Some Problems of Empiricism

and Positrvrsm

Introduction: Two Ways to Criticize Positivism

So far. v'e have discussed the broad oudines of the empiricist vierv of human
knowledge, and of scientific explanation. We have seen that 'positivism' in
social science can be seen as an attempt to put the study of human social life on
a scientific fboting by extending the methods and forms of explanation ri'hich
have been successful in the natural sciences. In doing this, positivists have
generally relied on some version of the empiricist theory of knou'ledge, and
have been committed to the application of social scientific knou'ledge in
programmes of social reform.
We now come to our consideration of some of the criticisms s'hich have
been made of positivism in social science. These criticisms are of nvo main
kinds, and rve will be dealing with them in separate chapters. The criticisms
rvhich have been most widely made and accepted among social scientists
themselves concern the extension of scientific methods to the don-rain of
human social life. Anti-positivists who take this line of argument point out that
there are fundamental difFerences between human social life and the fhcts of
nature which are the subject-matter of the natural sciences. These differences
include the alleged unpredictability of human behaviour, which stems trom
our unique possession of free will; the 'rule-governed', as distinct from larv-
governed, character of social life; and the role of consciousness and meaning in
human society. Connected with these ontological differences between the nat-
ural and the social worlds, it is argued, the relations between social scientists
and their subject-matter are very different from those between natural
scienrists and the things and processes they study. One such difference has to
do with the way moral or political values enter into the selection of topics for
investigation.l Social scientists will be guided by value orientations to seek
explanations of particular social phenomena or historical processes' so that
soiial explanation will be 'value-relevant', and concerned u'ith particulars.
By contrast, natural scientists are concerned with discovery of general laws by
methods which exclude value iudgements. Another difference derives directly

28

I
 Sorue Problems of Ewpiricisrn and. Positipisrn. 29

trom a recognition of the role of consciousness and meaning in social life.

When social scientists come to the systematic study of social life, they encoun-
ter a subject-matter which already has an understanding of itself! Moreover,
the social scientist will often herself be part of that social life, and will in any
case have to learn to communicate with it in its own terms in order to gain
understanding of it. This, again, is very different liom the external relation
between natural scientists and their subject-matters.
These arguments are, of course, very persuasive, and we will return to
investigate them and their implications in more depth (especially in Chapters
5, 6 and 7). However, for the moment we will be considering a quite different
line of criticism of positivism. The key point here is not so much whether it
makes sense to extend the methods of science to the study of society, but whnt
a.ccltunt of sc'ience one draws on in doing that. As we saw) the empiricist
account of science is broadly accepted by positivists as the model for a scientific
approach to society. But there are some serious and unresolved difficulties in
n the empiricist account of science (see especially Keat and Urry J.975, Benton
II 1977, Quine 1980, Halfpenny 1982, Chalmers ).999) and there are now, in
rIl addition, some quite well-established abernatil)e accounts of science. These
h are based more on historical studies, and on sociological investigation of
-e science in action, and we will discuss some of these in Chapter 4. It is very
d important to explore these further because they open up more possibilities for
n thinking about what the social sciences are or could be. In particular, it has
been (and still is) very common for philosophers of social science to contrast
'e positivist with interpretivist views, as if this exhausted all the alternatives. But
n there nre other alternatives. For example, it is possible to reject positivism
LS because of its empiricist account of science, but still keep open the possibility
s that society might be studied scientifically, drawing on an alternative account
of what natwrnlscience is like. Of course, even with an alternative view ofwhat
'f
t science is, it may still be held that human society cannot be studied scient-
f ifically. But to ask this question with alternative models of science in mind is
s likely to raise new and interesting issues about just where the differences and
I similarities lie between natural science and the study of society.

Some Problems of Empiricism

Concepts and. Expercence

The empiricist view that all knowledge is acquired by experience, and that
there are no innate ideas, has been called into question by developments in
a number of disciplines. Noam Chomsky, widely regarded as the founder of
contemporary scientific approaches to language, has argued that the child's
experience of language is far too limited and fragmentary for us to explain

E
 30 Philosophy of Sociol Science

language acquisirion in empiricist terms (see Lyons rg77).

our ability to
produce an indefinite number of well-formed sentences pr.roppor.,
not just
an innare disposition to learn language, but also innate t rro*t.ag"
of the
'depth grammar' common_to an ranguages. Much more controversiary,
self-
sq'led 'evolutionary psychologists' and sociobiorogists argue
that many of our
basic thoughr processes and behaviours are .*p."riio.r,
ol o.r. genetic inherit-
ance isee Pinker 1997;also the criticisms of this approach
in Rose and Rose
2000). Ho'ever, even if we are scepticar of craims such as these,
there are
other sources of evidence which suggest that knowledge acquisition
can,t just
be a matter of recognizin.g patterns of regularity in the flow
of sensory experi-
ence. one very telling illustration is given by the case-studies
,.port.d by
oliver Sacks, a neurologist whose work was concerned with herping people
*'ho suffer from various kinds of brain damage. one of his p"tierris (,the
man
*ho mistook his wife for a hat') was referre d io him by a' ophth"lmologist:

Dr P. was a musician of distinction, wel-k'own for many years as a singer, and dren,
at the local schoolof Music, as a teacher. It was here, in relation to his students, that
certain strange problems were first observed. Sometimes a srudent
would present
himself, and Dr P. would not recognise him; or, specificaily, wouid
not recognise his
face. The moment the student spoke, he wourd be recognised
by his voice. such
incidents mulciplied, causing embarrassment, perplexity, fear _ and,
some.imes, com_
edy. For not only did Dr p. increasingly fail to see faces, but he
saw faces when there
were no faces to see: genially, Magoo-like when in the street, he
, might pat the heads
ofwater-hydrants and parking meters, taking these to be the heads of children.
(Sacks
1986:7)

