Ontology

Ontology derives from the Greek words for thing and rational account. In classical and speculative philosophy, ontology was the philosophical science of being. Its general aim was to provide reasoned, deductive accounts of the fundamental sorts of things that existed. Ontology was not concerned with the specific nature of empirical entities, but rather with more basic questions of the universal forms of existence. Examples of classical ontological questions are as follows: Are bodies the only things that exist, or are immaterial forms real? Is there a supreme intelligence in the universe, or is all activity reducible to mechanical motion? Are individuals alone real, or are collectivities independently real? Are there real objects of universal terms, or are universals simply names that humans give to mental abstractions? The very generality of these questions means that they will always have some connection to the investigation of natural and social phenomena. In the contemporary era, however, it would be wrong to continue to think of ontology as a fundamental science given that hypothetical-empirical methods of research (at least in the natural sciences) have permanently displaced the deductive-rationalist methods of classical philosophy.

The last systematic attempt at fundamental ontology in the work of Martin Heidegger hoped to displace [Page 578]the domination of empirical science by demonstrating that its conclusions were relative to unexamined frames of meaning. The answer to the question, “What is being?” differs depending on the frames of meaning within which the question is asked. The scientific answer to this question refuses to admit all nonquantifiable data into an acceptable account of reality. The consequence of this method is that the world is reduced to the sum total of individual things. Since these things are assumed to be meaningless in themselves and anything that might exist beyond individual things but is not quantifiable is ruled irrelevant, the entire world is reduced to mere raw materials for scientific and technological manipulation. The importance of this aspect of Heidegger's work has not impeded the further extension of the hegemony of quantitative methods in both the natural and social sciences. His alternative, to let beings be, has not proven a globally convincing alternative.

Nevertheless, ontological questioning remains an essential moment of any adequate social scientific research. The importance of ontological questioning, however, does not mean that it is reasonable any longer to expect deductive expositions of the essential nature of social reality. It would be anachronistic to pose these questions with the goal of arriving at a totalized system of universal principles in mind. In the contemporary period, ontology, or more particularly, social ontology, remains essential as a critical propae duetic to empirical research.