Running Head: THE SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC WAY
The social scientific way
The social scientific way
The philosophy of social sciences seeks to understand the nature of the study of human
behavior and social relations. It is consequently a met theoretical endeavor”€”a theory
about theories of social life. To achieve their end, philosophers of social science
investigate both social science as it is practiced, as well as the nature of those studied by
the social sciences, namely, human beings themselves, in an attempt to discern the
appropriate logic of inquiry for this area of study. The philosophy of social sciences can be
broadly descriptive (unearthing the fundamental conceptual tools in social science and
relating them to the tools employed in other human endeavors), prescriptive
(recommending that a certain approach be adopted by the social sciences so that they can
accomplish what the recommender thinks social science ought to accomplish), or some
combination of these. Because the philosophy of social sciences addresses an enterprise
with enormous political import, and because metatheories of social science invariably are
connected to substantive theories of social life itself and moral visions about it, the
philosophy of social sciences has had a deep connection to political theory from its
beginnings. (Harding, 2006)
Historically, philosophers have often framed the philosophy of social sciences in terms
of the question: “Can the social sciences be scientific in the same way that the natural
sciences are?”€ (The approach that answers this question affirmatively is called naturalism,
whereas that which answers it negatively is dubbed humanism; a number of approaches
attempt to combine these approaches into a synthetic whole.) Given this framework, the
term philosophy of social sciences can arguably mislead by suggesting that to be
legitimate, the study of human behavior and social relations must be scientific in the way
the study of plants and planets is, which is to say that the term seems to imply naturalism.
To avoid suggesting this, practitioners sometimes denominate their field of inquiry:
“philosophy of social inquiry”€ or “philosophy of social studies.”€ But by whatever name
the field is called, it ought to be clear that whether or how the study of human social
behavior is scientific is an open question that is part of the business of the philosopher of
social sciences to address. (Gellner¸2007)
Human phenomena are self-evidently meaningful”€”they are typically performed for a
purpose and express an intention, and often follow rules that make them what they are:
