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This paper seeks to show ways in which analytic eclecticism can be strengthened to encourage hybrid theorizing capable of yielding more practically useful principles for foreign policy decision-makers. The paper also seeks to show that some of the advantages of analytic eclecticism are overstated, notably the ability to sidestep difficult questions in the philosophy of social science. Nevertheless, with a proper deepening of their discussion of pragmatism, the core of the practical consequences of analytic eclecticism can be advanced with greater force and with a strengthened methodological rationale.

The article responds to Richard Lauer’s (2019) “Is Social Ontology Prior to Social Scientific Methodology?” The article concurs that “social ontology matters” for the conduct of research and theory in social science. It argues, however, that neither of the interpretations of the status of social ontology offered by Lauer is satisfactory (either apriori philosophical realism or pragmatist anti-realism). The article argues for a naturalized, fallibilist, and realist interpretation of the claims of social ontology and presents the field of social ontology as the most abstract edge of social-science theorizing, subject to broad empirical constraints. The approach taken is anti-foundationalist in both epistemology and metaphysics. Ontological theorizing is part of the extended scientific enterprise of understanding the social world. Claims about the nature of the social world are not different in kind from more specific sociological claims about social class or individual rationality, to be justified ultimately by the coherence and explanatory success of the theories they help to create. At the same time, it is justified to treat the claims of social ontology as provisionally true, which supports a realist interpretation of the findings of social ontology.

This paper examines the “methodology,” or philosophy of social science, developed by Felix Kaufmann in the second quarter of the 20th century, with the aim of determining its influence on the early work of the sociologist Harold Garfinkel. Kaufmann’s two methodology books are discussed, one written before, the other after, his migration from Austria to the United States. It is argued that Garfinkel took over Kaufmann’s conception of scientific practice: as a set of procedural rules or methods that determine whether or not new propositions will be accepted into the corpus of scientific knowledge, and whether previously accepted propositions should be retained or abandoned. However, Garfinkel deployed this methodology not so much as a model for sociological inquiry, but rather for the processes by which the lifeworld is constituted—an area of investigation that is epistemologically prior to the focus of most social science, and one which had been opened up in the writings of Edmund Husserl and (especially) Alfred Schutz. It is suggested that Kaufmann’s “methodology” was an important complement to the work of these other two philosophers in their influence on Garfinkel.

Understanding Institutions offers a theory that is able to unify the two dominant approaches in the scientific and philosophical literature on institutions. Moreover, using the ‘rules-in-equilibrium’ theory, it tackles several ancient puzzles in the philosophy of social science.

The category of anarchy is conventionally associated with the emergence of an autonomous discipline of International Relations (IR). Recently, Donnelly has argued that anarchy has never been central to IR (hierarchy is more weighty). His criticism targets not just concepts of anarchy but theories of anarchy and thereby expresses an anti-theory ethos tacitly accepted in the discipline. As a form of conceptual atomism, this ethos is hostile to structuralist and normative theories. This article aims to reinstate theoretical holism against conceptual atomism and to defend the enduring relevance of theories of international anarchy for IR. This is done by revisiting two classic, structuralist accounts of international anarchy articulated in Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (scientific structuralism) and Hedley Bull’s Anarchical Society (normative structuralism). It will be shown that both represent coherent theoretical ‘wholes’ which reveal a more complex relationship between anarchy and hierarchy than supposed by critics and which recognise the important connection between the structure of international anarchy (whose key players are states) and the value of freedom. The conclusion examines the prospects of normative theories of international anarchy and ‘anarchical’ freedom in a globalising world where state agency is being challenged.

This article evaluates the idea of the modularity of mind and domain specificity. This concept has penetrated the behavioral disciplines, and in the case of some of these—for example, the cognitive study of religion—has even formed their foundation. Although the theoretical debate relating to the idea of modularity is ongoing, this debate has not been reflected in the use of modularity in behavioral research. The idea of domain specificity or modularity of mind is not without its controversies, and there is no consensus regarding its acceptance. Many neuroscientists, as well as several evolutionary psychologists and philosophers, have raised a number of objections that cannot remain overlooked. I will show the areas in which the idea is problematic, what attempts have been made to preserve it, and how social scientific research can move beyond post-Fodorian modularity without losing any valuable insights.

