task of individualizing the changes of the “outline conditions” which are favourable or not to the genesis and consolidation of the forms of social integration, as well as the conditions which offer an evolutive challenge in the phases of development of social formations98. The principles of organizations only circumscribe the “logic evolutive space” but “if” and “when” it comes to new structures depends on the contingent circumstances of the “single historical events”, for whose study only historic research is competent: «historic research must explain, in genetic terms, if, how and when a determined society has achieved a determined level of development in its base-structures»99. In another passage he writes: «I find more appropriate to start, first of all, from the interdipendence of two casualities which flow in two opposite directions. If we distinguish the level of the structural possibilities (levels of learning) from the level of the factual courses, it is possible to comprehend both casualities with an exchange of the perspective of the explanation. We can explain the occurring of a new historical event referring to contingent outline conditions and to the challenge set by structurally open possibilities; instead, we explain the arising of a new structure of conscience referring to the logic of development of the previous structures and to the boost given by the events which generate problems»100.

In this interdisciplinary framework, Habermas separates the problems of “evolutive logics” from those of “evolutive dynamic” of historical events, to the

94 J. Habermas, it. transl. Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 196. 95 J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., DR2, cit., p. 161. 96 J. Habermas, it. transl. Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 115. 97 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, p. 197. 98 J. Habermas, it. transl. Confronto di teorie in sociologia, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 357. 99 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 184. 100 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 183.


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extent that he affirms that “historical material is related to determinations which are specific for social evolution”101. The “theory of social evolution” and “historic research” are methodically distinguished and referred each other102. This does not mean that he neglects the problems of “social dynamics”. In the study about the changing of social systems it is necessary to evaluate, at the same time, the “logics of development” (the “structures of conscience”) and the “historical processes” (the “events”)103.

In the debate started in the ex-Federal Republic of Germany by J. Rüsen104, Habermas reflects then about the offer, “even modest”, of the theory of social development to historiography, not excluding that «a theory of social evolution cannot be used as a meta-theory to evaluate the concurrent histories of a same sphere of phenomena. Perhaps it is possible to get some points of view adequate to the critics or the justification of problematic directives and narrative perspectives. In this mediated manner, a theory of social evolution can still inspire historiography»105. Even if, at the beginning of the same essay, he recognized that the “real offer of theory” elevated to history by the theory of social evolution, “only shows its first hints”106.

On the other side, the historical explanations are absolutely indispensable for the definition of reconstructive sciences for the re-discovery and control of hypotheses. On the one hand, through the intellectual engagement and the historian’s experience of life – the historical research carries out a “euristic function” for the “formations of theorems” of the evolution, as it suggests typological comparisons among social structures and schemes of development. On the other hand, it carries out the irreplaceable “technical function” of obtaining the “necessary historical data” for the “indirect check” of the “almost-empirical theorems” of reconstructive sciences107. Habermas, indeed, aims at integrating the “general framework of reference” of the theory of social evolution with “partial theories” into the different ambits of research in order to “verify indirectly” his hypotheses necessary to social reproduction”108. Furthermore, the sociological theory can count, as well as historiography, on the results of historical researches whose contribution represents a correction in relation to the unavoidable space-time and thematic provincialism of the same theory109.

101 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 195. 102 J. Habermas, it. transl. Un’altra via di uscita dalla filosofia del soggetto, in Id., PDM, cit., p. 303. 103 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 182. 104 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 203. 105 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, pp. 196-197. 106 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, p. 154. 107 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 192. 108 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 155. 109 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., p. 156.


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But what does the “indirect check” of the propositions of the reconstructive science consist of? Some Habermas’ answers can be proposed which can be deduced by his fragments of reflection, but none of them brings to clarity. This aspect of his methodology has not been solved yet by the critical literature, even if it is fundamental in the antinomy between the “great theorization” and the “empirical researches”.

The answer to that questions remains then undetermined. Anyway, I hope that I have achieved the argumentative clarity and the linguistic simplicity I due to the reader/hearer, and rely on the “friendly-unfriendly cooperation of many scientists”.

