phenomenon · claim-type · cross-domain-transfer · mechanism · claim-relation · replication-status · limitation — grounded in the full text| phenomenon | disciplinary boundaries between the social sciences and the humanities— “Generally, a distinction is made between the social sciences and humanities.” | |
| claim-type | critique— “Historically, these kinds of disciplinary dissociations have been important for different sciences to gain recognition albeit resulting in installing an illusory and pauperising wall between the social sciences and the humanities.” | |
| method — evidence | — “This article reviews the outlines of these demarcations and their impacts on exchanges and partitioning of the social sciences and the humanities; it also analyses to some extent these differences in relation to the influence of so-called STEM2.” | |
| transfer | from philosophy (Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus): the metaphor of a net of a given mesh laid over a stained surface is taken over and developed into the paper's own model of how each discipline's theoretical production captures reality partially and differently— “Developing this metaphor, each intellectual construct whatever the origin would thus appear as a net whose mesh shape is different from another net or in other words, another discipline, another school of thought, another approach, etc.” | transfers[0] |
| mechanism | a new discipline seeking recognition models itself on the already-legitimate hard sciences and simultaneously demarcates itself from the humanities, so the split is produced by the pursuit of institutional legitimacy rather than by the objects studied— “sociology and social sciences in general tried to develop by being modelled on so-called hard sciences, and strove to attain the ideal efficiency and the already acquired social and institutional legitimacy of the latter; this effort represents a kind of entry test for new disciplines seeking recognition;” | mechanisms[0] |
| mechanism | internal specialisation that is not accompanied by maintained exchange and dialogue turns into disjunction and research seal-off, which defeats the deeper knowledge of humans and society that the specialisation was meant to serve— “But articulating such processes such that they do not maintain necessary exchanges and dialogue often results in disjunctions and research seal-off dynamics compromising the social sciences initial project, that of a purported deeper knowledge of humans and society.” | mechanisms[1] |
| qualifies | Simon (2008) on methodological naturalism— “In short, the French School of Sociology under Durkheim’s leadership in particular, made it an obligation to find for the science it wants to institute a specific object and method by asserting itself as an indefectible advocate of the explanatory method underpinned by "methodological naturalism" too often criticised (Simon 2008… | claim_relations[0] |
| builds-on | Tschannen (2004), Simon (2008)— “So, as a "late comer among sciences" (Simon 2008 : 7), sociology certainly shares its area of study with other close disciplines trying however to appear as "a special viewpoint" (Tschannen 2004) on the foundations and characteristics of individuals’ lives as a group no matter the scale (whether micro-sociologic… | claim_relations[1] |
| builds-on | Morin (1994) on hyper-complexity, Boudon (1984)— “Also appearing in the study are this "hyper-complexity" (Morin 1994) and this frailty of human knowledge which call for more humility and openness especially toward the humanities, an attitude running contrary to the "facesaving pride" (Boudon 1984) that has prevailed in most recognised sociology and social sciences.” | claim_relations[2] |
| sense | the humanities / social-sciences distinction - AS AN INSTITUTIONAL WALL: the paper's own word for the boundary is a wall, called illusory and pauperising, erected in the course of seeking recognition and not derived from a difference in object— “albeit resulting in installing an illusory and pauperising wall between the social sciences and the humanities” | senses[0] |
| sense | methodenstreit - THE METHODOLOGY DISPUTE UNDER ITS GERMAN NAME: the paper glosses the two in one parenthesis and then traces the same dispute across a century, from Germany in the 1870s to Chicago and Columbia between the wars, saying it never ceased completely— “The methodology dispute (methodenstreit) already reported in the last quarter of the XIX century in Germany” | senses[1] |
| sense | interdisciplinarity - AT TWO SCOPES THE PAPER KEEPS APART: intra-disciplinary connections first within the social sciences, and inter-disciplinary connections between them and the humanities, so a single word for both would lose the distinction the argument turns on— “Much was done to point the finger at their differences overlooking an opportunity to bank on intra-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary connections first within the social sciences and secondly between them and the humanities and even beyond between the social sciences and STEM” | senses[2] |
| differs in | Simon (2008) on methodological naturalism — WHY THE DISCIPLINE NEEDED A METHOD AT ALL. The founding requirement is described as institutional rather than epistemic: the French School 'made it an obligation to find for the science it wants to institute a specific object and method', which is a condition of BEING a science rather than a finding about its subject. The paper then defends the resulting methodological naturalism as 'TOO OFTEN CRITICISED ... and frankly too hastily too', so it disputes the criticism while accepting the account of the motive— “In short, the French School of Sociology under Durkheim’s leadership in particular, made it an obligation to find for the science it wants to institute a specific object and method by asserting itself as an indefectible advocate of the explanatory method underpinned by "methodological naturalism" too often criticised (Simon 2008…— “made it an obligation to find for the science it wants to institute a specific object and method” | claim_relations[0] |
| differs in | Tschannen (2004), Simon (2008) — WHETHER THE DISTINCTION IS IN THE OBJECT OR IN THE STANCE. 'sociology certainly shares its area of study with other close disciplines trying HOWEVER to appear as “a special viewpoint”' - the territory is conceded and the distinctiveness is relocated to a way of looking. A boundary that cannot be drawn around the subject matter is drawn around the perspective instead— “So, as a "late comer among sciences" (Simon 2008 : 7), sociology certainly shares its area of study with other close disciplines trying however to appear as "a special viewpoint" (Tschannen 2004) on the foundations and characteristics of individuals’ lives as a group no matter the scale (whether… | claim_relations[1] |
