John G. Gunnell argues that a distinctive feature of Ludwig
Wittgenstein's work after 1930 was his turn to a conception of
philosophy as a form of social inquiry and that Thomas Kuhn's
approach to the philosophy of science exemplified this conception.
He further contends that their work addresses foundational issues
in the social and human sciences and particularly the vision of
social inquiry as an interpretive endeavor, as well as the
distinctive cognitive and practical relationship between social
inquiry and its subject matter.
Gunnell speaks directly to philosophers and practitioners of the
social and human sciences. The issues he tackles include the
demarcation between natural and social science; the nature of
social phenomena; the concept and method of interpretation; the
relationship between language and thought; the problem of knowledge
of other minds; and the character of descriptive and normative
judgments about practices that are the object of inquiry. Though
Wittgenstein and Kuhn are often criticized as initiating a modern
descent into relativism, this book shows that the true effect of
their work was to undermine the basic assumptions of contemporary
social and human science practice. It also problematized the
authority of philosophy and other forms of social inquiry to
specify the criteria for judging such matters as truth and justice.
When Wittgenstein stated that "philosophy leaves everything as it
is," he did not mean that philosophy would be left as it was or
that philosophy would have no impact on what it studied, but rather
that the activity of inquiry did not, simply by virtue of its
performance, transform the object of inquiry.
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