Talk:Phronetic social science

Flyvbjerg the first scholar?
I am quite sure that Hannah Arendt already discussed the relevance of Phronesis years before Flyvbjerg. I am not sure in which book at the moment. I will look it up. Contributions/145.18.115.89 (talk) 16:31, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Bourdieu calling for a pronetic approach to sociologie ?
I'm not going to change the article but the assertion that Bourdieu was a partisan of a phronetic approach to sociology is very, very wrong for two reasons :

1) Phronesis answers the question how should we change something that values dictate as being wrong. Bourdieu, indeed, never hid his values. He thought social determination should be fought against. For him, sociological knowledge could identify how social determination worked, how it influenced our actions and thoughts. In other words he was searching what was the nature of our social identity (habitus concept). But he NEVER had the pretense to assert that the means by which we can overcome these social determinations can be scientifically deduced. To use Aristotles concepts : is "episteme" was not the foundations of his "phronesis". He clearly separated both and when he did criticize or prescribe he never tried to dress up as the sociologist, just as THE (awesome) dude that he was (ok, thats a value judgment^^).

2) When Flyvberg manipulate Bourdieus's work, it is to say that he noticed that the "habitus" contained phronesis type knowledge. Incorporating a new habitus is learning the social behavior that is legitimate in a given social area, its "codes". So this concept actually complexified the initial notion of phronesis by explaining that there is not one phronesis but as many as there are social groups (as many as there are individuals?).

Bourdieu indeed wanted scientists to matter. His personal ethics dictated the direction in which he wanted the change to go but he did not consider the ways and means of this change to be scientifically determinable (and thats what the theory of phronetic social sciences actually believe). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.113.48.60 (talk) 20:32, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

How about some critiques of the concept?
For instance, among those who prefer the scientific method as what, well, works, and has been shown to work? Allens (talk) 23:43, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If you know any such critiques please feel free to include them. And note that there is nothing inherent in the concept that suggests that phronetic social science is incompatible with scientific method. It simply has other aims.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:11, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If so, then the page needs some rewriting to make that clearer, I'm afraid. It seems, among other things, to be claiming (or to be claiming that Phronetic social science's founder claimed; it's not very clear on this) that the scientific method hasn't worked and won't work for social science (something that experimental psychology and other experimental social sciences would find rather surprising...). I'll try to locate something, but this isn't my area; perhaps someone else at the Rational Skepticism project can find something. Allens (talk) 10:41, 12 November 2011 (UTC)