Basic Bibliography

Here is a bibliography about Habermas’ publications, selectively limited to the documents where the assumptions of the theory of social evolution are precised. Some Italian translations are quoted and, in case they do not exist, their editions in German or in other foreign languages are indicated. Furthermore, Habermas’ publications are often collection of writings which have been taken and re-ordered chronologically in this bibliography. In view of the complex structure of some books, such as The Theory of Communicative Action, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity and Between Facts and Norms, we have preferred to indicate the titles of each chapter using a sub-numeration. This allows the reader to individuate easily the themes, the “systemic theory”, the authors, the “history of ideas” they deal with.

1967 J. Habermas, it. transl. Logica delle scienze sociali (LWS), Bologna, Il Mulino, 1970:

01. Il dualismo tra scienze della natura e scienze della cultura, pp. 3-66. 02. La metodologia delle teorie generali dell’azione sociale, pp. 67-136. 03. La problematica della comprensione del senso nelle scienze dell’azione empirico-

analitiche, pp. 137-258. 04. La sociologia come teoria del presente, pp. 259-286.

1968 J. Habermas, it. transl. Conoscenza e interesse (EI2), Roma-Bari, Laterza, 19832: 02. La metacritica di Marx a Hegel: la sintesi mediante il lavoro sociale, pp. 27-45. 04. Comte e Mach: l’intenzione del vecchio positivismo, pp. 72-90. 05. La logica della ricerca di Charles S. Peirce: l’aporia di un realismo degli universali rinno-

vato secondo una logica del linguaggio, in EI2, cit., pp. 91-112. 06. L’autoriflessione delle scienze della natura: la critica pragmatica del senso, pp. 113-141. 07. Teoria del comprendere dell’espressione di Dilthey: identità e comunicazione linguistica,

pp. 142-162. 08. L’autoriflessione delle scienze dello spirito: la critica storicistica del senso, pp. 163-186. 10. Autoriflessione come scienza: Freud e la critica psicoanalitica del senso, pp. 209-238.


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11. L’autofraitendimento scientistico della metapsicologia. Per la logica di un’interpretazione generale, pp. 239-264.

12. Psicoanalisi e teoria della società. Nietzsche e la riduzione degli interessi della conoscenza, pp. 265-291.

J. Habermas, it. transl. Su alcune condizioni necessarie al rivoluzionamento delle società tardo-capitaliste, in Id., KK, cit., pp. 61-76.

1970 J. Habermas, it. transl. La pretesa di universalità dell’ermeneutica, in AA.VV., Ermeneutica e

critica dell’ideologia (HI), Brescia, Queriniana, 1979, pp. 131-167. J. Habermas, it. transl. Appunti per una teoria della competenza comunicativa, Giglioli P.P.

(ed.), Linguaggio e società, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1973, pp. 109-125. J. Habermas, Machtkampf und Humanität, in «Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung», 12.12.1970. J. Habermas, Über das Subjekt der Geschichte, in Koselleck R. – Stempel W. D., Geschichte –

Ereignis und Erzählung, München, Fink 1973, pp. 470-476. 1971 J. Habermas, it. transl. Osservazioni propedeutiche per una teoria della competenza comunica-

tiva, in J. Habermas – N. Luhmann, it. transl. Teoria della società o tecnologia sociale (TGS), Etas Kompass Libri, Milano 1973, pp. 67-94.

J. Habermas, it. transl. Teoria della società o tecnologia sociale?, in J. Habermas – N. Lu-hmann, TGS, cit., pp. 95-195.

1972 J. Habermas, it. transl. parz. Discorso e verità, in Id., Agire comunicativo e logica delle scienze sociali (LSW2), Bologna, Il Mulino, 1980, pp. 319-343. 1973 J. Habermas, it. transl. La crisi di razionalità nel capitalismo maturo (LPS), Bari, Laterza, 1975:

01. Un concetto sociologico di crisi, pp. 3-36; 02. Tendenze di crisi nel capitalismo maturo, pp. 37-104; 03. Sulla logica dei problemi di legittimazione, pp. 105-159.

