The Positivism of Harrison White

Harrison White revolutionized our thinking about social networks with key concepts such as catnets and structural equivalence, stories and identities, domains and netdoms, styles and switchings, and disciplines and control regimes. This innovative conceptual architecture results from a particular mode of theory construction, following the playbook of logical positivism. In line with this approach from philosophy of science, White’s theory is empiricist—it aims at developing theoretical propositions that resonate with empirical evidence. It is logical in deriving major inspiration from mathematics. White rejects metaphysical arguments of grand theoretical schemes and speculations disconnected from empirical research. He also opposes normative and ideological arguments as unscientific. White’s theory focuses on observable theoretical constructs, avoiding theoretical terms for unobservables. And it by and large follows the strategy of induction: attaching concepts to observations and generalizing across them.