ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on similarities and differences between the natural and social sciences, and, eventually, arrive at a set of methodological principles for social science analyses. It discusses the most central issue in science: the relation between science and reality and explores the similarities and dissimilarities between the objects of the natural and social sciences. The chapter explains the critical realist understanding of science and reality with references to the theory of the domains of reality and the central distinction between the transitive and intransitive objects of science. Realist science standpoints have one characteristic in common; they claim that reality and things have an objective existence, but they disagree on the nature of reality and therefore also on how to attain knowledge of reality. Radical relativist and idealist views doubt that there can be any more or less valid knowledge about an objectively existing reality.
