The Illusion of a Discipline: Continuation of the Discussion on Quantitative Methods in International Relation

Abstract

This article continues the dispute about the application of quantitative methods in regard to international relations. In 2019, two groups of scholars published their critical reviews of my article “Statistic Against History”: 1) «Towards “Second Great Debate” in Russian IR» (by Denis Degterev); 2) «International Relations, Science without Method?” (by Igor Istomin, Andrey Baykov, Konstantin Khudoley). This paper consistently analyses the opponents's views and puts forward some counterarguments. The author emphasizes that natural sciences deal with long-term, relatively steady phenomena and processes, which are objective and mainly of repetitive character. This enables us to identify regular patterns in their structure, behaviour, development and changes. By contrast, in the sphere of arts it is extremely important to achieve agreement on basic concepts and ideas or, in other words, scientific convention. It is impossible to use here mathematical symbols or figures to describe the concepts in the sphere which is closely connected with historical context and systems of values, which changes with the time and depends on different variables. The objects of humanities are completely determined by such factors as society, historical context as well as the stance of the author on the issue. Any attempt to change even one of these may well lead to distortion of the meaning of a concept and thus will ruin the mathematical equation underlying it. These factors do not exist regardless of humans, so it is impossible to dismiss Aristotle's logic. Hence, any attempts of such an approach (through using quantitative methods) lead to methodological problems and even often to methodological nonsense.