Position of Demography Among Other Disciplines

Department of Demography and Geodemography Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Science Position of Demography Among Other Disciplines Edited by Zdenték Pavlik Prague, 2000ISBN 80-902686-3-3 Copyright © 2000 Zdenék Pavlik Department of Demography and Geodemography Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Science, Czech Republic All Rights Reserved Language Proofreading: April Retter Cover, Design & Layout: Boris Burcin Published by Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Science, Czech Republic Printed by CKD Sluaby, a.s., PraguePosition of Demography Among Other Disciplines 3 EDITOR’S FOREWORD It is commonly accepted that demography originated in the middle of 17" century and John Graunt was its real founder. According to a well known late Russian demographer Boris Tzeza- rovich Urlanis, demography is the only scientific discipline which has an exact date of birth — when Graunt’s Observations were published in February 1662. There were population censuses well before this date and even some information about numbers of deaths and births but the first look at these numbers as mass phenomena and the discovery of statistical regularities we owe to John Grauni. It was just 337 years ago in February 1999 and yet only a few demographers would agree as to what is demography, which problems are really demographic, what is the place of demography among other disciplines, ete. Demography has a long history at Charles University; it was in 1899 when the first course of demography was introduced at the Faculty of Philosophy, i.e. precisely 100 years ago. It seemed opportune to convoke selected specialists from demography and neighbouring disciplines to discuss these problems without aiming to achieve any final solution. The idea was accepted and the Round Table on the Position of demography among other disciplines was held on the pre- mises of Charles University in Prague on 25-26 August 1999. This volume contents revised contributions presented at the Round Table. ‘The first six presentations deal mainly with demography itself, how it can be conceived from different aspects. Various understanding do not deny its usefulness although the answerto whether demography is the science is rather partial and uncertain (David Coleman). The importance of demography’s connections to other disciplines was stressed in the explanation of demographic processes (Hans-Peter Kohler and James W. Vaupel) and also integration and synthesis in demography and with other social disciplines was called for (Dirk J. van de Kaa). Demo- graphic findings were always for the conception of social policy, which cannot be based only on our knowledge, but it has also its philosophical dimension (Guillaume Wunsch). It seems to me that further discussion should pay more attention to those topics of demography which are common with other disciplines (man, people, population) and to that subject matter which is specific to demography itself. The main focus on formal demography cannot help to in deter- mining its place among other disciplines. Methods are universal according to their substance and so they do not help to distinguish the subject matter of any discipline. Every discipline has its own history and so the history of demography completes the introductory picture of the first four presentations (Eric Vilquin). The following nine contributions deal with the of demography’s connections with other disciplines, which are crucial for its own development. The significant position of methods in demography justifies the use of statistics which shares its origins with demography (Andrei Volkov) and the use of mathematics (Dimiter Philipov). The fruitful cooperation of demography with sociology has been proved in many studies and it will surely continue in the future even if both demography and sociology maintain the specific and unique characteristics of their own disciplines (Jenny de Jong Gierveld), because they are commuting members of one family (Hans-Joachim

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