Sociology facing new scientistic attacks

Abstract

In 2011 Marradi drew the attention to the semantic expansion that have suffered some of the terms used in the social sciences because of an inferiority complex regarding the physical sciences. The cascade of conceptual components from “hard” sciences to the “soft” ones is certainly impressive. Obviously, the problem is not the blending of the human sciences, but the substitution of thought itself with slogans, without reflecting on its epistemological and ontological assumptions. In my note I want to extend the analysis of the consequences of inferiority complex in three directions: i) extending the referents (imported terms), including another key part of social science term: the term indicator; ii) analyzing the significance of the quantification in the development of sociological discipline in competition with economic discipline for public recognition; iii) marking the importance of a successful image of science among the world of those who take political and economic decisions, which limits the possibilities of social research