为什么在社会科学中，时空受限的规律性仍有解释力？

----为对“历史规律”感兴趣者推荐一篇文献

武夷山

2月19日，我贴出了博文《历史动力学》（http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=1557&do=blog&id=538971）之后，有网友就统计方法能否发现历史“规律”提出质疑，因为历史事件的数量比较小，而且很难“验证”。事实上，这类质疑一直是有的。

日前刚好看到《英国科学哲学杂志》2012年第1期上的一篇文章的摘要，也在探讨类似的问题。

文章题目是Why do Spatiotemporally Restricted Regularities Explain in the Social Sciences? （为什么在社会科学中时空受限的规律性仍有解释力？）

Author: Rosenberg, Alex

Source: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Volume 63, Number 1, 14 March 2012 , pp. 1-26(26)

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Abstract:

Employing a well-known local regularity from macroeconomics, the Phillips curve, I examine Woodwards ([2000], [2003]) account of the explanatory power of such historically restricted generalizations and the mathematical models with which they are sometimes associated. The article seeks to show that, pace Woodward, to be explanatory such generalizations need to be underwritten by more fundamental ones, and that rational choice theory would not avail in this case to provide the required underwriting. Examining how such explanatory restricted regularities are underwritten in biology by unrestricted Darwinian regularities provides the basis for an argument that Darwinian regularities serve the same function in human affairs. The general argument for this claim requires, inter alia, that we accept some version or other of a theory of memes. The article concludes by clearing the field of some prominent objections to the existence of memes, and extracting some policy implications from the persistence and acceleration of arms races in human affairs.

1Introduction

2Invariance as Evidence or Diagnosis: An Example from Woodward

3Why are Restricted Regularities Explanatory?

4Invariance and Arms Races in Biology

5Restricted Regularities, and Arms Races in Human Affairs

6Dealing with the No-memes Objection to Darwinism about Human Affairs

7Conclusion: A Moral for Institution Design