STANISLAV ANDRESKI

    There are not many subjects about which I know a lot so when I find one about which I know a little and it is covered in jargon I get irritated.  Rather than focus on the subject of my irritation I will introduce you to someone who was irritated about all of this 45 years ago. Since the wiki entry for him is short and given that he died 10 years ago this month I thought it worth calling him and his work to your attention.

   Stanislav Andreski wrote quite a bit about different subjects, but I have only read Social Sciences as Sorcery. You can judge the tenor of this tract from these sample chapter headings:

“Why Foul One’s Nest?”, “The Uses of Absurdity”, “Evasion in the Guise of Objectivity”, Hiding Behind Methodology”, “Quantification as Camouflage”, “Ideology Underneath Terminology” and “The Law of Lighter Weights Rising to the Top.”

  I had another look at it and these quotations are from Chapter 6: “The Smoke Screen of Jargon”.

“The attraction of jargon and obfuscating convolutions can be fully explained by the normal striving of humans for emoluments and prestige at the least cost to themselves, the cost in question consisting of the mental effort and the danger of ‘sticking one’s neck out’ or ‘putting one’s foot in it’. In addition to eliminating such risks, as well as the need to learn much, nebulous verbosity opens a road to the most prestigious academic posts to people of small intelligence whose limitations would stand naked if they had to state what they have to say clearly and succinctly. Actually, the relationship between the character of a jargon-mongerer and the amount of his verbiage can be expressed in the formula below, which I propose to call THE EQUATION OF JARGON-MONGERING.” [those interested in the equation should see pp.82-83.]

“The usage of mumbo-jumbo makes it very difficult for a beginner to find his way; because if he reads or hears famous professors from the most prestigious universities in the world without being able to understand them, then how can he know whether this is due to his lack of intelligence or preparation, or to their vacuity? The readiness to assume that everything that one does not understand must be nonsense cannot fail to condemn one to eternal ignorance; and consequently, the last thing I would wish to do is to give encouragement to lazy dim-wits who gravitate towards the humanistic and social studies as a soft option, and who are always on the lookout for an excuse for not working. So it is tragic that the professorial jargon-mongers have provided such loafers with good grounds for indulging in their proclivities. But how can a serious beginner find his way through the verbal smog and be able to assess the trustworthiness of high ranking academics?” [for you beginners he answers the question by offering a way to test your brain power, see pp.85-86].

He offers some consolation later in the book:

“The reason why human understanding has been able to advance in the past, and may do so in the future, is that true insights are cumulative and retain their value regardless of what happens to their discoverers; while fads and stunts may bring an immediate profit to the impresarios, but lead nowhere in the long run, cancel each other out, and are dropped as soon as their promoters are no longer there (or have lost the power) to direct the show. Anyway, let us not despair.”

Post Script

Stanislav Leonard Andreski (Andrzejewski) was born in 1919 and died Sept. 26, 2007. He wrote about several subjects. Here are some reviews of Social Sciences as Sorcery and a couple of obituaries:

Reviews:

“Social Sciences as Sorcery,” by Stanislav Andreski, Review by: John Woods

Source: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Jun., 1974), p. 371

“For all its breadth, Social Sciences as Sorcery achieves a fine unity of treatment.

It is also an eminently readable and, above all, ingenious and amusing….

Much of the book concerns the postures we adopt. It debunks the fraudulent and

punctures the stuffy with skill and zest. As much concerned with manners and morals as with method, it derides social science "sorcerers" for passing comfortable and un-productive careers in airy word-castles of jargon, securely founded on the bedrock of the obvious. It is high-style coffee-table reading, as well as a book of considerable substance.”

[It should be noted that Wood does say some negative things]

“Social Sciences as Sorcery.” by Stanislav Andreski, Review by: Murray Hausknecht

Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 3, No. 3 (May, 1974), pp. 204-206

“Social Sciences as Sorcery,” by Stanislav Andreski, Review by: G. Duncan Mitchell

The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Sep., 1975), p. 364

“The Social Sciences as Sorcery,” by S. Andreski, Review by: I. C. Jarvie, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 193-199.

“Muddledom and Mumbo-Jumbo in Sociological Jargon: Book World,” Reviewed by John Weightman. The Washington Post, Times Herald, July 13,  1973: B4.

“Clouting the Clerks, Peter Worsley, The Guardian, Sept. 14, 1972.

Obituaries:

“Stanislav Andreski: Forthright Founder of Reading University Sociology Department,”

Kazimierz Sowa, The Guardian, Nov. 20, 2007.

“Andreski's most popular book is Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972). This work brought Andreski international recognition but did not please many fellow sociologists due to his indictment of the "pretentious and nebulous verbosity" endemic in the modern social sciences.”

On women:

“Later, Andreski turned his attention to the role of women in the development of civilisation, his thesis being that the more access women have to public life within a society the greater the social and scientific development that society is likely to enjoy. Sadly, his book on this subject remains incomplete.”

“Professor Stanislav Andreski: Sociologist Whose Wartime Escape From Poland informed His Later Work on Military Organisation,” Christie Davies,  Independent, October 8, 2007.

Stanislav Andreski, Professor Emeritus of Sociology of Reading University, was an outstanding figure in the first generation of British sociologists.

“Andreski always wrote a clear, impeccable and attractive English that was a pleasure to read. He held in contempt those social scientists who were obscurantists and jargon-mongers, and in 1974 published an attack on them in his best-selling Social Sciences as Sorcery. It was very popular with the public but infuriated those of his colleagues whose careers were based on concealing behind verbiage the fact that they had nothing to say. Andreski was equally contemptuous of bureaucracy and when he received an absurd questionnaire from the Social Science Research Council asking him what method he used, he replied "thinking".”

“Andreski was a character, a man whose keen brain, encyclopaedic knowledge, fluency in five languages and ability to read others, enabled him to attain a commanding position in comparative sociology. Few British sociologists have matched him for originality or have had such a range of achievements.”