Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Issues and arguments
- Chapter 2 Challenges to scientific rationality
- Chapter 3 Causes, confirmation, and explanation
- Chapter 4 Functionalism defended
- Chapter 5 The failures of individualism
- Chapter 6 A science of interpretation?
- Chapter 7 Economics: a test case
- Chapter 8 Problems and prospects
- References
- Index
Chapter 2 - Challenges to scientific rationality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Issues and arguments
- Chapter 2 Challenges to scientific rationality
- Chapter 3 Causes, confirmation, and explanation
- Chapter 4 Functionalism defended
- Chapter 5 The failures of individualism
- Chapter 6 A science of interpretation?
- Chapter 7 Economics: a test case
- Chapter 8 Problems and prospects
- References
- Index
Summary
Arguing for naturalism would be pointless if the natural sciences were not a paradigm of rational investigation. However, many philosophers and social scientists now argue that social forces drive the natural sciences. According to Kuhn, incommensurable paradigms dominate science, making scientific change a social process rather than a rational one driven by decisive tests. According to the social constructivists like Latour (1987), appeals to “evidence” and other epistemic values are really just a cover for negotiation and network building. These irrationalist views have enormous implications if true. Not only would naturalism be a non-starter, the social sciences would also have to be drastically reconceived. The drive for better data and more careful tests would be misguided. Much that social scientists do and struggle for would be without foundation. Moreover, social scientists would lose any claim to expertise on policy issues if their results are mere social constructs or one of many incommensurable paradigms. Social science would be just one more human conversation but with pretensions to be something it could not be.
This chapter tries to show that social scientists need not adopt these irrationalist doctrines. In what follows I try to do three basic things: answer the many irrationalist critics of natural science, identify what I take to be the basic core practices defining good science, and sketch the recent developments in philosophy of science that later chapters presuppose.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Philosophical Foundations of the Social SciencesAnalyzing Controversies in Social Research, pp. 16 - 57Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995