This article addresses Michael Burawoy’s call for a public sociology. While it takes a critical view of Burawoy’s proposition, it accepts the basic idea of conceptualizing sociology as a discipline inherently engaged with the public. To this end, it draws on the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer formulated in his Truth and Method. While Burawoy understands public sociology as a distinct type of sociological work complementary to traditional professional sociology, using Gadamer’s philosophy I attempt to avoid this division and to conceptualize sociology on the basis of the intersection between professional and public sociology. I understand sociology not as a research field formulating theories that describe society, but as a distinct interpretative tradition that participates in contemporary discussions seeking answers to the social-related questions posed by the public.

The philosophy of Richard Rorty provides a useful justification for accepting epistemological diversity in sociology. In his view, intradisciplinary debates about what constitutes sociological knowledge are irresolvable because, at root, they are cultural disputes. But Rorty’s philosophy offers more than an elaborate justification for the status quo. He also provides a compelling rationale for sociologists to write passionately. Beyond simply improving our prose, passionate language may imbue sociological research with moral relevance, at least in Rorty’s terms.

Critical realism is a philosophy of social science that analyses and aims to remedy current problems and gaps. Basic tenets of positivist and quantitative research tend to contradict those of qualitative and interpretive research, and critical realism proposes ways to resolve the contradictions. Vital themes in childhood research that are reviewed in this article include a comparison with feminist research, critical realism, being and thought, transitive and intransitive, theory/practice consistency, agency and structure, closed and open systems, micro and macro in the global/local nexus, four planar social being, facts and values, and transformative change through the four-stage MELD dialectic. Critical realism aims to understand the world in order to be able move from coercion towards creative liberating power.

Using David Easton's theory of the political system, this paper shows exactly how to measure the goodness of any political system. The theory of the political system has five specific parts -- inputs, conversion (to), outputs, feedback loop, political environment. Using this as the standard, by comparing it to the empirical facts constituting a particular political system, the goodness of that actual political system can be measured with mathematical precision.

In this essay, I argue that a common reading of Max Weber’s social science and its treatment of interpretation as either insufficiently or excessively “scientific” on the model of the natural sciences is inadequate. Freed from the either/or opposition of naturalism and humanism, and read through the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Weber can be read as offering a way forward for the social sciences that embraces both the subjective orientation of social scientists and the objective aspirations of social science.

Scholars have sometimes argued that we should conceive of social research as a form of moral inquiry, at least in part, but none have made clear exactly how and why observational research can make a distinctive contribution to moral insight. Returning to an era before the modern distinction between social science and the humanities became entrenched, this article argues that Adam Smith provided a clear and forceful rationale for the moral role of social research, especially history. Smith believed that moral understanding relies on emotional reactions to richly described cases, preferably where our own interests are not at stake. These meditations on particular cases, in turn, provide the basis for moral generalizations that can inform future encounters with particular cases. This perspective led Smith (along with his friend David Hume) to the view that historical writing makes a more important contribution to moral understanding than abstract philosophy does. This article reconstructs Smith’s arguments about the role of empirical observation in cultivating moral sensibility in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, his Lectures on Jurisprudence, and his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. It then connects his argument to contemporary ideas about the nature of moral understanding in philosophy and cognitive science.

Much of the excitement in social media analytics revolves around, a) capturing large-scale collections of naturally-occurring talk, b) repurposing them as data, and, c) finding ways to speak sociologically about them. Researchers have raised concerns over the use of social media data in research (for example, boyd and Crawford, 2012; Housley et al, 2014; Tinati et al, 2014), exploring the ontological and epistemological grounding of the emerging field. We contribute to this debate by drawing on Wittgensteinian philosophy to elucidate hitherto neglected aspects; namely that it is not just social scientists who are in the business of analysing social media, but users themselves. We explore how mainstream social media analytics research (1) overinflates the importance of sociological theories, concepts and methodologies (which do not typically feature in the accounts of social media users), (2) downplays the extent to which social media platforms already exhibit order prior to any sociological accounting of them, and, (3) thereby produces findings which explain social scientific perspectives rather than the phenomena themselves. We reformulate the ontological and epistemological basis of social media analytics research from a Wittgensteinian perspective concerned with what it makes sense to say about social media, as members of society and as researchers studying those members. Such a project aims to explore social media users’ language as a practice embedded within the context of social life and online communication. This reflects the everyday use of language as an evolving toolkit for undertaking social interaction, pointing towards an alternative conception of social media analytics.

