Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (RLE Social Theory)

<p>An extended historical and philosophical argument this book will be a valuable text for all students of the philosophy of the social sciences. It discusses the serious alternatives to positivist and empiricist accounts of the <i>physical</i> sciences and poses the debate between naturalism and anti-naturalism in the <i>social</i> sciences in new terms. Recent materialist and realist philosophies of science make possible a defence of naturalism which does not make concessions to positivism and which recognizes the force of several of the anti-positivist arguments from the main anti-naturalist (neo-Kantian) tradition.</p><p>The author presents a critical evaluation of empiricist and positivist theories of knowledge and investigates some classic attempts at using them to provide the philosophical foundation for a scientific sociology. He takes the Kantian critique of empiricism as the starting point for the main anti-positivist and anti-naturalist philosophical approaches to the social studies. He goes on to investigate the inadequacy of post-Kantian arguments from Rickert Weber Winch and others both against <i>non</i>-positivist forms of naturalism and as the possible source of a distinctive philosophical foundation for the social studies.</p><p>The book concludes with a critical investigation of the Marxian tradition and an attempt to establish the possibility of a materialist and realist defence of the project of a natural science of history which escapes the fundamental flaws of both positivist and neo-Kantian attempts at philosophical foundation.</p>