| differs in | Morin (1994) on hyper-complexity, Boudon (1984) — WHAT FOLLOWS FROM THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE. 'HYPER-COMPLEXITY' and 'this frailty of human knowledge' are cited as grounds for 'more humility and openness especially toward the humanities, an attitude running contrary to the “facesaving pride” ... THAT HAS PREVAILED in most recognised sociology and social sciences'. The same premise that usually licenses methodological retrenchment is used here to argue for opening the boundary Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | claim_relations[2] |
| edge | methodology dispute —same-as→ methodenstreit Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concept_edges[0] |
| audit | intra-disciplinary —distinct-from→ inter-disciplinarity — Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but the span names intra- and inter-disciplinary connections side by side; distinct-from is loose, endpoint variant. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concept_edges[1] |
| for which use | limitation — the distinction between the social sciences and the humanities as used here: the paper states the social sciences struggled to maintain it in order to gain institutional and social recognition, which is a claim about standing rather than about subject matter Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[1] |
| for which use | limitation — the recommendation for interdisciplinary teaching made here: the support offered is the author's own experience of putting teachers of different profile in the same class within their own university department Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[2] |
| for which use | limitation — the attribution of the arbitrariness of definitions to Poincare: the paper reports it as recalled by Grawitz, a secondary source, with a page reference to that work rather than to the original Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[3] |
| replication | untested | |
| limitation | The author limits the scope of the argument: it does not claim to abolish all disciplinary distinctions, only their essentialisation. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[0] |
| limitation | The boundary the paper is about is explained by a bid for institutional standing rather than by any difference in what the two groups of disciplines study. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[1] |
| limitation | The proposed remedy is illustrated from the author's own department and teaching rather than from evidence gathered for the purpose. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[2] |
| limitation | The claim that scientific definitions are arbitrary reaches the reader through a textbook rather than from the source it is attributed to. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | limitations[3] |
finding · quantity · variable · definition · key-term — grounded in the full text| finding | From the nineteenth century the social sciences struggled to maintain the distinction to gain institutional and social recognition. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[0] |
| finding | The scientist and pragmatist impulse gave the social sciences a solid epistemological, theoretical and methodological base but simultaneously essentialised the concept of science and narrowed it. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[1] |
| finding | Nineteenth-century sociography - social surveys and statistical handbooks - supplied nascent sociology with its data-collection instruments: the questionnaire, the monograph and observation. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[2] |
| finding | Contemporary sociology is strongly marked by internal division into multiple specialisations. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[3] |
| finding | Qualitative method was dominant in early German sociology and the Chicago School until the 1930s and then disappeared, pushed out precisely as the social sciences reasserted their claim to be scientific. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[4] |
| finding | The qualitative approach returned forcefully from the 1980s and now offers considerable prospects for enriching research. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[5] |
| finding | The German romantic-hermeneutic tradition reversed the demarcation, bringing the social sciences (as sciences of the mind) closer to the humanities rather than to the hard sciences. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[6] |
| finding | In the American tradition, the Chicago School's promotion of qualitative method served to humanise the social sciences. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[7] |
| finding | The study of art exposes the symmetric limits of both camps: the social scientist's external gaze is too detached from the work of art, while the humanist's internal gaze does not distance itself enough from it. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[8] |
| finding | Disciplinary dissociation did earn the separate sciences recognition, but its cost was an illusory and impoverishing wall between the social sciences and the humanities. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[9] |
| finding | The paper's own position is that inter-disciplinary differences of theme, theory and method remain meaningful and even productive so long as they are not treated as essential. Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[10] |
| definition | STEM Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[1] |
| definition | policy sciences Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[2] |
| concept | methodenstreit Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[0] |
| concept | methodology dispute Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[1] |
| concept | inter-disciplinarity Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[2] |
| concept | intra-disciplinary Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[3] |
| concept | hyper-specialisation Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[4] |
| concept | disciplinary frontiers Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[5] |
When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.
Tag layer © the Meta-Tagging Project, CC BY 4.0. The paper text is © its authors/publisher
and is linked, not reproduced. Excerpts shown are short quotations for identification and verification.
· back to index
· concepts · authors
· עברית
© 2026 Shir Sivroni · ORCID 0009-0000-2597-2824