| Chapter 2: | Background |
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He suggested that when “empirical evidence conflicts with empirical evidence, the weaker must give way to the stronger, and the stronger, in turn, are of value as long as they will stand up” (Douglas, 1973, p. 198). He clearly disapproved of debates on subjective truth and objective truth. He considered that to do so “is to fall into errors, confusions and self-contradictions and scepticisms” (p. 198). He was of the opinion that the theory of knowledge is a playground of theorists, and debates on subjective and objective truth result in unnecessary and endless quarrels. Husserl may have been right in his prediction that constant debates on social theories to better understand the human world would earn the community of social theorists a reputation for disunity and fragmentation (Abbott, 2001; Becher, 1989).
However, what Husserl did not explain in his 1907 lecture is what criteria should be employed to judge the weaker and the stronger evidence and what makes evidence of value. This omission suggests that Husserl, at the time, had not sufficiently advanced his thinking about the values of the knowledge producer playing a part in judging the weaker and the stronger. This is where I believe Mannheim contributes to making the need of self-awareness of one’s own value judgments in social research more explicit. Mannheim suggested that “sociological interpretation can neither confirm nor deny the truth of statements about the world” (Kettler et al., 1982, p. 16). This is because he believed that knowledge is always produced from a specific social and historical standpoint which reflects the interests and culture of the groups in question. Thus, Mannheim considered that context in so-called social reality should be explained together with its social interpretation (Kettler et al.). He also argued that social reality is constructed and social phenomena are not something fixed. Mannheim stated in his article “Sociology of Sociology” (translated by Kettler et al.) that