1974 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sviluppo della morale e identità dell’io, in Id., Per la ricostruzione del

materialismo storico (ZRHM), Milano, Etas Libri, 1979, pp. 49-73. J. Habermas, it. transl. Possono le società complesse formarsi un’identità razionale?, in Id.,

ZRHM, cit., pp. 74-104. J. Habermas, it. transl. Il ruolo della filosofia nel marxismo, in Id., Dialettica della Razionaliz-

zazione (DR2), Milano, Unicopli, 1994, pp. 139-166. J. Habermas, it. transl. Confronto di teorie in sociologia: l’esempio delle teorie dell’evoluzione,

in Id. LSW2, cit., pp. 340-360. J. Habermas, it. transl. Problemi di legittimazione nello Stato moderno, in Id., ZRHM, cit., pp.

207-235. 1975 J. Habermas, it. transl. Introduzione: il materialismo storico e lo sviluppo di strutture normati-

ve, in Id., ZRHM, cit., pp. 11-48. J. Habermas, it. transl. Per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., ZRHM, cit., pp.

105-153.


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J. Habermas, it. transl. Tesi per la ricostruzione del materialismo storico, in Id., DR2, cit., pp. 151-165.

1976 J. Habermas, Überlegungen zum evolutionären Stellenwert des modernen Rechts, in Id., Zur

Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus (ZRHM), Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1976, pp. 260-270.

J. Habermas, it. transl. Storia ed Evoluzione, in Id., ZRHM, cit., pp. 154-206. 1980 J. Habermas, it. transl. Scienze sociali ermeneutiche e scienze sociali ricostruttive, in Id., Etica

del discorso (MB), Bari-Roma, Laterza, 1985, pp. 25-47. 1981 J. Habermas, it. transl. Dialettica della razionalizzazione: J. Habermas a colloquio con A. Hon-

neth, E. Knödler-Bunte e A. Widmann, in Id., DR, cit., pp. 221-264. J. Habermas, it. transl. La funzione vicaria e interpretativa della filosofia, in Id., MB, cit., pp. 5-

24. J. Habermas, it. transl. Teoria dell’agire comunicativo. Razionalità nell’azione e razionalizza-

zione sociale (TKH.I), Bologna, Il Mulino, 1986: 01. Introduzione: approcci alla problematica della razionalizzazione, pp. 53-228. 02. La teoria della razionalizzazione di Max Weber, pp. 229-378. 03. Prima considerazione intermedia: agire sociale, attività finalizzata e comunicazione, pp.

379-456. 04. Da Lukács ad Adorno: razionalizzazione come reificazione, pp. 457-529.

J. Habermas, it. transl. Teoria dell’agire comunicativo. Critica della ragione funzionalistica (TKH.II), Bologna, Il Mulino, 1986: 05. Il mutamento di paradigma in Mead e Durkheim: dall’attività finalizzata a uno scopo

all’agire comunicativo, pp. 547-696. 06. Seconda considerazione intermedia: sistema e mondo vitale, pp. 697-810. 07. Talcott Parsons: problemi di costruzione della teoria della società, pp. 811-950. 08. Considerazione conclusiva: da Parsons attraverso Weber sino a Marx, pp. 951-1088.

1985 J. Habermas, it. transl. Il discorso filosofico della modernità (PDM), Bari-Roma, Laterza, 1985:

01. La coscienza temporale della modernità e la sua esigenza di rendersi conto di se stessa, pp. 1-11.

Excursus sulle «Tesi di filosofia della storia» di Walter Benjamin, pp. 12-23. 02. Il concetto hegeliano della modernità, pp. 24-45. Excursus sull’obsolescenza del paradigma della produzione, pp. 77-85. Excursus sulla appropriazione dell’eredità della filosofia del soggetto da parte della teoria

dei sistemi di Luhmann, pp. 366-383. 1986 J. Habermas, it. transl. Storiografia e coscienza storica, in G.E.Rusconi (ed.), Germania: un

passato che non passa, cit., pp. 33-35.


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J. Habermas, it. transl. L’uso pubblico della storia, in G.E.Rusconi (ed.), Germania: un passato che non passa, cit., pp. 98-109.

