Concept

Jean-Michel Berthelot

Summary
Jean-Michel Berthelot (1945 – 5 February 2006) was a French sociologist, philosopher, epistemologist and social theorist, specialist in philosophy of social sciences, history of sociology, sociology of education, sociology of knowledge, sociology of science and sociology of the body. Former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Jean Michel Berthelot began his career as a teacher of philosophy in secondary education. After a PhD under the direction of Raymond Ledrut, he became professor of sociology at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaures from 1982 to 1997, where he directed the CERS (Centre d'études et de recherches sociologiques) and the doctoral school. In 1997, he joined the University of Paris Sorbonne, first Paris V and then Paris IV. He was Secretary General of the International Association of French speaking sociologists Language (AISLF), from 1992 to 2000, as well as Secretary General of the journal "Les Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie". Berthelot's philosophy and history of social sciences was influenced by Kant, French historical epistemology of Bachelard, Canguilhem, Koyré and Gaston Granger, the falsifiability of Popper and Lakatos and the epistemological reflections of sociologists, from Durkheim, Weber and Simmel to Passeron, Adorno and Habermas. Jean-Michel Berthelot's epistemological work combined the philosophy and history of science in the study of sociological theories to understand the logic of construction and justification of sociological knowledge. Berthelot created a typology of sociological explanations, constituted by six logical schemas of intelligibility: causal, actancial, hermeneutic, structural, functionalist and dialectic. These types of explanation were the result of formalization of theory and arguments in the history of sociology. Berthelot, at the same time, criticized the epistemic relativism and defended the pluralism and openness in sociology, which makes him, in the contemporary debate on philosophy of social sciences, a rationalist and constructivist.
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