The writings of Bruno Latour have invigorated empirical inquiry in the social sciences and in the process helped to redefine their character. In recent years the philosophy of social science that made this inquiry possible has been deployed to a different end, namely that of rethinking the character of politics. Here I suggest that in the pursuit of this goal, inflated claims are made about that philosophy, and some basic theoretical tools are asked to do a job for which they may not be best equipped.

This book succeeds in being nice all round. Its means are slight distortions of issues in dispute. A preferable approach would be to inform readers of the sharp rifts in the field and their ramifications and then to challenge beginners to think about how to deal with the situation.

Since the inception of International Relations (IR) within university departments, its disciplinary status has been the subject of constant debate. Yet, the current literature on ‘the state of the discipline’ silences this debate either through IR’s assumed disciplinarity or conflation of debates about theory with the existence of IR. This Forum moves beyond this literature by explicitly engaging whether IR is a discipline or not and by enquiring how this status matters. Contributors rely on the sociology and philosophy of social science to call into question or affirm the disciplinarity of IR to argue whether IR is as a subfield of Political Science, a full-blown and autonomous discipline, or a hybrid field of interdisciplinary studies. Furthermore, contributors reveal the implications of the different disciplinary statuses regarding the academic institution, interdisciplinary possibilities and modes of organizing IR. Overall, these contributions aim to engage rather than close the disciplinary debate, creating further space for reflection.

Following introductory remarks on Mills’s academic persona and current reputation, I pursue two lines of investigation. First, I analyze the deep structure of his thought, constituted by a pragmatist epistemology and a radical sociology, or ‘politics of truth.’ Then I argue that this structure is undermined by inconsistencies between its two components.

This article attempts to add a new dimension to the meta-scientific discussion about the status of interpretive enquiry and the boundaries of 'social science'. It argues that while the existing deb...

In this essay, the authors consider the challenge made by two keynote speakers at recent social work research conferences, one in the United States and the other in Europe. Both spoke of a knowledge crisis in social work. Both John Brekke (Society for Social Work and Research) and Peter Sommerfeld (First Annual European Conference for Social Work Research) proposed some version of realism as a solution to the crisis. The authors will deepen the argument for realism, however, by discussing how a critical realist perspective allows us to rethink positivist and conventionalist assumptions about the fact/value relation. Using a critical realist philosophy of social science, the authors discuss how social work has taken up positivism and myriad forms of conventionalism and also identify how practical knowledge gradually loses its place and thus contribute to social work’s ongoing knowledge crisis. The authors then offer a way of thinking about practice. The authors will consider forms of practice knowledge and propose that social work has four kinds that unfold in essentially open systems: discursive, visual, embodied, and liquid systems, and that each of these have both tacit and explicit dimensions. These forms of practice, moreover, are inevitably situated in theory-to-practice gaps (the authors call them phenomenological practice gaps), which are the source of social work’s knowledge crisis. The authors conclude with a discussion of the role of reflexivity in a science of social work.

Utilising critical realist philosophy of social science, this article contends that discourse may be studied as a causal mechanism in the generation of events — and one relationally connected to mechanisms of differing kinds. To do this, it is argued that we should adopt critical discourse analysis rather than the guidance of poststructuralist discourse theory. After establishing the key assumptions of poststructuralist discourse theory, some of the substantive analytical tendencies that secrete are discussed and illustrated through a look at the treatment of humanitarian discourse in the International Relations literature on the nature of Western warfare. The article then places discourse within a critical realist view of the social world. I argue that unlike in poststructuralist discourse theory, with critical realism, discourse can be differentiated from the realm of extra-discursive practice, placed in dialectical relation to this wider realm of social relations, and analysed as a possible causal mechanism in the generation of social phenomena, alongside these other mechanisms, as a way to better determine discourse’s actual effect on events. critical discourse analysis is introduced as offering an amenable methodological tool-kit for studying discourse as conceptualised in this way.

In recent decades, numerous psychological and sociological theories have been offered in the attempt to explain human cognition, motivation, and behavior in fundamentally evolutionary terms. Drawing inspiration from the Darwinian theory of natural selection, evolutionary approaches to social science argue that behavior arises primarily from underlying evolved psychological mechanisms and that the central task of social science is to identify and articulate the specific nature of such mechanisms. Much effort has been expended by evolutionary social scientists to definitively identify the various evolved psychological mechanisms that account for the diversity of human cognitive, emotional, and social behavior. We argue, however, that the search for evolved psychological mechanisms that adequately account for either the transmission of psychological entities (i.e., emotions, intentions, ideas, behaviors, etc.) across generations or the current existence of such entities cannot in principle succeed because evolutionary social science theorists have fundamentally mistaken their metaphors for mechanisms.

