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This episode is an example of the agent’s (“supremacist”) move toward creating a semiotic catalyst activator that would enable him to accept the other race in princi- ple—when his own immediate interaction benefitted from it. The simple doubt (“what has race to do with it?”) that produced the “bit of a point” actually led to overcoming of the strict stigmatization “my people” <> “your people” and creating an atmosphere of personal acceptance of openness. It is through regulating the nature of background atmospheres that social systems set the stage for all of the normatively possible and impossible actions—as well as their change.
Cases of structural transformations of normatively regulated developing systems lead to the need for the adoption of new formalizing systems for the social sciences.
The axioms of the general linear model do not fit the tensions in linearizing <> cur- vilinearizing social and psychological processes. New formal models of nonquanti- tative mathematics are likely to innovate the social sciences. For example, topological innovations allow for making sense of the phenomena of borders in human minds and activities. Borders—in biological sense membranes—play cru- cial role in all systemic perspectives. New methodologies of the study of mainte- nance and transformation of social borders at all levels—psychological, sociological, economic, and political—are the next horizon toward which the philosophy of social sciences can strive.
Conclusion: Normative Sciences Need Systemic
Social sciences introduce a new demand for philosophy of science—to account for the agency of purposeful actors and their co(unter)-actions in any generalized scheme of catalytic processes. This demand is an opportunity that may lead all social sciences toward understanding the dramatic realities of the human condition.
Acknowledgment The suggestions on an earlier version of this chapter by Svend Brinkmann are gratefully acknowledged.
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