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Science and technology as hegemony Marx - science as social relations - the scientific theory of society Engels and the return to epistemology The Frankfurt School - science and technology as ideology Habermas - the retreat from the critique Marxism as a positive science Soviet science - the scientific and technological revolution the breakup of certainty - the discourse of the history and philosophy of modern physics the science of sociology and the sociology of science scientism or critical science - the debates in biology science as power - toward a new social theory of science.

The purpose of this essay is to examine Arthur F. Bentley's philosophy of social science. Bentley developed a critique of the philosophic premises underlying a number of orientations in the social sciences, especially those which would model social science on the natural sciences. Unlike many critics of social science, Bentley did not argue that social science had to develop its own explanatory style. His more radical teaching was that certain basic problems in both the natural and social sciences could be traced to defective understandings of relations between language, behavior, and scientific thinking. For Bentley, any science develops from ordinary language through a process of increasing formalization. No external position, including that of conventional logic, can direct process, since even logic is thoroughly embedded in linguistics and behavioral contexts.

Sociologists have recently debated the general manner in which respondents' accounts should be treated. Should they be regarded as evidence of underlying intentions, objectives and beliefs or should analytical attention focus on the structure of the accounts themselves? This paper reviews this debate from the point of view of the philosophy of social science. While, as critics have noted, the 'accountist' position is subject to major epistemological problems, the 'actionist' view also faces considerable difficulties. These are elaborated through examples from the history of science and artificial intelligence research. Having established the vulnerabilities of both accountist and actionist positions, a pragmatic and mutually supportive rapprochement is proposed.

This paper contrasts two approaches in the continuing development of a science of public opinion..Each approach is ultimately grounded in a different tradition in the philosophy of social science. The differences are significant at the present time because they imply alternative methods of observation and analysis. Eventually, the differences may be significant in policy research. The more conventional approach assumes that the complexity of human behavior can be captured in causal or probabilistic covering laws, and that these laws can be used to explain the distribution of opinion at a point in time and movements of opinion. Familiar survey data and statistical techniques provide an appropriate methodological basis for investigating the possibilities. The less conventional approach assumes that an act of an individual or group is motivated, or goal directed, and can be understood by examining the particular context of the act as seen from the viewpoint of the actor in question. This approach implies data in addition to survey data to map the appropriate contexts; and it implies techniques of analysis that construe the signifilcance of an observation in terms of all other observations on the same context rather than all other observations on the same variable. Two substantive examples, each based on Lasswell's displacement hypothesis, are used to illustrate these alternatives. Public opinion is a familiar topic in social science, perhaps so familiar that we often overlook different tendencies in the underlying models used to analyze opinion surveys. For columnists, commentators, and others who interpret trends in opinion, the tendency is to attribute changes in opinion to events in the news or events that affect the public in more material ways. Thus McGovern's popularity declines because he appears to lack good judgment and decisiveness in the Eagleton affair. Or long lines at the corner gas station contribute to President Nixon's low approval rating even when Watergate temporarily disappears from the front page. Political figures, policies, and institutions are construed as "products" in a political "market": The various alternatives rise