The paper begins by outlining the approaches to the development of a philosophy of social science in the work of Bourdieu, Passeron, and Habermas. The discussion of the positions of Comte and Mill which follows is an historical case-study of the tensions between competing stances adopted in the 1960s — between the tendency to formulate a logic of the social sciences and the tendency to ground a philosophy of social science in ontology or in the socio-political conditions of its production. The method adopted to compare the contributions to the philosophy of social science made by Comte and Mill displays sympathy with Bourdieu’s inclination to analyse the social conditions for the genesis of theory. The paper first considers comparatively the contexts in France and England for the emergence of social science and philosophy about social science. It then examines separately the developments of the projects of Comte and Mill before turning to an articulation of the contrasts between their positions, focusing on aspects of their correspondence as subsequently published and introduced by Lévy-Bruhl. The purpose of the paper is to raise the general question whether international intellectual exchange in relation to the analysis of society can occur within a universal discourse possessing a priori validity or through socio-cultural exchanges which assist the construction of universality through the mutual recognition of difference.

Most contemporary political science researchers are advocates of multimethod research, however, the value and proper role of qualitative methodologies, like case study analysis, is disputed. A pluralistic philosophy of science can shed light on this debate. Methodological pluralism is indeed valuable, but does not entail causal pluralism. Pluralism about the goals of science is relevant to the debate and suggests a focus on the difference between evidence for warrant and evidence for use. I propose that case study research provides evidence for use through providing information that bears on the applicability of causal generalizations and risk assessment.

In the opening chapter of Theory of International Politics Waltz makes an interesting distinction between scientific laws and theory construction. Recent special issues of this journal have suggested that this distinction allows Waltz to be read in different ways — for example, as a scientific realist who conceives of unobservable entities, or as a constructivist interested in how we create models. This contribution argues against both these interpretations by analysing the first chapter of Waltz’s book and suggesting that his distinction between theories and law-like statements is fully consistent with mainstream discussions in the philosophy of social science. It argues that Waltz’s position still depends on the identification of empirical regularities, something that makes him an empirical realist, but which undermines the claim that he is a scientific realist.

Organizational life and research regularly involve having to explain specific events. This paper considers how such explanations might be evaluated. We outline a theory of causal explanations as answers to why-questions and introduce criteria to assess such explanations. The criteria are illustrated via an analysis of different explanations proposed for the remarkable success of Honda’s entry into the US motorcycle market.

There is a growing interest in critical realism and its application to social work. This article makes a case for adopting this philosophical position in qualitative social work research. More specifically, it suggests that there is a concordance between critical realist premises and action research with its cyclical inquiry and advancement of social change. This combination of philosophy and method, it is argued, promotes anti-oppressive social work research and illuminates the processes shaping outcomes in programme evaluations. Overall, the article underscores the importance of ‘depth’ in qualitative inquiry by conceiving the social world in terms of five interlacing, social domains.

Infallibilism and apriorism are still influential in the philosophy of social science. Infallibilists about human kinds claim that there are features of institutional entities about which we cannot possibly be wrong. But infallibilism is not implied by the theory of collective intentionality that supposedly grounds it. Moreover, it fails to account for the mode of existence of important institutional kinds, including the paradigmatic example of money.

Despite the extensive commentary on the work of Peter Winch, there has been inadequate recognition of how his Idea of a Social Science discerned the implications of Wittgenstein’s philosophy for confronting issues regarding the nature and interpretation of social phenomena. Winch’s subsequent confrontation with anthropology can be further illuminated by examining one of the most contentious contemporary debates in this field. This case illustrates the paradoxes involved in meta-practices such as philosophy and social science seeking to make descriptive and normative claims about conceptually preconstituted forms of life, and it indicates the limitations of philosophical realism as a social scientific meta-theory.

