This paper addresses the problem of social roots of statistics, and particularly it highlights its role in transforming data into knowledge. Statistics is the only tool enabling effective move from the welfare state to the welfare society. Following the Gurria's call for a new generation of statistics, the main ways for the development of this new statistics are also discussed. The problem how to meet new social needs rising in information societies or societies based on knowledge is also briefly discussed.
The contribution deals with defining the phenomenon of culture and its concept from the perspectives of philosophy as well as special sciences. With regard to the philosophical approach to culture and the tension between particularism and universalism it focuses on culture/human nature relationship and the role these concepts play in social cognition. Due to contemporary global conflicts and the abandonment of the idea of progress the concept of culture becomes central and highly relevant as a mediator in the resolution of conflicts, especially those, in which the acknowledgment and respect are the problems at issue.
On the background of the status of social sciences and the fragmentation of social knowledge the paper explains interpretivism as an explanatory method characteristic of social sciences. While describing the nature of interpretivism it underlines the inspiring contribution of analytical philosophy of language: the communication theory of meaning, Davidsonian and Quinean reflections on interpretation. The author argues, that the interpretive approach to social facts together with the concept of action embody a potential, which could be effective in overcoming the epistemological and methodological splitting in social knowledge.
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