Author's Keywords: ideal types, reification, hypostatization, concepts, realistic ontology, social things, social reality, max weber, hypotheses	Convention All Academic Convention is the premier solution for your association's abstract management solutions needs. Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! Click here for more information.
Association: Name: American Political Science Association URL: http://www.apsanet.org
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p153078_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Eidlin, Fred. "Ideal Types and the Problem of Reification" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Marriott, Loews Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA, Aug 31, 2006 <Not Available>. 2011-03-13 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p153078_index.html>

Eidlin, F. , 2006-08-31 "Ideal Types and the Problem of Reification" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Marriott, Loews Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA Online <PDF>. 2011-03-13 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p153078_index.html

Publication Type: Proceeding Abstract: Social scientists are usually aware that ideal types are merely constructs that pick out, indeed exaggerate preselected aspects of social reality. Nevertheless, there remains a tendency to treat them as if they referred to entities actually existing in the social world. This paper shows why the very attempt to avoid reification by denying existence to social things encourages a tendency to reify ideal types and other constructs which social science imposes on social reality. It argues that without a realistic ontology of the social, it is difficult to envision how social reality might "kick" at the constructs social science seeks to impose upon them and render them problematic. The constructs of social science select out of an infinite universe of facts only those which they, themselves, have predetermined to be germane. Once so selected, the facts become psychologically fused with the constructs that selected them. All science attempts to simplify and typify the reality it seeks to represent. However, it is the notion of a reality independent of the constructs science attempts to impose on it that compels scientists to abandon or modify these constructs as inadequate representations. Finally, the paper explores various concrete sources of orderliness in social reality that can serve as objective constraints on the hypotheses social science seeks to impose on them.

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