sacks continued his examination: 'r{is visual acuity was good: he had no diffi-
culty seeing apin on the floor, though sometimes he missed it if it was placed
to his left. lle saw all right, but what did he seer, (p. 9). sacks's unfortunate
patient was someone who,^though he had good eyesight, h.d lort
the ability to
make sense of the flow of visual impressions he wai undoubtedry
receiving.
This sort of case illustrates the complex and pre-conscious mentai
activity of
selecting and interpreting sensory inputs *hl.t goes into ,normal,
visual
experience. our ability to identify people, recognile faces, interpret
a land-
scape, and so on is not just a matter of having sense-organs
which are in good
order, but it also involves active processis of con-ceptual ordering and
interpretation of which we are mostly unaware. As the philosophe, of
science
N. R. Hanson once put it: 'There is more to seeing th"r, the eyeball'
(Hanson 1965:7 ). -.ir,
I
on this view, thenfxperience is a complex synthesis of sensory impressions
and conceptual ordeling and selection. All experience is to ,o,,'. .rt"rrt
shaped
bv our previouslv acquired conceptual ;;ri;, A"';;^;, scientific
-"p;a;.
obser-vation is concerned, this is even more clearly the case. For
an experience
to count as a scientific observation it must be put into language) as a statement
 Some Problerns of Ernpiricisrn and. Positiyisrn 3r

o rvhich can be understood and tested by other scientists. The activity of putting
st an experience into language is, precisely, to give conceptual order to it.\ An
elementary statement) such as 'The litmus paper turned from blue to rbd,'
i- implies ability to recognize a physical object, to classify it as litmus paper, and
tr to deploy the vocabulary of colour terms.
But, of course, this only shows that any pa.rticltlar statement of an
experience, or factual statement, must presuppose an ability to conceptually
order experience. It does not demonstrate t}le existence of innate knowledge,
t in the sense of knowledge prior to and independent of allexperience. It still
remains an open question how we acquired the concepts through which we
f interpret our experiences. Given the great diversity across culture s and through
: historical time in ways of interpreting experience (Durkheim l9\2,1982), it
I seems obvious that a large part of the conceptual apparatus each of us brings
to bear must be learnt.
On the other hand, some very basic capacities for conceptual ordering do
seem to be presupposed for learning itself to be possible. The eighteenth-
century German philosopher Immanuel Kant developed some of tl-re most
powerful arguments for this view (see Kant 1953; Korner 1990; Hofi-e 1994:
esp. part 2). On his account, the ordering of the flow of our sensory experience
in terms of sequences through time and locations in space was necessarJ'to rhe
making of all 'judgements of experience'. It is similar with the abilitv to judge
identity and difference, to distinguish between things and their characrerisLics,
and to think in terms of cause and efTect. So, for example, we can learn fiom
experience that touching a piece of burning wood causes pain, but the concept
of 'cause' could not itself 6e derived from experience. In Kant's vierv, these
very basic organizing concepts (the 'forms of intuition' and 'categories of the
understanding') are presupposed in all experiential judgements, and so must
be considered both innate, and universal to humankind. Ever since Kant, the
main alternative approaches to empiricism have taken his work as their point
of departure.

Sc i e n tifl. c L aw s, T e st n b i lity a. n d. Int rp r et a.ti. 0 n

e

We have already explored some of the difficulties with the empiricist demar-rd
that scientific statements must be empirically testable. If this demand is made
very stricdy, then it would require scientists to be much more restrictir.e in the
nature of the hypotheses they advance than they generally are. In parricular,
scientific laws would have to be treated as mere summaries of observations, as
empirical generalizations. But if this were done, scientific explanations would
loose their explanatory power) scientific prediction would be impossible,
science would be deprived of an important stimulus to further research, and
so on. These features of scientific statements depend on an interpretation of
scientific laws such that they make claims which go beyond what is strictly
32 Philosophy of Sociwl Science

implied by the existing evidence. To preserve this fearure of scientific laws it

is necessary to adopt a looser criterion of testability, which ackno*.ledges
that new observations may count for or against a hypothesis, but can never
conclusively prove or disprove it.
As we saw in chapter 2, attempts to develop a rigorous quantitarir-e measure
of the degree to which hypotheses are supported, or confirrned, bv the
available evidence fall foul of the fact that any finite set of er,idence u'ill be
vanishingly small compared with the indefinitely large class of possibla er-idence
which may be relevant. In addition, the more relaxed empiricists becorne in
loosening the requirement of testability (for example, some possiltle obser-
vation must be relevant to the truth or falsity of the hypothesis), rhe rnore
difficult it hecomes to make clear and defensible distinctions beru..een ge nuine
science and the non-scientific belief-systems which empiricists are generally
committed to excluding.
But there is a further difficulty with testability which relates n-rore closely
to what was said above about the relationship between experience and
interpretation. If every statement of experience is at the same time an inter-
pretation, then in principle every factual statement is open to rainterpretati.on.
As we saw in chapter 2, with the example of the apparent evidence against the
effectiveness of a complementary medical practice, whether to accepr a piece of
evidence as confirming or refuting our existing beliefs will ahvar-s involve
making judgements. In part, these judgements will concern horv to interpret
both one's existing beliefs, or hypotheses, and rhe new piece of evidence.
Ambiguous figures are the most commonly used illustration of rhis. The
pattern in Figure 1, the famous'duck-rabbit', can be seen either as the head
of a duck (facing left, the two projections forming the beak) or as dre head of
a rabbit (facing right, the projections representing the long ears).
In such cases as this, the same patterns of markings on paper are interpreted
in radically different ways by different observers, and by the same obsener
at different times. The possibility of different interpretations of the same bodv
of evidence raises serious problems for the empiricist account of scientific
practice. Apparendy conflicting evidence can always be rendered consistenr
with a favourite hypothesis by reinterpreting either the hypothesis or rhe new
evidence. Though such 'conventionalist' tactics tend to be disappror.ed of by
empiricists, it is hard to show that they are never justified. Bur the mosr
important problem posed by ambiguity and interpreration is at the ler.el of
rivalry between major theoretical orientations. so, for example, in the con-
troversy between the proponents of Darwinian evolutionary theon. and its
theologically oriented opponents) fossil evidence which favoured rhe vieu.'that
there was historical change in organic forms was contested as a temptation laid
by the devil. The remarkable adaptations of organisms to the requiremenrs of
their conditions of life, again, was inrerpreted as the res'lt of design by the
theological tradition, but as the result of natural selection by Dar-winians.
In this way, rival theories are able to ollbr alternative interpretations of the

