Woodcutters and Witchcraft: Rationality and Interpretive Change in the Social Sciences

The "woodcutters"of the title derive from an example of a problem of apparent irrationality in Wittgenstein's (1956 ed.). Witchcraft enters the picture from anthropological studies interpreting beliefs about witchcraft as formally inconsistent. What Risjord (philosophy, Emory U.) is getting at is that to understand what he calls the "explanatory coherence" principle underlying social science, "it might be wise to look at cases where it [i.e. interpretation] breaks down." In examining the relationship between evidence and methodology, he discusses interpretative change, explanatory criteria of adequacy, norms, the problem of meaning, and the relationship between the social and natural sciences.