1987 J. Habermas, it. transl. Sull’evoluzione delle scienze sociali e dello spirito nella Repubblica Fe-

derale, in Id., TuK, cit. pp. 217-228. J. Habermas, it. transl. Intervista con Angelo Bolaffi, in «L’Espresso», 25.01.1988. J. Habermas, it. transl. Intervista con Robert Maggiori, in NR. KPS VII, cit., pp.32-40. 1989 J. Habermas, it. transl. La sociologia nella Repubblica di Weimer, in Id., TuK, cit., pp.195-215. J. Habermas, it. transl. Intervista con Hans Peter Krüger, in Id., NR. KPS VII, cit., pp. 86-102. J. Habermas, it. transl. Intervista con Barbara Freitag, in Id., NR. KPS VII, cit., pp.103-116. J. Habermas, it. transl. Intervista con T. Hviid Nielsen, in Id., KPS VII NR, cit., pp. 117-146.

PATHS TOWARDS ADDICTION: A FUZZY MODEL OF CAUSAL RELATIONS Chiara Ferretti Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e Sociali Università di Pisa [email protected] +39 050 2212420 Abstract

In this paper I describe the development of a method used in a social research, aimed to study, in a multicausal paradigm, the etiology of drug addiction.

The method I developed is antithetical to the ones used in classical monocausal researchs; it tries to find an explanation more faithful to the complexity of reality, considering more causal elements necessary to the development of such phenomenon.

The research was based upon data from heterogeneous sources, being used literature, interviews I did in a community to rehabilitate drug addicts, and life histories taken from internet sites.

After having categorized and analyzed the data with standard methods of traditional logic, and obtaining deterministic results unable to properly reflect the complexity of social reality, I analyzed the same data using instruments based upon fuzzy logic to confront the two typologies of research.

The outcome obtained using fuzzy logic resulted more precise and adequate to understand the social phenomenon observed. Between the methodological issues addressed, connected with the development of the research technique I used, are the problematization of the researcher’s role and the use of fuzzy loguc as suitable to the possibilità of reading “grey areas” of reality, overcoming true/false dichotomy making space to the uncertainty and vagueness of reality.

Keywords: Fuzzy, drug addiction, causality

Index

Introduction 851. Theoretical framework 852. Research 86Conclusion 91References 92


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Introduction

In my empirical research I addressed the subject of drug addictions aetiology from a multicasual viewpoint.

The main peculiarity of this research is not in the subject, but in the analytical tool employed, id est fuzzy logic. I confronted two research methods (based respectively upon standard logic and fuzzy logic), noticing how research procedures and results obtained with the new fuzzy instrument are more accurate and adequate for understating social phenomena, leading to the overcoming of the true/false dychotomy, allowing a proper space for uncertainity and vagueness (proprieties of social reality often elided in social researches based upon traditional logic).

Aristotetical formal logic is very strict and doesn't allow for ambiguity, but in real world concepts as “enough”, “almost”, “few” are very important. Logic should reflect objective reality: if reality is contradictory, an adequate description of reality should deal with this contradictoriety. Real world is not a binary one.

Fuzzy logic arises from Zadeh works, since 1965, and it starts from the consideration that everithing around us is becoming, is in fieri.

Zadeh asserted that instead of adapting the world to our measuring instruments it is necessary to adapt our instruments to the world. Fuzzy set theory have been used in social sciences only recently (Ragin, 2000) but it has been theoretically indicated as adequate for dealing with complex social systems (Chiuppesi, 2007).

I chose to use this instrument for a social research because I think it better reflects the complexity of social reality and the central role of social observer, without leading to hyperdeterministic results and information loss, being oriented to the study of both variables and cases and allowing a strong tolerance towards vagueness.

1. Theoretical framework

Developing this research I started analysing classical addiction theories, which deal with the subject in a mono-causal way, usually attributing the cause of this phenomenon to family – asserting that a somehow inadequate familiar environment for the child's psicho-phisical development can lead to a deviant behiaviour.

Influential in spreading a different view of the phenomenon was the work of Shuterland (1939), about 'differential association': the deviant behaviour is


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determined by a process of associating with deviants; the peer group is a necessary cause, it is necessary the presence of someone proposing the consumption, teaching something about it; like it may be influent a determined environment.

Keeping in mind these considerations I developed a research dealing with the subject in a multicausal way. Family may be a necessary cause, but is not sufficient for the developing of a drug addiction. It's not enough to explain the phenomenon.