Drawing on Bickhard's interactivism along with philosophical hermeneutics, we outline a plausible ontology of human action and development that might serve as a metatheory for positive psychology. Our nondualistic metatheory rests on a distributed notion of agency. The kinds of morally imbued social practices that are identified by hermeneutic theorists constitute one level of agency. At the first level of agency, persons are already committed, at least by implication, to folk psychologies that cover positive emotion, positive traits, and positive institutions. Higher levels of agency and knowing emerge through the process of development. The higher knowing levels incorporate the capacity for conscious self-reflexive awareness, which permits the person to consciously deliberate and form theories of the good person and the good life. These more consciously formed positive folk psychologies are always in a dialectical relationship with the more implicit and embodied understandings of the good life as manifested in social practices, emotional experiences, and habitual thoughts. We suggest that this framework helps to account for the `diversity of goods' that underlie our lives and to clarify the relationship that the professional positive psychologist will have with his or her native folk psychology.

In the context of calls for “postpositivist” sociology, realism has emerged as a powerful and compelling epistemology for social science. In transferring and transforming scientific realism—a philosophy of natural science—into a justificatory discourse for social science, realism splits into two parts: a strict, highly naturalistic realism and a reflexive, more mediated, and critical realism. Both forms of realism, however, suffer from conceptual ambiguities, omissions, and elisions that make them an inappropriate epistemology for social science. Examination of these problems in detail reveals how a different perspective—centered on the interpretation of meaning—could provide a better justification for social inquiry, and in particular a better understanding of sociological theory and the construction of sociological explanations.

This article contributes to the revision of the concept of system in social theory using complexity theory. The old concept of social system is widely discredited; a new concept of social system can more adequately constitute an explanatory framework. Complexity theory offers the toolkit needed for this paradigm shift in social theory. The route taken is not via Luhmann, but rather the insights of complexity theorists in the sciences are applied to the tradition of social theory inspired by Marx, Weber, and Simmel. The article contributes to the theorization of intersectionality in social theory as well as to the philosophy of social science. It addresses the challenge of theorizing the intersection of multiple complex social inequalities, exploring the various alternative approaches, before rethinking the concept of social system. It investigates and applies, for the first time, the implications of complexity theory for the analysis of multiple intersecting social inequalities.

The two works under review attempt to describe the outlines of a post-positivist social science of the future. Against objectivist approaches, these books emphasize the importance of hermeneutics and the cultural turn to the social sciences. Social sciences must recognize collective understandings and human agency. However, while affirming the importance of an interpretivist approach, both of these works also suggest that objective institutional reality must be recognized by social scientists today. Meaningful human agency and objective structure must be encompassed by the social sciences. To this end, critical realism, originally promoted by Roy Bhaskar, figures prominently in both these books precisely because it is a theory which seems to be able to account for both agency and structure simultaneously. In fact, as both these books sometimes demonstrate, the dualistic approach represented by critical realism is flawed. By contrast, the hermeneutic approach advocated by Keith Topper and by some of the contributors to Steinmetz’s collection provides an adequate explanation of institutional social reality in and of itself. Consequently, these books can be interpreted as pointing toward a hermeneutic social science of the future.

All three of the books under review— Science and Social Science by Malcolm Williams, Rethinking Science by Jan Faye, and Open the Social Sciences by the members of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (Immanuel Wallerstein, chair)—argue for a broadly naturalist approach in which the social sciences are seen as of a piece with the natural sciences. Fortunately, all three do so in a discriminating way that avoids simple options and that appreciates the important ways the social-scientific disciplines require their own approach. Open the Social Sciences in particular also contains detailed and wise advice as to how the contemporary social sciences should proceed if they want to fulfill their ambition to explain human social behavior in a scientific way.

The aim of this article is to argue for a conception of critical social science based on the model of constitutive rules. The author argues that this model is pragmatically superior to those models that employ notions like “illusion” and “ ideology,” as it does not demand a specification of the “real (but hidden) interests” of social actors.

The article reflects on the possibility of a social science that aims at self-referential knowledge-acquisition. This form of social research explores and questions deep-seated presuppositions prevalent in contemporary culture and strives to become aware of other forms of life. This view of social sciences, therefore, is perfectly in line with the pragmatist perspective that language and knowledge, rather than acts of representation, allow people to increase the scope of human possibilities. Various forms of social research, in a wide range of disciplines, have already explored this self-referential knowledge: for instance, genealogical history and sociology, post-processual archaeology and the critical turn in anthropology. The article locates this self-referential knowledge within the context of contemporary American pragmatism (e.g. Rorty, Bernstein). It is argued that this type of knowledge ties in with the radical tradition in neo-pragmatism, in particular its anti-foundationalist notion of critique.

