# CHAPTER 1 – LAWS AND THEORIES
ð Students of International Politics use the word theory usually for descriptive works and seldom to efforts which meets philosophy-of –science standards.
ð Difference between laws and theories:
o Laws stablishe relations between variables, variables being concepts that can take different values.
o Two conceptios on Theory:
§ POOR DEFINITION “Collections or sets of laws pertaining to a particular behavior or phenomenon”
· The difference from laws is just a quantitative matter.
· Yes-or-no question.
· Inductive theory.
· Waltz criticizes saying that data never speak for themselves.
· Waltz quotes Lévi-Strauss critique on the “inductivist illusion”, denying that truth is won and explanation achieved through the accumulation of more and more data and the examination of more and more cases.
§ WALTZ DEFINITION “The effort to find out how much of a contribution different variables make to a given result”. It’s the effort to understand the background driving the relations between inputs and outputs.
· The difference from law is a qualitative matter.
· How much question.
· Deductive theory.
· Theories explains law.
· Waltz points out that Galileo or Newton didn’t just described natural phenomenas happening, or the final result of variables interactions, instead, they created/invented hypothesis to understand why such a relation produced such outcomes.
· Denies the idea of “a reality out there” and states that reality emerges from our selection and organization of materials that are available in infinity quantity. And he adds that choosing the realities to be worked raises methodological questions which can’t be really solved by inductive procedures.
· Quotes Imannuel Kant denial of absolute trues.
· Says that if we could directly apprehend the world that interest us, there would be no need for theory.
· Rather than collections of laws, theories are statements that explain them (Nagel, 1961; Isaak, 1969).
· Laws identify invariant or probable associations. Theories show why those associations obtain.
· Theories can be only invented, not discovered.
· For theories are speculation, and not observations, they are not permanent and, however well supported they may be, they always come and go (Andrade, 1957).
ð The urge to explain is not born from the curiosity alone. It is produced also by the desire to control, or at least to know if control is possible, rather than merely to predict.
ð Theory will be congruent neither with reality nor with a model that may represent it.
ð The model is a simplified representation of the reality through theory, and not a fusion of theory and reality, because reality is different from theory. Modeling is choosing some reality aspects to be represented in a comprehensible way and, for that, theory works as the pattern of choice.
o Theory is a way to deal and understand some reality datas, and not a reality draft.
o Kant was quoted saying that “what is true in theory may not be so in practice”
ð A theory can be tested by experience, but there is no way from experience to the setting up of a theory (Harris, 1970).
ð Hypotheses may be tested and, if confirmed, turned into law.
ð Recognizes that, besides driving to theoretical dead ends, induction theories are important because we need a sense of puzzling connections before worry about constructing real theories. (Maybe due to some interest growing aspect of inductive theories).
ð Theories do construct realities, but no one can ever says it is “the reality”.
ð 4 steps to create a deductive theory:
o 1) Isolation of variables (parsimony).
o 2) Abstraction in the sense of leaving some things aside in orther to concentrate on others.
o 3) Aggregation different elements according to the methodological standards previously decided.
o 4) Idealization of reaching the perfect, even though one must be aware that it is impossible.
ð Data limit the freedom with which theoretical notions are invented.
ð Stresses that social theories and, mostly, IR Theory is weak for dealing with a complex and dynamic broad of variables. He points that the traditional effort to reduce these difficulties through substituting the debate on terms for the using of terms technical usability will not work, because still the theoretics will face operational problems.
o The meanings of the terms vary according to the authors approach.
ð Points out three questions to be answered in order to avoid useless theoretical efforts unable to produce any explanation:
o Does the object of investigation permit use of the analytic method of classical physics – examining the attributes and interactions of two variables while others are kept constant?
o Does it permit it permit the application of statistics in ways commonly used when the number of variables becomes very large?
o Does the object of study permit neither approach, but instead require a systemic one?
ð Points seven steps to test a theory:
o 1) State the theory being tested
o 2) Infer hypotheses from it
o 3) Subject the hypotheses to experimental or observational tests
o 4) In taking steps two and three, use the definition of terms found in the theory being tested
o 5) Eliminate control perturbing variables not included in the theory under test
o 6) Devise a number of distinct and demanding tests
o 7) If a thesis is not passed, ask whether the theory flunks completely, needs repairs and restatement, or requires a narrowing of the scope of its explanatory claims.
ð Criticizes most IR Scholars for not elaborating precise theories clearly defining the terms to be tested, as in the case of Singer, Bremer and Stuckey, whose theories were not precise regarding key concepts like war and peace, conflict or harmony, instability and stability, etc…
ð Also criticize the great number of authors testing their theories without properly sticking to their own theory terms and bases.
ð Says that steps one, two and four are largely ignored among IR Scholars.
ð Rigorous testing of vague theory is an exercise in the use of methods rather than a useful effort to test theory.
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