More lucid thinking

Uskali Mäki: The Centre of Excellence in Philosophy of the Social Sciences

There are millions of researchers in the world, but there is always something that has not yet been studied. Much of this kind of under-cultivated room for study is found in the spaces between various scientific disciplines. Encounters between two or more disciplines often provide also the freshest and most significant innovations. The future of sciences is partly formed by exactly these kinds of encounters.

However, encounters are not always unproblematic, says research director, Professor Uskali Mäki. Two disciplines may give one phenomenon two seemingly competing explanations or appeal to research data that is difficult to reconcile, and their respective research methods and quality criteria may vary greatly. Some researchers have attempted to build bridges between disciplines, while others want to keep them strictly apart.

– Specialisation has been taken to such extremes that genuine expertise may suffer. Areas of expertise are not integrated and there are spaces between them, which means that the overall worldview may remain somewhat incomplete, says Mäki.

The Centre of Excellence in Philosophy of the Social Sciences led by Mäki aims to clarify these kinds of situations. Mäki speaks precisely about clarification, since according to him interdisciplinarity is a much-used rhetorical slogan that is insufficiently understood.

One of the research subjects of the Centre of Excellence is the transfer of scientific models from one discipline to another. A perfect example is the transfer of economic models to other social sciences and even natural sciences. For example, some biologists have started using the concept ‘market’ when researching animal behaviour.

They claim that exchanging grooming for sex or holding infants in baboon communities is an instance of market demand and supply. The flow also goes the other way, for example, when results from neurosciences or evolutionary biology are utilised in social sciences.

Transfer of concepts and models is often riddled with friction and controversy, since they may change on their way or mould the receiving discipline in a more extensive manner.

In addition to helping social scientists, the Centre of Excellence aims to create tools for thinking for the needs of science policy, such as for recognition and the evaluation of promising trends and allocation of resources.

Interdisciplinarity is an important criterion to major research funders, such as the Academy of Finland. Therefore, interdisciplinarity is also referred to in funding applications.

– It is not always easy to assess whether the talk is well-founded or merely rhetorical. In this, our centre has a lot to offer, says Mäki.

Out of the twenty or so researchers at the centre, most are philosophers, but almost all have experience of other disciplines. One has knowledge in biology, another one in social psychology, and so on. Mäki is both a philosopher and an economist.

– Philosophers often busy themselves in their own chambers by themselves but we have an exceptional amount of outward-looking teamwork. New hypotheses and answers are found when the different areas of expertise of various researchers are combined. This is something that the Centre of Excellence enables beautifully.

Centre of Excellence in Philosophy of the Social Sciences

Text: Tuomo Tamminen
Photo: Wilma Hurskainen
Translation: AAC Global