Dealing with psychoactive substances addiction there are many factors to be considered:

personal: expectations, beliefs, personality... interpersonal: significant others... situational: cultural influences, drugs accessibility... Drugs are not used only to relieve or to become estranged from several types

of discomfort; they are used also to obtain some kind of adaptation to social pressure towards competition and success.

Following Merton's classical analysis (Merton, 1968), the use of substances can be derived from the conflict between cultural and social structures.

Cultural structure offers a series of finalities to the individual behaviour. These finalities should be pursued with socially legitimated means, but these means are not equally available to everyone.

From this hiatus between aims and the possibility to realize them derives an anomical condition, a conflictual status that the individual can face with different kinds of adaptation.

The drug use is part of the adaptation to renounciation (abandonment of aspirations and rules), and is an instrument of evasion from a socio-cultural refused reality.

2. Research

The research started with the objective of better understanding of the causes of drug addiction, considering more factors that,when combined toghether, are necessary for the development of the phenomenon. It's the whole of social-cultural-situational factors that has an effect on the development of the phenomenon, or on its absence. We are part of a society, we cannot avoid to be influenced by it.

Once individuated the cases to study and obtained necessary datas from interviews and life stories I formalized a research model to obtain omogeneity


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and compatibility between heterogeneous data. I conducted 13 interviews in a rehab community, and collected other data from

existing literature (8 cases from Rusconi-Blumir, 1978) and from life stories chosen from web communities. Interwiews had both a fixed-choices questionnaire and a semi-structured open interview.

The data I obtained are self-representation, that is normal since every action we perform is done according to our self-representations.

The usefulness of fuzzy logic in this research design is in the possibility to derive logical formalization straight from the natural language expression of causal conditions.

I distinguished five variables, each subdivided in different modalities:

- A: family A1: functional, united family A2: family with small disputes, un-traumatic separations A3: both parents present but at least one of them autoritarian or busy with work A4: separations, divorces, violent disputes, one or both parents with drug or alcohol abuse A5: one parent completely absent A6: both parents completely absent

- B: environment, neighbourhood B1: adequate (comfortable, safe) B2: quite comfortable (few episodes of drud dealing, small crimes) B3: quite degraded (crimes, drug dealing) B4: very degraded (dangerous neighbourhood, pervasive criminality, widespread drug dealing)

- C: culture C1: Good level of schooling (university, high school) C2: Low level of schooling (primary school, lower secundary school)

- D: economical situation D1: high income level D2: medium-high income level D3: medium income level D4: medium-low income level D5: low income level

- E: psychological problems E1: no psychological problems E2: some psychological problem E3: severe psychological problems

The data matrix built around these variables was used to organize empirical datas in such a way to be analytically examined, and to put in evidence the


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combinations of modalities more often repeating, to observe what are the situations from which it's easier to develop a drug addiction.

The combinations of modalities more often observed are: A5 B2 C2 D5 E1 A4 B4 C2 D5 E1 This means that between the observed cases are frequent those with a familiar

non positive situation, a degradated environment, a low level of level of schooling, and culturally disadvantaged situations (psychological problems seems to have low relevance).


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An analysis of this kind is not exaustive and not perfectly adherent to reality, but it shows us all the difficulty of explaining complex social phenomena with a tradition causal analysis. The gap between theory and social research can be usefully bridged with fuzzy tools (see Ampola, 2000).

With traditional tools there is a great information loss, only standard situation were evidenced, and data not conforming were eliminated or brought back to standard cases.

It's for these reasons that I analized, on a second step, the same data with fuzzy instruments, transforming the discrete states of categories individuated on variables in fuzzy membership degrees on the continuum interval 0-1.

This transformation involves a conceptual difference in considering the variable as an indicator of the subject's status about a latent variable (inaccessible in a direct way), and considering it as the membership degree of the subject to a set with vague boundaries.


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After that, I tried to build a sinthetic indicator; in order to lose the minimum

possible information I looked for the algebrical function allowing to sinthetize in a single result the memberhip of a social actor to the group theoretically defined.

The first operator I analized is the minimum (min) used by Ragin (2000); I discarded this because it leads to an excessive information loss. I assumed that each variable had the same weight in determining the final score, and with min operator only one variable (the one with minimum score) is the only one determining the final score, with no hint of the other one's scores.