I
 Sonoe Problenos of Etnpiricistn and. positipisyn J5

srt
ges
I'er

1re
he
be
LCe

in

te
lr'

h
d
r-
). Figure 1 The duck-rabbit
e
rl
available evidence in such a way that whatever the
e
evidence, each can witrr
logical consistency maintain its own account of things.
t This situation of systematic disparities of interp-retation
between two (or
more) theoretical perspectives implies debate which is invariably
at cross-
prlrposes, and the absence of anything that will serve
as a crucial experimenr, or
decisive test-case. when rival theoriei have this sort of
relation to one another
they are said to be 'incommensurable'. A great dear depends
on how far this
concept accurately captures situations of theoretical riva1ry
in science, and on
how common such rivalry is. Empiricists and orhers *ho
,..k;;defend the
rationality of science will tend to regard incommensurability
as rarely if ever
complete, so that there.is generarly the possibility
of resorving scientific
disputes through rational argument abour the evidence.
Those i"ho udopt
a relntivist of science (such that science is no more and no less reliable
'iew
as a source of k'owledge than any other belief-system)
will tend to emphasize
the importance of incommensurability as a common
feature of theoretical
controversy in science.

Theoretical Entities in Science

A very sftict version of empiricism will rule out any reference to

theoretical
entities which cannot be directry observed. rlowever, a great
part of the
explanatory w.ork of the natural science involves irrrr.rriirrg
il"ss.s of entities
which, if they exist, and behave as described, can explain obierved
phenomena.
In chemistry, the ways in which elements combine with others to form
 34 Philosopby of Social Science

compounds, and the energ' exchanges which take place when this
happens,
are explained in terms ol the struc'-ure of the atoms and molecules involved.
In ph1,si6s, rhere are *'ell-known laws governing the relationship between
the
temperarure, rhe prg55u1s and the volume of a fixed oi a gas. These
-"r,
relationsl-rips can be explained in terms of the collisions between
the molecules
ol tl-re sas lnt.l beru.een them and the walls of the container. As we saw in
Ctrrrpter l. trIendel explained observable patterns in the characteristics
of
sncce ssile qenerations of pea plants in terms of some
unknown factor passed
.rr in rhe germ cells from one generation to the next. These later were
termed
genes' and subseque'tly ide'tified with sequences of the complex
organic
mole cr.rle 'DNA'.
There are several ways in rvhich empiricists can approach this feature
of
scie'ce. o'e rvay is to adopt a looser criterion of obsirvability, and
to accept
observations made indirectly with insrruments. which themselves
take for
granted many theoretical assumptions. In this way, claims about
the existence
of entities which are not obserwabre may be held to be testable in
the sense rhat
some indirect observation or measurement may co'nt for or against them.
Again, horvever, rhese concessions on the part of empiricist,
them to maintain the special and superior status of science -"kJit harder fbr
compared with
other sorrs of knowledge-claims. Another empiricist approach to the
probrem
of theoretical entiries is to trear staremenm about them as useful
fictions, rvhich
e'able scientilic prediction in virtue of rheir fb.nal (mathematical) conte't.
No claim as to the real, physical existence of atoms, molecules a'd the like
need be involved. This sort of approach is called 'instrumentalism,.

The Role of Theories iru Scientffic Explnnntion

But this rather grudging approach on the part of empiricism to the issue
of
theoretical entities seems at odds with the huge proliferatio' of
new classes
of entitl, with which modern science has filled thi world as we
no\\,, lcrow it
(Latour 1987: 93). From quarks, quasars and black holes, through
bacilli,
retroviruses a'd prions to protons, neutrinos a'd photo's, the
very content of
scientific adva'ce seems to consist in the progreisive uncovering
of hitherto
*nimagined complexiry in the macro- and microstructures of tle world
rve
inhabit.
At issue here is the view we take of the nature and role of theories in
scie'tific exprlanation. The 'covering law' model of scientific explanatio^ (see
chapter 2) is an attempt to show the logic of a simple explanation at the level
of observable patterns of phenomena. r{owever, if we return to our exampie
of
the simultaneous spri'g emergence of some species of dragonfl1., this sort
olexplanation clearly does. not exhaust the possible roles for r.lerr... I'deed,
on some accounts) the gathering of evidence for observatiolal generalizations
(such as, in this case, linking emergence with temper"a.rr.
day rength)
"rid
 Sowe Problews of Erupiricisru and positiyisnt JJ

!ens, belo'gs to a. early,'natural history'phase of science. The properly

-,,-e cl.
scientific
r
rvork only begins when such obseruational ge'eralizations rrave
l rhe been acquired,
and scientific theory is required to explain them.
llese There are (at least) three further sets of quesrions that might be
ules
: asked once
such observational generalizations .rt"blirhed. one set ias to do with the
r!\ ln "r" in the
part played b' simultaneous emergence
.\ OI
mode of life of the dragonfly
species concerned. one plausible ansrver is that r,vhen popu.lations
:ssecl have rela-
tively short flight periods, simultaneous emergence maximizes the
'nec1 chances that
members of the opposite sex find each other a'd successfully reproduce.
l:nic This
isrecognizable as a'functional'expranatio': it purports,o"r.[ us what part
the piece of behaviour concerned plays i' the u.hole constituted by
"c of 'vider
the mode of life of the population and its reproduction.
. epr 'Ihe second set of questions has to
do with the 'historical narratiye' whereby
tbr this pattern of drago'fly behaviour itself emerged, and became established
: nce in the population. Most biologists today would draw on some versio' of
rhar Darrvinian natural selection to answer this set of questions, though in fact
re fD. the
currently most favoured version of this theory has difficulty in eiplaining
: tbr the
establishment of mutual adaptations of this kind. The third set of questions
irh has
', to do with the intemal structures and processes whereby extemal stimuli such
lem as temperarure and day le'gth switch on meramorphic
change in the dragonfly
:tch larr''a. This entails research into the anatomy anJ physioroly
en t.
of growth and
development in the relevanr species. In rurn, this may iead to"hrrthJ. q.r..tiorr.
irke about the interaction bet\,veen the physiological processes (such as hormone
secretion, cell division and differentiation) involved in growth a'd
devel-
opment, and the genetic mechanisms which regulate and aie in turn regulated
by them. Through rhis roure, the genetic *p..i, of larval deveropme't
may be
linked back to the Danvinian narrative of the evolution of the reievant
population-level adaptations, and that "..o,rnt
in turn to the fu'ctional explanation.
of Through linkages such as these, research in answer to one sort ofq'estion
can
CS
produce fi'dings relevant to explanations proposed i'response to
, ir tthers. This
example illustrates two flirther features of the role of theorl, in science.
:11i.

