Giulio Bolacchi - Portfolio Archive

A short essay in which I identify some issues about the experimental analysis of behavior. The consolidation of a science of behavior in Galilean terms given by the “sense-experiences and necessary demonstrations” is hindered by the tendency to consider behaviorism mainly as the analysis of animal organisms, with a consequent limitation in knowledge, which in some cases scholars try to overcome by opening to the cognitive field.

The current scientific partition between economics, psychology and sociology in terms of disjoint equivalence classes is founded on ambiguous and indeterminate properties. This is confirmed by the common-sense arguments advanced within each separate discipline in order to emphasize the presumed differences and peculiarities that each one claims.

Scientific knowledge as opposed to common-sense knowledge entails a methodological revolution based on a search not for essences, in Aristotelian sense, but for mathematical functions, in Galilean sense, originated from the controlled experiment and founded on the concept of a closed or isolated system.

The problems of development fall within a border area between economics and the other social “sciences,” such as sociology and psychology. When border areas are not precisely delimited, they tend to turn into no-man’s-lands on which the adopters of the various paradigms of knowledge try to impose their dominion, giving rise to a multiplicity of explanations that lack the characteristic attributes of the scientific explication.

The prejudices deriving from the human-nature dualism play a primary role in orienting scholars towards contrasting particularistic schemata rather than a general and integrated schema. Furthermore, when analyses are particularistic and specific, as in the field of organizational studies, there is a risk of confusing the theoretical (explicative) facet with the economic or the political facets of the organization based on evaluative paradigms.

Changing the social perception of kidnapping means changing the social perception of deviation. Attempting to do so immediately raises the familiar accusations of sociologism and psychologism. The book contradicts these accusations and provides those who want to overcome the barriers of common sense knowledge with a summary of the main methodological concepts of the social sciences.

To solve the problem of the transition from underdevelopment to development, therefore, it is necessary to overcome the theoretical shortcomings of the models so far formulated and to advance a scientific perspective integrating the economic and sociological components.

“Economism” and all the interventions implemented according to economic analyses did not affect the social context. Thinking about social science and emerging economic rationality, which could be taken as the spirit of capitalism, we could say that South society is still tied to old-fashioned traditional patterns.

The article proposes a concise analysis of the methodological problems that undermine the sociological disciplines and prevent the transition from social philosophy to social science.

The study offers a wide-ranging view on small and medium-sized enterprises, which allows in-depth analysis about the structural interactions between small-medium enterprises and large enterprises in different market configurations, ending with a theoretical study of that prevalent and vital production function (combination of factors of production).

The explication of underdevelopment situations through the predicate of mismatch between technology function and the market allows us to explain the disappointing results of those policies seeking to support the transition from underdevelopment to development through external capital inflows oriented towards industrialization.

The attempt at explaining underdevelopment lapses economic science into a “crisis” resulting from the uncritical use of variables and functional relations typical of developed areas to explain a phenomenon not overlapping with advanced development.

In this volume, we consider the free zone as an independent macro-variable functionally related to the economic growth in an underdeveloped area. This explanation is based on a new model of development for the backward areas.

The situation in Sardinia from 1944 (establishment of the regional constituency) to 1949 (election of the first regional council) is a historical example of how political élites behave in the management of power and the disconnect between the political class that holds power and the remaining part of the community that engages in pure political behavior of acceptance, delegation and legitimation with respect to the power élite.

In development theories and especially development policies, craftsmanship does not participate as an active variable to development; it appears instead as a more or less relevant parameter, which roughly indicates conditions of economic and social backwardness.