The product operator was unsatisfying too, because if a case scores 0 on a single variable, the final score will become 0; I found this behaviour too drastic in dealing with extreme cases.

I tested other alternative versions of triangular norms (T-norms): operating between sets they give for each element of the set the membership to a new set to be semantically defined. I had to discard these alternative T-norms found in literature (for example, max(0,a+b-1); max{0,(λ+1)*(x+y-1)-λxy}) because they are useful only in the composition of two sets, while I was working on five sets – one for each variable.

The membership of each case to the final set, expressed by the sinthetic index, is a function of its membership to each fuzzy set corresponding to the variables.

The final set can be described as the set of those who belong with a high membership to every variable-set.

If I connected fuzzy scores of single variables with an intersection fuzzy operator, having five variables I would have obtained sisthematically low scores, losing too much information.

This lead me to abandon the idea of a composition with a union/intersection operator, and lead to me to the research of a new set, semantically connected to the beginning ones but not the fruit of their mere connection.

Arithmetical mean was adequate for my purposes, because it lets correspond an average higher final score to high scores on starting sets, without one of them being able to determine univocally the final score.


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Conclusions

Observing results in data matrixes it's possible to see how every variable has a weight in determining the synthetic index.

Higher scores on single variables are associated to a higher score to the final index; it's easier to develop drug addition in case of a problematical family, with a degraded environment, a low level of schooling and a difficult socio-economical situation; the more dangerous situations are those where every observed cause is present in higher degree. With traditional instruments I obtained similar results, but with lesser precision, more information loss and in a less adequate way. Fuzzy set theory proved to be an adequate tool for dealing with the complexity of multicausal models of a social phenomena.


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References Ampola M. (2004) The study of social reality as a relational network: about the context. Recent

developments and applications in Social Research Methodology, Sixth International Conference on Logic and Methodology,Amsterdam,Isbn 90-6706-176-x.

Ampola M. (2000) From the theory to the empirical level: hypothesis of fuzzy logic, in: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Logic and Methodology, TT-Publikaties, Colony (Bulletin of sociological methodology, 68)

Chiuppesi M. (2007) Complessità e vaghezza, frattali e logica fuzzy: nuovi sentieri per la ricer-ca sociale, Edizioni Plus – Pisa University Press, Pisa

Merton R. K. (1968) Social Theory and Social Structure, Enlarged Edition, The Free Press, New York

Ragin, C. C. (2000) Fuzzy-set social science, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago Rusconi M. – Blumir G. (1979) La droga e il sistema, Feltrinelli, Milano Sutherland E. H. (1939) Principles of Criminology, Revised Edition, J. P. Lippincott Co., New

York Zadeh, A. L. (1965) Fuzzy Sets, in Information and Control 8, 338-359

RECENSIONI

Annalisa Buccieri, Essere e non essere. Soggettività virtuali tra unione e divisione Milano, FrancoAngeli, 2009 Elisabetta Buonasorte

Dopo circa un ventennio

dall’esplosione di Internet quale stru-mento ampiamente diffuso e non più settoriale, in una fase in cui l’uso della rete è diventato sempre più quotidiano – nonostante le persistenti asimmetrie che animano il dibattito sul digital divide – e assume proporzioni sempre più rile-vanti il fenomeno dei social network si-tes, stimolando nuovi e ulteriori percorsi di ricerca, il testo Essere e non essere. Soggettività virtuali tra unione e divi-sione di Annalisa Buccieri, edito dalla Franco Angeli nello scorso maggio, po-ne al centro dell’attenzione alcuni im-portanti nodi concettuali legati alla co-municazione interpersonale che prende vita nella dimensione virtuale.

L’obiettivo è quello di sfuggire a vi-sioni parziali o eccessivamente radicali, pregiudiziali o ancorate a tutt’oggi ai momenti iniziali della diffusione della rete su larga scala, evidenziando piutto-sto la multiformità dell’universo di Internet, i mille volti che essa esibisce, le diverse spinte verso la frequentazione del cyberspazio e le diverse connotazio-ni che questa assume. L’“esotismo” che ha caratterizzato in prima istanza la per-cezione nel nuovo canale comunicativo, come esito di visioni esageratamente ot-timiste o, per contro, esageratamente ca-tastrofiste, e anche in certa misura il suo utilizzo, dal momento che la rete è ri-masta per un po’, pur nell’ambito del

poderoso processo di massificazione, arena preferenziale di esperti o appas-sionati, occupa tuttora un posto nel pa-norama del ricorso ad Internet, e tutta-via si affianca ad una serie di altre mo-dalità che chiedono di non essere igno-rate.

