The Humean discourse on causation has played a crucial role in the history of philosophy of science as chapter 1 demonstrated: it has provided the dominant account of what the concept of cause means and what causal analysis entails, especially during the twentieth century. This chapter will examine the assumptions concerning causation that underlie the philosophy of social science debates. It is seen that the Humean assumptions have played a foundational role in informing these debates, too. Having drawn on the accounts of cause that have been dominant in philosophy of science more widely, the main traditions in the philosophy of social science have also primarily turned to the Humean philosophy of causation in grappling with the concept of cause. Crucially, the acceptance of the Humean assumptions has given rise to some foundational controversies in social theorising over the legitimacy of ‘social scientific causal analysis’ and has gone towards bringing about a highly dichotomistic view of forms of social inquiry.

The classic debate in the philosophy of social science has been over the question of ‘naturalism’. Philosophers of social science have disagreed sharply over whether there are crucial differences between ‘natural’ and ‘social’ facts and, consequently, over whether social phenomena can be studied through the same ‘scientific’ methodology as the natural sciences. Crucially, the Humean notion of cause has played an important role in this foundational debate between the ‘positivist’ and the ‘hermeneutic’ traditions.