**Author details**

The statistical analysis of European ancestry in a network of variables is irrelevant considering the dramatic fact that, despite the arrival of democracy, those who have European ancestry continue to hold privileged positions in the composition of power, and indigenous people (10% of the Mexican population) keep occupying the population segments in extreme poverty.

The need to rethink the relationship between empirical research that uses quantitative methods and the articulation of explanations and theories results from three circumstances:

**1.** The valuable material provided by the comparative-descriptive analysis is insufficient to

**2.** There is a growing theoretical deficit in sociological research due to the impressive amount

**3.** Globalization represents a challenge for empirical research, but also for its explanation and

The aim of this chapter is to state the criteria that sociological reflection must fulfill to articu-

The first one comes from the fundamental change in the history of thought at the beginnings of modern thought, which replaces a logic that resorts to an ultimate absolute origin as explanation for a relational-procedural logic. However, remains of the old logic survive today in

In the modern sense, explaining means to resort to the conditions a phenomenon arises from, in other words, to cognitively recover its intrinsic causality. However, a method that resorts to history is not enough. It requires a second-order observation that analyzes the first-order empirical observations and associates them to other knowledge. Statistical data from empirical research must be subject of a professional sociological observation that correlates it with the knowledge that has been recognized as objective and valid by the scientific community. The reflections made by a second-order observation of the statistical material from sociobiology, especially those studies that statistically link "European ancestry" with income and cognitive levels, show that in quantitative methodology, variables that in social reality are immersed in a network of historical, social, and political relationships are taken out of context to form part of a two-dimensional statistical model. Without a reflection that contributes to give meaning to the data, the mere enunciation of correlations does not offer possibilities to

In the case of the existing relationships between race and cognitive abilities analyzed by the sociobiology, they follow the already historically overcome early logic. This logic parts from what is before it and refers to an origin in which is already contained what is to result from it.

formulate an explanation of social phenomena.

22 Statistics - Growing Data Sets and Growing Demand for Statistics

numerous explanations, approaches, and theories.

explain any of the phenomena it deals with.

of first-order observations.

late an explanation and a theory.

**4. Conclusions**

theorization.

Laura Ibarra García

Address all correspondence to: 95nubi@megared.net.mx

University of Guadalajara, Mexico