oi
:to Rensoning and. Crentipity in the Inyention of Theories
!t,'e

Theories are invented as plausible answers to q'estions posed by reflection

on already-acquired observational generalizationi. The pro..r, whereby such
ie answers are invented involves scientific imagination and creativity.
el
For this
reason, ernpiricist philosophers of science tend to rrear it as outside their
i
II
sphere of concern, relegating it to psychology. For them, philosophy
:t of science
j
is concerned only 'r'vith such matters as the logica_l structure op.rrrr.r, ,o
"rri (the ,coltexr
empirical testing of scientific theories once they have been invented
.ls justification').
of However, it is clear that something more c.r, b. said abo't
the logic and, more broadly, the sorts of reasoning involved inthe inyention
ol
36 Philosophy of Social Science

theories. For one thing, not just anything will count as a plausible candidate for
an explanation. It might be proposcd, fbr example, that our dragonfly larvae
note the appropriate temperature rise, and signal to each other that it is time to
get on l'ith their metamorphosis. FIowever, what is known about the nervolrs
s)'stem of dragonflies, and more generally about the physiology of insect
metamorphosis makes it unlikely that this sort of conscious regulation of
actir,in' is availabie to dragonfly larvae. In this way both background know-
ledge and experimental intervention can narrow down the range of plausible
explanations of the phenomenon.
Moreover, even ifplausible , a potential explanation would still have to satis$r
a criterion of relevance. So, for example, someone might give the functional
explanation of the role of simultaneous emergence of dragonflies in their
re;rrodr-rctive activity in answer to the historical-narrative question about how
this behaviour pattern became established in rhe population. However, this
might be quite irrelevant. It could, for example, be that the particular com-
bination of day length and remperature in the course of evolution of this popu-
lation provided optimal chances for meeting nutritional needs and avoiding
predation. Selective pressures operating at the level of individual dragonflies
rvould, if this were true, be likely to result in ever-closer approximation to
emergence under these conditions across the whole population over a number
of generations. The observed phenomenon of simultaneous emergence would
thus be a contingenr ollrcome of the spread through the population of an indi-
vidual adaptation to environmental conditions. So, there are constraints on the
range of inventions that can count as plausible candidates for theoretical
explanations. In particular, the proposed explanation must refer to something
u'hich, if true, wowhl. account for the observed pattern, and something which,
given background knowledge, could.well betrse. The philosopher N. R. l{anson
has ref-erred to the logic of this sort of creative work in science as'a conclusion
in search of premisses': we know what the observed pattern of phenomena is,
and what we are searching for is something that could have brought it about.
Flanson (following Peirce) calls this sort of reasoning 'retroducrion' (as distinct
from'induction' and'deduction') (Hanson 1965: 85ff.).
so, we can see a certain logical pattern and an associated set ofconstraints on
the invention oftheoretical explanations in science. Also, there are features of
scientific reasoning which link it closely with creativity in other areas of life.
The most discussed of these is the use of metaphor and analogy (see, especially,
Hesse 1963). we are all familiar with the textbook diagrams of atoms as rnini-
ature solar systems, with a nucleus and orbiting electrons. Darwin's theory of
evolution makes use of an analogy between the practices whereby the breeders
of domesticated animals and plants bring about changes by 'selective breed-
ing', and the action of environmental conditions in 'selecting' rvhich variants
ir"r a population in the wild sunive and reproduce. The term 'naturai selection'
embodies this metaphor. The explanatior.r of the role of DNA in the devel-
opment of organisms involves thinking of the sequencing of molecular unirs
 Sorne Problem.s of Etnpiricistn and. Positipisrn 37

on strings of DNA as a code carrying instructions for making different protein

molecules. Much more controversially, practitioners of 'cognitive science,
commonly use the operation of computers as their model for thinking about
human cognitive processes (see, for example, pinker 1997, and, the criticisms
in Greenfield 1997).
This feature of scientific creativity is also difficult to square with any strict
version of empiricism. An imaginative leap is required to recognize that the
observed pattern of phenomena would be produced if some process analogous
to one already understood in another field were at work. since the source of
the metaphor may be a mechanism or process outside science, as, for example
with the idea of a genetic code, or of natural selection, the use of metaphors in
the construction of scientific theories is an important link between science and the
wider cultural context to which it belongs. This link is an important starting-
point for sociologists ofscience (see Chapter 4) and others (such as advocates
of 'standpoint' epistemologies - see chapter 9) who argue that seemingly
universal and objective scientific knowledge contains unacknowledged value
commitments and culturally specific assumptions. This aspect of science tells
against the empiricist tendency to claim that science is objective because it is
exclusively the result of applying formal logical rules to factual evidence.
on the other hand, the use of metaphors in science does not necessarily justify
the'reduction'of science to its cultural context (see, for example, Beer t9g3
and the criticisms in Benton 1995). Though it is important to recognize what
other creative activities, such as the writing of fiction, have in common with
scientific theorizing, it is also important to understand the different consrraints
involved in the development of analogical reasoning in science. To be accept-
able, scientific analogies have to satisfii requirements imposed by the field of
phenomena which they have been invented to explain, and the further elabor-
ation of a metaphor as it is subjected to experimental and observational testing
may take it progressively further from its original formulation (see Lopez r99g).

