Constructive Empiricism in the Social Sciences

Abstract

‘What problems face the aspirant empiricist today?’ is the question Bas C. van Fraassen asks in his seminal work The Scientific Image (1980). In this thesis, I interpret this question as a challenge to develop constructive empiricism [CE] in a field of scientific inquiry other than the context of physics in which it was conceived. The first part of the thesis expounds CE with reference to classical empiricism, discloses some of its fundamental assumptions, and spells out in detail its account of science. In the second part of the thesis, CE is extended to social science. Since CE was developed in the context of natural science, I take an articulation of the alleged fundamental differences between natural and social science as indicating the challenges a CE-outlook on social science must address. I also provide a brief history of the gap between the sciences. Then, in the bulk of this thesis, I argue that CE’s model view accommodates social science, that description, prediction and explanation in the light of CE are proper fruits of inquiry in social science, and that CE is able to make sense of the differences in the concepts used in natural and social science. In the discussion of the feasibility of CE for social science, I show concurrently that contemporary articulations of the differences between the natural and the social sciences pose no insuperable problems for the constructive empiricist.