This article proposes a (critical) realist agenda for tourist studies, centred around the question, ‘What makes tourism possible?’. In asserting realism as the philosophy of social science most likely to advance tourism theory, it offers a critique of prevailing epistemologies, notably positivism and constructivism (and critical theory), with a view to provoking engagement by the tourism research community with ontological and epistemological arguments, which we would contend is the hallmark of a mature subject area that is not derivative of disciplines. In the furtherance of this cause a critical assessment is made of the ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions underpinning an idea or assemblage of ideas within tourist studies that might be construed as ‘orthodox’, here represented by the tourist-area life cycle and subsequent applications, and also of radical reactions to that orthodoxy. We follow this with a case study of seaside resort decline (Rhyl, North Wales), which demonstrates how a realist philosophy of social science may permit a more satisfactory understanding of, in this instance, tourism destination development than that afforded by actualism or non-realism.

The social sciences must be biological ones, owing simply to the fact that they focus on the causes and effects of the behavior of members of a biological species, Homo sapiens. Our improved understanding of biology as a science and of the biological realm should enable us therefore to solve several of the outstanding problems of the philosophy of social science. The solution to these problems leaves most of the social and behavioral sciences pretty much as it finds them, though it does provide improved understanding of their scope, limits, and methods.

The four sections of this article are reactions to a few interconnected problems that Mario Bunge addresses in his The Sociology-Philosophy Connection, which can be seen as a continuation and summary of his two recent major volumes Finding Philosophy in Social Science and Social Science under Debate: A Philosophical Perspective. Bunge’s contribution to the philosophy of the social sciences has been sufficiently acclaimed. (See in particular two special issues of this journal dedicated to his social philosophy: “Systems and Mechanisms. A Symposium on Mario Bunge’s Philosophy of Social Science,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34, nos. 2 and 3.) The author discusses therefore only those solutions in Bunge’s book that seem most problematic, namely, Bunge’s proposal to expel charlatans from universities; his treatment of social laws; his notions of mechanisms, “mechanismic explanation,” and systemism; and his reading of Popper’s social philosophy.

This article addresses three main issues. First, it argues that David Laitin, in a misguided critique of Bent Flyvbjerg’s book Making Social Science Matter for being a surrogate manifesto for Perestroika, misrepresents the book in the extreme. Second, the article argues that Laitin’s claim that political science may become normal, predictive science in the natural science sense is unfounded; the claim is a dead end that perestroikans try to get beyond. Finally, the article proposes that political scientists substitute phronesis for episteme and thereby avoid the trap of emulating natural science. By doing so, political scientists may arrive at social science that is strong where natural science is weak: in the reflexive analysis and discussion of values and interests aimed at praxis, which is the prerequisite for an enlightened political, economic, and cultural development in any society.

Austin Harrington’s book, Hermeneutic Dialogue and Social Science: A critique of Gadamer and Habermas, intends to present an account of debates on objectivity in the social sciences, in stressing the political and epistemological responsibility, in public spheres, to those who want to create a fairer understanding of societies and history, without demonizing natural enterprises or leaving social studies out of acute critical questioning.

The author examines (and refutes) the functional explanation that G. A. Cohen employs in his book Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense in light of its recent republication. In recent years, Roy Bhaskar has provided a convincing critique of the empiricist philosophy of social science that Cohen employs, and this article tries to provide an assessment of his method from a Bhaskarian perspective. It begins with an exposition of functional explanation, followed by the Bhaskarian critique by demonstrating that functionalism is unworkable because it is dependent on an empiricist account of causation.

Political science faces a challenge from a “Mr. Perestroika,” who decries the hegemony of formal and statistical analysis in the discipline. Although not connected with this movement, Bent Flyvbjerg makes the best case for a renewed dominance for qualitative and case study work throughout the social sciences. This article challenges Flyvbjerg’s call for a phronetic as opposed to an epistemic discipline. It challenges as well the unqualified call for pluralism advocated by many in the perestroika movement. It offers instead an integrated tripartite method in which narrative, statistics, and formal modeling fill in a scientific frame.

Methodological triangulation is the use of more than one method to investigate a phenomenon. Nurse researchers investigate health phenomena using methods drawn from the natural and social sciences. The methodological debate concerns the possibility of confirming a single theory with different kinds of methods. The nursing debate parallels the philosophical debate about how the natural and social sciences are related. This article critiques the presuppositions of the nursing debate and suggests alternatives. The consequence is a view of triangulation that permits different methods to confirm a single theory. The article then explores the consequences for the philosophy of social science.