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7 - The logic of mechanistic explanations in the social sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Michael Schmid
Edited by
Pierre Demeulenaere
Michael Schmid
Affiliation:
Bundeswehr Munich University
Pierre Demeulenaere
Affiliation:
Université de Paris IV
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Summary

Statement of the problem

This chapter draws together some philosophical (Bunge 2004; Little 1998) as well as sociological arguments (Balog 2006; Hedström 2005; Manicas 2006) in favor of an explanatory and realistic research program for the social sciences. As I shall show, such a program presupposes that social scientific explanations are to be couched in the form of microfoundational multi-level explanations of macroscopic states of affair with reference to a substantive theory of individual action.

The logic of scientific explanations

The background to my subject was described by Carl Hempel when he proposed that the social sciences call only those explanations successful that can satisfy a series of “conditions of adequacy” (Hempel 1965: 247ff.). Among these are that the explanandum can be logically deduced from the explanans; moreover, that the explanans should contain at least one deductively necessary nomological proposition or “law”; further, that the propositions of an explanatory argument should be empirically confirmable; and finally, that the propositions of the explanans must be true.

Against this explanatory scheme quite different criticisms were brought forth that increasingly denied the capacity of the social sciences to furnish explanations of the kind that Hempel defended (Bayertz 1980).

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Analytical Sociology and Social Mechanisms , pp. 136 - 153
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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