Methodological Individualism

216 Popperian methodological individualismexplanations’ in social science and history; if only in the interim, while awaitingthe ‘rock-bottom explanation’ of large-scale social phenomenon in terms of individuals,their dispositions, beliefs and interrelations. The recognition of half-wayexplanations illustrates the difference between epistemological and methodologicalindividualism. The epistemological fact that social phenomena areexplainable and/or definable in terms of individuals, does not imply themethodological rule that they should be explained in this way.In this article, Watkins introduces a still weaker version of methodologicalindividualism and contrasts it with sociological holism.If methodological individualism means that human beings are supposed tobe the only moving agents in history, and if sociological holism means thatsome superhuman agents or factors are supposed to be at work in history,then these two alternatives are exhaustive.(Watkins, 1957b: 106)This version is weaker than his earlier versions, because it is possible to agreewith Watkins that human beings are the only moving agents in history, and yet todeny that human beings are the only constituents of social reality, or the onlycauses of social events.Watkins’s weakening of methodological individualism is the result of hisencounter with the anthropologist Leon Goldstein, who accused him of breedingconfusion by using two different principles of methodological individualism; onetruly methodological and one ontological (Goldstein, 1958). Watkins answersthat he has distinguished these two principles from the very beginning, and so,denies being guilty of confusion. What he does not mention, however, is that heoriginally reserved the name ‘methodological individualism’ for the strictlymethodological principle, while later using this name also for the ontologicalthesis. This is unimportant. More important is the fact that Watkins now makes asynthesis of the two, so that methodological individualism comes to compriseboth versions: ‘(1) Human beings (together with their material resources andenvironment) are the only causal factors in history. (2) Explain all social events interms of human factors’ (Watkins, 1959a: 320).Watkins did return to methodological individualism in an article on Hobbesfrom 1976, where he restates and rejects his position in the 1950s. This retrospectivestatement is perhaps the most clearly worded formulation there is of theoriginal, strong version of methodological individualism. In order not to miss, ormisinterpret, anything in this careful and authoritative statement of methodologicalindividualism, I quote it in full:Let S be any (human) society, institution, or social process, and let an I-predicate be a one-term predicate that is predicable of individual people;that is to say, it always makes sense, though it may be false, to predicate anyI-predicate of any individual. I-predicates can designate physical, psychological,and psycho-physical properties of individuals. Thus ‘tall’, ‘ambitious’