ABSTRACT
However, whereas the empiricist believes that we know reality through our direct experience of it, that it has an independent, factual, external existence which we may discover through our senses, the structuralist offers a more indirect version of how we know this objective, material reality. For the structuralist there is, indeed, a material, objective world, but, to understand why it is like it is, the observer has to look to the underlying conditions or structures that give rise to it. These structures are not directly observable, but have to be appreciated through theoretical assertions. There is a rejection of the empiricist’s passive orientation to the material world, that it is simply there to be discovered by those who have eyes to see and ears to listen. Rather, knowledge of the material world is gained through acting upon it, holding ideas about it, trying them out and seeing if they work. It is to these underlying material conditions that the structuralist has to turn in order to explain ‘surface’ phenomena such as social relations and psychological processes.
