A New Paradigm Of Social Science Research On Complexity Philosophy Of Social Science

The social sciences have been facing with a lot of challenges from the nature sciences and philosophy from the beginning of creation. The history of social science has been centered around the scientific status of social knowledge. Traditional social science research tends to seek its scientific legitimacy under the guidance of the Newtonian paradigm. Newtonian mechanistic paradigm has dominated the development of science(including social science) for nearly three hundred years. Guided by the paradigm, social science has made great progress of scientification and standardization. At the same time, it receives quite a lot questions. For example, at the scientific level, people questions its legality as a discipline and the truthfulness of its knowledge. At the philosophical level, people questions the objectivity of its research subjects and objects, the universality of its cognitive structure, the scientificity of its research methods. These questions in essence are rooted in a problematic view of social science:the kind view of social science is based on linear thinking and mechanical determinism, despises the true complexity of social reality, focuses on the reductive and fragmentative studies of reality under the guidance of one-way causation and mechanism. This forced the social scientists to make a choice between social constructivism and social realism, methodological individualism and methodological holism. As a result, we can not understand fully the complexity of social reality, especially of social system. The cognitive model of social science is limited to linear reductionism. At the same time, the formation and extension of interdisciplinary and multiple research methods are restrained. In its long-term development process, social science becomes a simple copy of nature science step by step, which is dominated by the mechanistic view of nature, resulting the degradation of social science.The revolution of physics that began from quantum mechanics and relativity in the early 20th century challenged fundamentally the basic theories and assumptions of Newton paradigm. Then, the general system theory, cybernetics, dissipative structure theory, synergetics, catastrophe theory and chaos theory, as new theories and research thinking, obtain vigorous development in various nature science disciplines, which are in stark contrast with Newton paradigm, and have been referred to as "complexity science". Their core research thinking, methods and theories constitute a so-called "complexity paradigm". In fact, these new research thinking and methods is not only applicable to the nature science, but also to the social science. The existence of social scientific laws, the scientificity of social scientific explanations and the rationality of social science models are three core issues in the philosophy of social science, complexity thinking and methods have important significance for reconstructing and solving them. And it proves the necessity, feasibility and rationality of the application of complexity paradigm to social science research. Meanwhile, sociology, economics and politics are three major disciplines of social science, the paper introduces their history of thoughts, reveals complexity ideas implied in traditional social science research, and combines the core categories, basic theories and modeling methods of complexity science, provides an alternative research path and mode for these disciplines. The process itself is the process of shifting the social science paradigm.So, on the one hand, complex systems paradigm highlights the fundamental flaws of Newton’s mechanical determinism paradigm, and on the other hand, it clarifies the nature and targets of social science research. The complexity of social reality is real and hierarchical and diversified, mainly manifested in the form of social system. We must face up to the complexity and adaptability of social system, reveal the nonlinear nature of reality, two-way causality and dynamic interaction network, and the internal evolution mechanism of social system, so as to enrich and improve the methods of recognition of social system, and grasp the essence of social science research. It is in this sense, that we believe the complexity paradigm provides for us a new perspective viewing the social system, a new method representing the complexity of social system, and a new mode of diversity and interdisciplinary. It combines the objective description of the world and the value about the relationship between human and the world. And it re-understand and explain the operation mechanism and development of social system. Its pluralistic formalism and contextualism represent a new alternative approach of social science research.