Types of Therretica.l Explanntion

Scientific theorizing may be invoked ro answer a number of different kinds of

question. In the case of the simultaneous emergence of dragonflies, we noted
three sorts of answer which could reasonably be called 'theoretical'. one of
these is fwnctional explanation, and. ir answers questions about the relationship
bet$reen elements, or parts) and the wholes to which they belong. often func-
tional explanations will be concerned with the way in which specific properties
or activities of elements enable the continued existence or reproduction of the
more complex totalities, or systems) to which they belong. So, for example, the
heart functions to circulate the blood round the body, and the circulation of
the blood, in turn, functions to deliver oxygen and nutrients to tissues, and
carbon dioxide and other waste producrs of metabolism to the lungs and kidneys,
 38 Philosophy of So cial Science

which, in turn, function to - and so on. Functional explanations are extensiyely

used in both the biological and the social sciences, and remain controversial.
The second sorr of explanation involving theory is histot,icol-narratiye
explanation. It is frequently confused with functional explanation, but is really
quite distir-rct. The question of how an object, class of beings, or pattern of
phe'omena came into being is distinct from the question of how it now
sustirir-rs itself or is sustained (the functional question). The former quesdon
requires t]-te construction of a historical narrative
- the characterization of
a parLicr-rlar sequence of events or processes through time. For this to be more
than description of 'one damn thing after another', and even for the narrative
to g-ork lvith criteria of what is relevant, what irrelevant to the telling of the
stonr) some reference, implicit or explicit, has to be made to causal mechan-
isms. Generally, the story will make reference to numerous, interacting causal
mechanisms which are at work) and coming into play at different points in the
narrative. F{ere, the role of theory is to provide accounts of the key causal
rnechanisms at $,'ork, and, perhaps) some characterization of typical patterns
of interaction. An example here is the relationship berween Darwinian evolu-
tionary theory, on the one hand, and a genealogical account of the emergence
of a particular species or lineage through time, on the other.
The third sort of theoretical explanation in science is the one foregrounded
in most philosophical accounts of science, and rve will devote more detailed
discussion to it here, returning in the next section to a further consideration of
narrative explanation in relation to the issue of explanation and prediction.
This third sort of theoretical explanation begins lr.irh patterns of obser-vable
phenomena (such as the characteristics of successive generations of pea plants,
or the relationships between day length, temperarure and emergence in
dragonflies) and proceeds to investigate the causal relations involved by
analysis of the microstructure underlying the observations. In the case of these
biological examples, this will involve analysis of the formation of tissues and
organs, of cell division and differentiation, and, at a still more fundamental
level of analysis, of the activity of genes in the cell nuclei. The basic idea here is
that to find out how a thing works one should take it to pieces, and study its
components. The deeper one searches for an explanation) the more one will
need to divide up the pieces into their components and so on. At a cerrain
point, of course, this will lead ro the making of hypotheses abour parrs rhat are
so small as to be unobservable, and we are returned to our old problem of the
legitrmacy of appeals to unobservable entities in science.
This sort of role for theory in scientific explanation is represented i'
the'hypothetico-deductive' model (see Hempel 1966). o' this model, a
'microstructure' of theoretical entities and their relationships is invented to
account fbr observable, macrolevel patterns. The statements describing the
microlevel entities and processes are the 'hypothetical' aspect of the theory.
Asrl'e saw, empiricists tend to see the process of invention as beyond rational
analysis. However, once the tieoretical hypothesis has been arrived at, statements
 Sowe Probletns of Ernpiricisrn nntl. positiyisw 39
(
I t Gases are composed of molecules.
| 2 These molecules are in constant motion, and collide
I with one another and the walls of their container.
J 3 The istotal volume of the molecules in a given sample of
negtigibte compared with the votume of the gas.
Theory I 4_ 9.r:
| Molecules exert no force on one another except at
I collision.
I S Molecutar motions and interactions obey the laws of
(- classicalmechanics.

Pressure = F1 (mass, concentration, mean speed of

Bridge- molecules).
principles,
Temperature = F, (mean kinetic energy of molecules).
or corres- Rate of diffusion F" (mean speed, c6ncentration and
pondence =
diameter of molecule--s).
rules
{fi etc.

lt
++ v
I

I tl
+l
Ir
Obser- P -1lv P*T Avogadro's Graham's Etc.
vation (Boyle's (Charles's Law Law of
Law) Law) (relating P, difiusion
I and f to
V,
J molecular
numbers)

Key
l- rj lx '],'l ,
Sense-datum statements

'F' means 'function of ', in the sense that terms so related have
J
t(l

a definite quantitative
ir

relationship to one another such that from known values of on",

vatues ot
the other can be calculated. "orr"rpoiJing
'P' is short for 'pressure', 'r' for 'temperature', 'v'for 'vorume,,
and
,-' for ,is proportionar to,.
Arrows represent the direction of deductive inferences. Anows drawn with
broken lines
indicate a further set of inferences which are insisted upon by strici poiitivisis
ano
phenomenalists.

Figure 2 The Hypothetico-Deductive account of scientific theories:

the kinetic theory of gases as an example
Source: Benton (1977: 64).

describing the phenomena to be explained by the theory can be deduced from

the theoretical statements. This is the 'deductive' aspeit of the theory. If the
theory is true, then the truth of statements describing the phenomena to be
explained follows with necessity. Figure 2, a diagram or*. kinetic theory of
gases' represents a simplified version of the physical theory which
uses cerrain
hypotheses about the molecular microstructure of gases io explain observed
patterns in their behaviour at the macrolevel.
 40 Pbilosophy of Social Science

There are several points to notice about this

moder of horv a theon.*.orks.
First, some of the statements which go to make
up a theory *. *";il';;;
stricdy speaking false, but represent an 'idealizatiorr',
,o wt r.t .."i entides and
processes approximate more or less closely
(in this case, statements 3 and 4 in
the figure are of this kind). Many scientihc l"w,
are idealized abstracrions of
this sort, and so are a long fro- the empiricist view of them as general-
-.y
izations from observation. There are interesting
parallels here with the absuact
'ideal types' employed by Max weber, or the assumptions
made about .rational
actors', in some theories in economics and political
science 1r.. cir.pt.. s;.
such idealizations give rise to questions about
how they are to be tested or
evaluated, given that they are iniended to be counrerfhctual.

