Name Jean-Michel Berthelot Region Western philosophy | Died February 5, 2006 Role Philosopher | |
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Era 20th-century philosophy Main interests Philosophy, sociology, education, historical epistemology, philosophy of social sciences, social theory Areas of interest Sociology, Social theory, Philosophy, Epistemology, Philosophy of social science, Education Similar People | ||
Jean-Michel Berthelot (1945 – 5 February 2006) was a French sociologist, philosopher, epistemologist and social theorist, specialist in philosophy of social sciences, history of sociology, sociology of education, sociology of knowledge, sociology of science and sociology of body.
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Epistemology and history of sociology
Berthelot's philosophy and history of social sciences was influenced by Kant, French historical epistemology of Bachelard, Canguilhem, Koyré and Gaston Granger, the falsifiability of Popper and Lakatos and the epistemological reflections of sociologists, from Durkheim, Weber and Simmel to Passeron, Adorno and Habermas.
Jean-Michel Berthelot's epistemological work combined the philosophy and history of science in the study of sociological theories to understand the logic of construction and justification of sociological knowledge. Berthelot created a typology of sociological explanations, constituted by six logical schemas of intelligibility: causal, actancial, hermeneutic, structural, functionalist and dialectic. These types of explanation were the result of formalization of theory and arguments in the history of sociology.
Berthelot, at the same time, criticized the epistemic relativism and defended the pluralism and openness in sociology, which makes him, in the contemporary debate on philosophy of social sciences, a rationalist and constructivist. The pluralism in sociology, in Berthelot's epistemology, is not only inevitably, but even fruitful for the research and theoretical debate.