ABSTRACT
The purpose here is to explore certain aspects of the philosophy of science which have serious implications both for the practice of social and political science and for understanding that practice. The current relationship between social science and the philosophy of science (or the philosophy of the social sciences) is a curious one. Despite the emergence of a considerable body of literature in philosophy which is pertinent to the methodological problems of social science, there has been a lack of ostensive ties between the two areas. A justified concern with the independence of social scientific research has contributed to a tendency toward isolation which is unfortunate in view of the proliferation of philosophical problems which necessarily attends the rapid expansion of any empirical discipline. Although in the literature of contemporary social science there are frequent references to certain works in the philosophy of science and to philosophical issues relating to methodology, these are most often in the context of bald pronouncements and shibboleths relating to the nature of science, its goals, and the character of its reasoning. But what is most disturbing about the fact that social scientists have little direct and thorough acquaintance with the philosophy of science is not merely that there has been a failure to carefully examine the many logical and epistemological assumptions which are implicit in social scientific inquiry, since this task might normally and properly be considered to be within the province of the philosopher of science. It is more significant that this unfamiliarity has, paradoxically, obscured the extent to which certain doctrines originating in the philosophy of science have been uncritically insinuated into the enterprise of social science as informing categoricals. Much of the theoretical literature in political and social science, as well as
attempts to explicate the epistemic features of social scientific investigation, rest on a belief that the activity of the natural scientist is an appropriate model for understanding and prescribing the role of the social scientist. Although it may be granted that social and natural science must be distinguished in terms of such characteristics as technique and subject matter, this is often understood as explaining certain inherent or temporary
limitations of social science. Generally it has been assumed that with regard to the logic of explanation, social science must be fundamentally symmetrical with natural science if it is to count as science. Although there are a number of common features that would support the idea of symmetry, such as a mutual empirical orientation and concern for systematic explanation and description, and although philosophy, science, and everyday life may be analytically as well as existentially differentiated as modes of thought and activity, this view is misconceived to the extent that it tends to postulate a hierarchy of epistemological structures with impermeable boundaries and fails to take account of some of the more generic aspects of explanation. As a consequence of this misconception, social scientists have been reluctant to move beyond the realm of natural science when seeking a model of inquiry even when the requirements of explanation in the two spheres seem hopelessly disparate. The result has been principally either an imperious attempt at assimilation or an assignment of social science to some inferior position within the general class of activities understood as science. Both positions are seriously defective, and a more adequate formulation is possible only by breaking down some of the alleged constraints which are assumed to be endemic to scientific inquiry. A conception of social scientific explanation can be elaborated which will
not only support the case for logical asymmetry between the natural and social sciences and at the same time preserve the characteristics essential to any mode of empirical inquiry but will better illuminate what most social scientists in fact do in producing explanations as well as what sort of explanations are required by the character of the phenomena with which they are concerned.1 But the problem of supporting the contention that natural science is inadequate as a paradigm governing the conception of methodology in the social sciences is complicated by the fact that what is often construed by social scientists as natural science is actually an ideal typification of the logic of science which is the invention of certain philosophers of science. This philosophical reconstruction has been accepted in one form or another by many social scientists, especially those concerned with the problems of theory construction, as an adequate representation of the character of all scientific explanation and as a prescriptive norm for inquiry. What the social scientist accepts as his model is, then, itself a model and one that, although popularly received for many years, has recently been severely criticized within the philosophy of science itself not only as a reconstruction of the logic of scientific explanation in general but even natural science in particular. A thorough critical analysis of this model, the so-called deductive model, is
a necessary prologue to any further evaluation of the thesis of logical symmetry between explanation in the natural and social sciences as well as an explication of the substantive character of social scientific explanation, and such an analysis is the principal, although limited, concern of this chapter. Consideration of the deductive model also provides a vehicle for examining certain more general problems about explanation and the relationship
between social science and the philosophy of science. Since social scientists, and especially political scientists, have been influenced, either directly or indirectly, by the deductive model and other aspects of the philosophy of logical empiricism from which it emanates, there is not only the obvious question whether social scientists have correctly understood this construct and this school of thought but the question of the validity of logical empiricism, even if correctly understood, as an approach to the philosophy of science (and social science). Finally, and possibly most important, there is the problem of the extent to which the philosophy of science may be understood as an enterprise charged with establishing a theory of science which can serve as an authoritative guide for substantive empirical inquiry and a norm for the evaluation of particular explanations.
