ABSTRACT
It is the mark of an educated mind to seek in each inquiry the sort of precision the nature of the subject permits.1
In this chapter, I turn from the nature of science as such to the specific timbre of the social sciences. In it I want to consider the forms of explanation appropriate to their ontological circumstances; to outline a heuristic for the understanding of social phenomena; to calibrate the differentiae of the social, as distinct from the natural, sciences and the specificity, if any, of history; to gauge the applicability of evolutionary and functional concepts to human history and to assess the significance of the conceptualised and norm-imbued (norm-alised) character of social life. The resulting critical naturalism, which is grounded in the scientific realism advanced in chapter 1, permits a situation of conflicting schools in contemporary social thought; a generalised critique of fundamentalist ‘First Philosophy’; a reevaluation of the problem of the value and a reappraisal of the character of historical rationality. But my main concern is to relate this perspective to the organising theme of this inquiry: the nature of, and prospects for, human emancipation. My overall contention can be summarily stated. It is only if social phenomena are genuinely emergent1a that realist explanations in the human sciences are justified; and it is only if these conditions are satisfied that there is any possibility of human self-emancipation worthy of the name. But, conversely, emergent phenomena require realist explanations and realist explanations possess emancipatory implications. Emancipation depends upon explanation depends upon emergence. Given the phenomena of emergence, an emancipatory politics (or more generally transformative or therapeutic practice) depends upon a realist science. But, if and only if emergence is real, the development of both science and politics are up to us.2 This chapter is intended then as a kind of abbreviated prolegomenon to a natural history of the human species.