-beAused
second point is that, on the hypothetico-deductive
account) theories can
only to deduce statements about observable patterns
if iefiniuons are
provided to link the concepts in the theory
with tle conceprs used in rhe
description of the phenomena to be explained.
In the case of ou. example,
these include starements (a) to (d) in the figure,
"na
between the microstructure of gases and macropropenies
*.f ,tut.-.o.rr..tior*
such as temperature
and pressure. These 'bridge principles'can be
interpreted in difrbrent *.ar.s. F.or
strict empiricists they *"Lb..,."r, merely formi rules for,r""rfr,_g ;#_
etical concepts into empirical ones,",and which
do not commit the scientist to
belief in the reality of.t-rre 'entities; hypothesized
in the theory. Arternativery,
the bridge principles themselves t. understood u, .";;;*rr;subsranrive
-"y
knowledge-claims in their own righi. The nature
of the quantitarive relation_
ship between kinetic energy of morecules and temperature,
for example, is
something that has to be discovered it isn,t just
- a rnatter of defining rerms.
rn other sorts of examples, the rerationship between
microlevel is more complex. In developm"rrt"ibiology,
th. -"..o- and the
fo, rhere are
assumed to be links between genetic constitution "*"_p1.,
(g.""qp.) urri ah" charac-
teristicsofthe developing organism-(phenotype),
uoi
"rt "-iy irrutlr,.d,inter-
complex
actions between these two lev.els- of biologicai
organizutior, ,.r.h
in terms of"r.,correspondence
that the representation of the links betweJn *rem
rules' would be inappropriate. In part, the clifference
between the nr.o softs of
case is that processes at the macrolevel
are active in modifying the behar.iour of
entities at the microlevel (that is, tle genetic
level), as *rI vrr,rr. In part,
the difference has to do with 'emeigent properties'
or ^r"ri*
power u,hich living
organisms have which are not porr.rr.d by gerr",
or genomes.
In general, the relationship between theo"retical ,tut.-.rrt,
and descriptions
of the observations the theories are attempting
to explain is a controversiar area
philosophy of science. !\4-rat is rrl*.
T-sr
different leuels of analysis, and therefore the ", statusis'trr. ,.t"tio.rrrrrp u.*..r,
of the different disciprinary
specialisms which focus on each level. Empiricists
tend, as we have ,"e.r, to b.
r-esistant to any scientific theorizing which
gets very far from what can be
direcdy observed. They are thus corimitted to
a rather flat ontology, in which
the world consists essentially of the sorts of things
and patterns *,hr.t ."r, u.
 Sorne Problerns of Ernpiricisrn nnd. positiyisru 4t
)rks. observed. In opposition to rhis tendency of thought are various sorts of
)be 'realists'who are prepared to accept that one of the achievements of science is
and to discover whole categories of entities and processes not available to ordinarl,
4in observation. we will return to this topic rater (chapter g), but for now it is
sof worth making a distinction between two sorts of realist. The first sort sees
ral- scientific explanation as moving always from the macro to the micro. Things
ract are to be explained in terms of the parts of which they are made, and the paris
rnal in terms of theirparts, and so on. This suggests that there might be an ultimate
5). stopping-point when we ger to the most fundamental particles and the laws
or governing their behaviour. In principle, the behaviour of all the higher levels of
complexity in organization would be explicable in terms of these basic building
ian blotks of the universe. This is a kind of scientific metaphvsics, sometimes called
are 'physicalism', and is an example of 'reductionism': the attempt to ,reduce'
rtre phenomena of belonging to different levels to a single, fundamental level.
tl€, I:lowever, another sort of realism can accept that science does, indeed, reveal
)ns ever more fundamental layers in the physical structure of the world. But once
Ire this has been done, it does not at all follow that everything about the higher
:or
levels of organization can be explained in terms of rhe lower. on this view,
)r- each level has its own particular features and can be studied to some exrent
to independendy of theories about levels 'above ' or'below, it (see Rose 1997 for
lv. an example of this sort of realism in opposition to genetic reductionism in
ve biology). so, for example, it might be argued that chemists can ger a long r.vay
n- in studying the ratios in which different elemenrs combine to form compounds,
is and the properties which result without referring much or at all to molecular
and atomic theory. similarly, srudenrs of animal behaviour can develop their
science without knowing much, or anything, about the ways in which genes
are involved in the regulation of behaviour.
one way of grounding this claim for the (relative) auronomy of the different
sciences is to argue for the existence of emergent properties or powers which
are possessed by higher levels of organization but are not deducible from the
lower. So, for example, birds indulge in courtship behaviour, make nests and
lay eggs. Theories about their genetic constitution may pray a pan in our explan-
ations of how and why they do this, but genes themselves clon't court, make
nests or mate. No amount of study of the genetic makeup of a bird would give
you any idea what it was to build a nesr or lay an egg unless you already knew.
such arguments are used to maintain 'anti-reductionist, fbrms of realism,
which respe ct the specifi.city of each level. The dispute between reductionist
and anti-reductionist approaches to the relationship between levels is of great
importance for the social sciences. It separates sociological realists such as
Durkheim and Marx from individualists such as weber. The recurrenr arrempts
by ultra-Darwinists to explain human social life in terms of the genetic con-
stitution of individuals (as in sociobiology and, more recently, .evolurionary
psychology') are a version of reductionism designed to replace the social
science disciplines altogether.
 42 Philosopby of Socinl Science

One further feature of theories can be illustrared by the hlpothetico-deducrive

model. This is that the potential scope of the theoretical statements is far rvider
than the specific partern of observations tley are designed to explain. In our
example, a u'hole series ofpatterns can be predicted from the statements lvhich
make up the kinetic theory. For empiricists, rhe explanarory power of the theory
is a matter of the range of such predictions rvhich can be ded.uced from it, and
the theory is confirmed to the extent that these predictions turn out to be correct.

Exp laru atio n nn d. Pr e d.i ction

This takes us on to the question of the relationship between theoretical explan-

ation and prediction. As we saw in chapter 2, the symmetry of explanation and
prediction is a tenet ofthe empiricist view of science. The hypothetico-deducrive
model of scientific theories displal's this relationship very clearly. However, rvhat
is much less clear is whether this model applies to oll sorts of scientific explan-
ation. As we saw) the phenomenon ofsimultaneous emergence in populations of
dragonflies could pose questions of a historical-narrative kind about how and
why it came about in the course of the evolution of the species concerned. A rele-
vant theory (but not the only relevant one) in this case would be some version of
Darwinian evolution. Darwin's specific achievement was ro arrive at a plausible
hypothesis about the mechanism which brought about organic change in the
direction of closer adaptarion of organisms to their environments. To simplifr
somewhat, his theory consisted of the lbllowing sratements:

1. In any population of animals or plants, there are many individual variations.

2. At least some of trese are inherited from one generation to the next.
3. In any generation, many more offspring are produced than will survive ro
reproduce themseives.
4. Depending on the nature of the environment in which they live, some vari-
ations will be more likely to survive and reproduce than others (,natural
selection').

