A Poetic for Sociology: Toward a Logic of Discovery for the Human Sciences: Towards a Logic of Discovery for the Human Sciences

For too long, argues Brown, social scientists have felt forced to choose between imitating science's empirical methodology and impersonating a romantic notion of art, the methods of which are seen as primarily a matter of intuition, interpretation, and opinion. Developing the idea of a 'cognitive aesthetic, ' Brown shows how both science and art-as well as the human studies that stand between them-depend on metaphoric thinking as their 'logic of discovery' and may be assessed in terms of such aesthetic criteria of adequacy as economy, elegance, scope, congruence, and form.