Generalization, scientific inference, and models for explanatory social science

This chapter presents methodological guidelines for a social science based on critical realism. It describes several alternative models for an explanatory social science and focuses on a demonstration of how the different forms of generalizations. The ways in which generalizations are applied and prioritized have significant epistemological and ontological implications. Frames of interpretation and theories are more or less reasonable; they differ with respect to explanatory power but can rarely be considered ultimately to be either true or false. Compared to the Popper–Hempel explanatory model, it represents a more comprehensive approach, pointing at key elements for an explanatory social science. The explanatory model of critical realism provides guidelines for how to relate in research practice the concrete to the abstract and the abstract to the concrete. In critical realism, theoretical generalizations are treated as indispensable.