These four propositions, appropriately formally srared, combined rvith the

assumption that the environment remains stable in the relevant respects, yield
rhe conclusion that those variations which confer enhanced survival and repro-
ductive chances on their bearers will become progressively more common in the
population over a series of generations. cumulative change over numerous
generations will eventually yield sufficiendy different fbatures for the population
to be designated a new species. Darwin's hypothesis is generally recognized as
a theory) but it does not hypothesize any theoretical entities. Moreover, it does
not lead to any specific predictions about the formation of any panicular species,
or what its characterisrics will be. The widespread acceptance of the theory must
be based on something other than successful predictions.
 Sorne Problerns of Ernpiricisrn and positiyism. 43

There are several reasons why Darwin's theory cannot be used to predict the
tbrmation of particular new species. one is that nature only ,selects' from
among the available variant forms which happen to exisr in a population. The
processes of genetic mutation and recombination which give rise to these
variant forms are not explained in the theory, rvhich simply works on rhe
assumption that they are random with respect to any adaptive function which
they may contingently turn our to have. Another reason ii that the theory has
nothing to tell us about the precise environmental pressures and affordances
which may be operating on any parricular population ar any particular time. In
several places, Darwin emphasized the immense diversiw of n ays in which
survival chances are affected by environmental pressures, referring to the fhce
of naturc as like 'a hundred thousand wedges'. He noted that alrnost nothing
was known about this complexity in particular cases.
So, in the case of Darwinian evolutionism, applying the theory ro the
explanation of a particular case is not merely a matter of applying a la$, to a
description of existing'initial conditions' and deducing the phenomenon to be
explained. In fact, all the theory does is to provide some heuristic indications
to guide substantive research towards an adequate historical narrative in each
case. In part, this much more modest (but srill indispensable) role for theory in
what might be called'historical sciences'is a consequence of the fhct that the
mechanism specified by the theory (in this example, natural selection) is only
one of a number of mechanisms (for example, mutation, recombination,
predation, climate, food supply, parasitism, disease, reproductive isolation,
molecular drive, genetic drift, and so on), each of which may partially corrsti-
tute, interact with, determine or modify the effects of natural selection. These
other mechanisms may be topics for other, related sciences, requiring complex
forms of interdisciplinary collaboration in relation to empirical study lbr the
production of plausible explanatory narratives. In sciences where explanation
and prediction are closely related, this is usually because parricular mechanisms
are naturally isolated from such interactions (as, for example, with the gravita-
tional fields of the bodies making up the sorar system) or because they ca' be
artificially isolated by experimental practice. This is usually impossible in the
case of historical natural sciences and most social scienc.r, *hi.h is one of
the main reasons why explanation in these disciprines is not generally matched
by predictive po\^/er. we will return to the problems posed by this featr_rre of
social scientific explanation in Chapter 8.

Valwes in Science
As we saw in chapter 2, empiricists have rwo basic optio's for thi'king about
the nature ofvalue judgements. These can be treated either as disguised fictual
statements, about, for example, the consequences of actions for the balance of
pleasure and pain in the world) or as mere subjective expressions of feeling or
 44 Philosophy of Socinl Science

preference. The latter, 'subjectrvist', view of value judgements has been the
most widespread among empiricists in the twentieth century, and empiricists
accordinglv tend to argue for the exclusion of value judgements from science.
For them, science is a rigorous attempt to represent the world as it is, using
obsen'ation, e-tperiment and formal reasoning. The intrusion of the personal
values of the scientist would clearly undermine this objective. However, as we
sarr' above, science necessarily involves more than experiment, observation and
fbrmal logic. Active processes of conceptual interpretation are involved in all
obsen'ation; theory construction is an imaginative, creative activity; and the
role of metaphor in science commonly involves drawing ideas from the wider
culture. If all this is so, how could science fail to incorporate value commit,
mentsl one empiricisr response to this relies on distinguishing between the
creative activity of inventing theories, on the one hand, and the processes of
critically evaluating and empirically teaing them, on the other. These latter
processes are governed by formal rules of logic and methodological rigour
rvhich can be expected to iron out biases deriving from value preferences of
individual scientists.
The core intuition of the empiricist vierv is that science should not be about
how we would lihe the world to be. on the contrary, science can make progress
only if scientists are prepared ro abandon their cherished hypotheses in the
face of evidence about the way things reolly are.Indeed, were science merely
a matter of advancing our own rvishes and preferences about natllre) then there
would be no point in doing any experimentation or obsen'ation at all.
We can distinguish three diffbrent sorts of criticism of the empiricist distinction
between facts and values, one of which, however, still preserues u,hat we have
called this 'core intuition'. one line of criticism is to dispure the 'subjectivity'
of value judgements, and to argue that at least in some cases successflil
explanation implies moral values. On this view, ,nolrnt;tl reolisru', values are
themselves independendy real, like the entities and processes studied by
science. A second line of criticism insists that cultural norms and values cannor
be disentangled from scientific knowledge-claims. Therefore the empiricist
image of science as above conflict about moral and political values is an ideo-
logy which gives science a spurious social authoriry. Instead of trying to make
science value-free, or pretending drat it already is, we should demand that
scientists make their value commitments explicit, so that rival values and
related knowledge-claims can be openly debated in the context of more demo-
cratic institutions for decision-making about technical matrers (see Wynne
1996, and subsequent debate in the journal Social Stud.ies of Science).
A third line of criricism, which, unlike the first rwo, still preserves rhe core
intuition of empiricism, recognizes that the view of science as the pursuit of
objective knowledge about the world itselfimplies value commirmenrs - namely,
not to misrepresent the results of experiments, to give serious consideration to
arguments against one's own views (no matter what the status of the person
who advocates them), to abandon one's prejudices when it becomes clear that
 Sonce Problerns of Ewtpiricisw't. ond. Positipisno 45