Questo lo sfondo su cui si innesta la riflessione su questioni rilevanti e sug-gestive, quali presenza e assenza nella comunicazione virtuale, sicurezza e in-sicurezza con riferimento alla comuni-cazione telematica, il senso di comunità rapportato al caso delle comunità virtua-li, anche attraverso la prospettiva dell’analisi di rete e lo sguardo nuovo che essa getta sulla realtà comunitaria.

Agli ambiti concettuali discussi “ri-spondono” in maniera speculare le nar-razioni tratte da uno studio di caso, rea-lizzato all’interno di una nota comunità on line italiana attraverso la sommini-strazione, per via telematica, di una gri-glia da compilare ad opera dei “cittadi-ni” virtuali che hanno accettato di parte-cipare all’indagine.

In modo assieme semplice e proble-matico il volume fa così il punto su temi quanto mai attuali, ineludibili per chiunque voglia andare più a fondo nel-la conoscenza dei mondi virtuali, e la-scia nel contempo aperte diverse oppor-tunità interpretative, individua direzioni di lettura alternative e schiude la strada a itinerari di ricerca su più aspetti e con


95

più metodi. Il tutto mantenendo costan-temente un “filo rosso” che aiuta il let-tore nella comprensione del senso del testo, una traccia ben identificabile del percorso che si è inteso seguire e del contesto su cui la meditazione si co-struisce. Grazie alla commistione tra una letteratura qualificata e internazio-

nale di cui si rende conto in un’ottica multilaterale, testimonianze che “solle-ticano” l’intellettuale e il fruitore comu-ne e materiali empirici da cui ricavare utili “sottolineature” per analisi future, il testo ricompone un quadro che ordina e stimola, chiarisce e incuriosisce, ri-scontra e domanda.

The book entitled Essere e non esse-

re. Soggettività virtuali tra unione e divisione, by Annalisa Buccieri, published by Franco Angeli (Milan) in the last month of May, points out some important questions concerning interpersonal communication through the Internet. About twenty years elapsed since the Internet became an instrument of widespread use, no longer a military or academic one; the use of the net has become part of everyday life, in spite of the persistence of digital divide, and the phenomenon of social network sites is constantly expanding, thereby stimulating further lines of research. In this context the aim of the text is to avoid partial or extreme views, still anchored to the first phases of the diffusion of the Internet on a large scale. The text, rather, underlines the multiform profile of the net, the several motivations for frequenting cyberspace and the various modalities of the frequentation. The “exoticism” typical of the initial perception of the new means – as the result of excessively optimistic or pessimistic perspectives – and, to some extent, of its initial use, still has a role considering the ways of using the Internet; nevertheless, it is accompanied by several further modalities that require study.

This is the background for the reflection on relevant and evocative questions like presence/absence within virtual communication,

security/insecurity during virtual interaction, sense of community and sense of virtual community, also through the social network analysis perspective, especially useful due to its unusual perspective on community.

Corresponding in a mirror-like way to the questions described are the “narrations” coming from a case study, conducted within a well-known virtual community in Italy providing via web open-answer questionnaires to virtual “citizens”.

In a simple but also problematical way, the book sums up some significant questions that no one interested in comprehending virtual worlds can ignore; at the same time it leaves open various interpretative opportunities, identifies alternative readings and opens the way to further analysis in various fields and with various methods. In so doing, the book maintains a clearly recognizable thread that helps the reader in understanding the sense of the text, the trajectory and the context of the reflection.

Thanks to the combination of a qualified literature, stories that fascinate scientists and the common reader alike, and empirical materials that constitute the basis for future studies, the book builds up a frame which puts order and stimulates, explains and elicits curiosity, answers and asks.


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the lab's quarterly n. 1/2009

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