the that is what they are, and so on. At a deeper level, many scientists are motivated
ists by respect for and wonderment at the integrity, otherness and intrinsic beauty
ce. of the objects of their investigation. This is a dimension of scientific culture
ng which is often missed in much of the social scientific literature on science, but
nal is, as we will see in Chapter 4, emphasized in some feminist approaches to science.
\\-e On this third view, then, it is argued against empiricism that values are
nd intrinsically and indispensably involved in science. However, a distinction can
a.l1 still be made between those norms and values which are necessary to and
he supportive of science, considered as a practice which aims at the production of
ler objective knowledge of its subject-matter) and those values which eitler are
it- obstructive of this aim or are simply extraneous) and so irrelevant. In the case
he of Dar-win, for example, he was inspired in his student days by the harmonious
of vision of nature portrayed in the work of the theologian W. Paley. However,
:er his growing recognition of the 'struggle for existence' through which natural
ur selection operated led to his reluctant abandonment of this vision: (What a
of book a Devil's Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low
and horridly cruel works of naturel' (quoted in Desmond and Moore 1992:
ut 449). Clearly, Darwin would have wished living nature to have been kinder
ss and more harmonious than it was, but it is arguable that his commitment to
1e the values of scientific investigation required him to give up such comforting
lv images (note that Desmond and Moore take the more conventional view that
re Darwin's ideas were shaped by wider Victorian cultural values).
Of course, this distinction between those values which are intrinsic to scien-
)n tific practice, and those which are not is a controversial one, and it is very much
-e an open question whether it can be applied in a defensible way when we come
to consider the role of value commitments in the human social sciences.
rl
'e

Further Problems of Positivism

)t
;t
Tloe Failings of the Ewpiricist Mod.el of Science

t So far we have considered at length some of the difficulties involved in the

I empiricist view of natural scientific knowledge. Since, as we saw in Chapter 2,
this is a key tene t of positivism, positivism itself falls if the empiricist view of the
natural sciences cannot be supported. However, it is still worth thinking
further about other elements in the positivist approach.

Tl.te Swperiority of Science

The second tenet, it may be remembered, was the notion that science is the
highest, most authoritative, even the sole source of genuine knowledge.
46 Philosophy of Social Science

According ro comte's three-stage 'law' of social development, theological

modes of thought give way to metaphysical ones, and these, in turn, to scien-
tific one s. The re are two claims distinguishable , here. one , the claim of ,func-
tional equivalence', is that science, metaphysics and theology are competitors,
in the sense that they are alternative modes of thought, covering the full range
of purposes for which human societies require knowledge, so that it makes
sense to think of each as replacing the others. The second claim is that the
scientific mode of thought is superior to the others, and so represents progress
in the sphere of thought to match (and, indeed, contribute to) industrial and
social progress.
The first claim, of functional equivalence, is open to rwo sorts of objection.
First, theology and metaphysics are not solely concerned with giving accounts
of the nature of the world - th.y also attempt to derive authoritative norms for
human conduct. They provide their adherents with reasons for obedience to
certain rules of conduct) and for accepting some kinds of institutional arrange-
ments rather than others. By contrast, the exclusion of values in the empiricist
view of science restricts science to the narrow task of predicting what wowld.be
the consequence a/such-and-such policy were to be implemented. Science , on
this view, cannot pronounce on the desirability or otherwise of either the
policy or its predicted consequence. If this is so, then science cannot replace
the functions performed by theology and metaphysics. If people are to have
means of orienting themselves to the ethical dilemmas and challenges of modern
life then they have need of specifically moral and political sources of guidance
which science alone cannot deliver - though, of course, the sources they draw
on may be other than religion or metaphysics!
I{owever, Max Weber (Chapter 5), and some of those influenced by his
ideas in the Frankfurt school of critical rheory (chapter 7), argae that the
spread of scientific modes of thought into public administration, business and
everyday life does, indeed, undermine our ability to confront questions of basic
value and meaning. As they see it, modern society becomes pervaded by a
narrow rationality, consisting of matching the most efficient means to ,given'
ends, which services an increasingly self-legitimating and totalitarian control
over both society and nature. This bleak pessimism is the opposite side of the
coin from comte's uropian vision of a new social order bound together by
scientific and technical progress.
The second sort of objection to the claim of functional equivalence is closely
connected to the first. what comte and, arguably, empiricists more generally
neglect is the extent to which social life depends on knowledge which cannot
be put into the form of statements or propositions: what is sometimes called
'know-how', as distinct from 'knowledge that'. In every context of social
interaction we respond to cues and act according to implicit rules and shared
understandings which none of us could fully articulate. Language itself is
constituted by rules which are learned and deployed tacitly, without our ability
or any need to render them explicit for everyday conversational purposes.
 Some Problems of Enapiricisnc and. positipistn 47

specific skills, such as those involved in cooking, sports and games) maintain-
ing relationships, parenting and so on, are learned through p1acti.e, in which
trial and error, intuirion and imitation are ar least i-loi".rt as following
explicit rules. The role of tacit hnowledgein social life"sis arguably both centrail!
important and also irreplaceable. practicar know-how may be informed by
scientific insights, but never replaced by it (rhe literature on this is enormous,
but see especially Hayek 1949; o'Neill 1998: ch. l0; wainrvright 1994).
This leads on to a consideration of the claim that science is superior to other
sources of knowledge and understanding. Both the above linei of argument
suggest that science is not strictly comparable with other sorts of knowledge. It
makes no sense to say that science is superior to tacit knowledge, for example,
since they are not alternative ways of doing the same sort of thing, or achieving
the same sort of purpose. one could argue that buses are r,rp.rio, to cars as
environmentally sustainable modes of transport, but what could be meant by
saylng that buses are superior to fridge-freezersl
on the other hand, it is clear that there is, at reast, some overlap between
theology, metaphysics, magical and witchcraft beliefs and so on) on the one
hand, and science , on the other. The resistance of the church to the new mech-
anical science in the seventeenth-century, and the opposition of theologians to
Darwin and wallace's theory of evolution by natural selection from the lg60s
onwards, was not mere coincidence. The church and the emerging scientific
establishment were rival institutional locations for authorizing Gowledge-
claims about the nature of our world. Among other things, ,tr.rggle fo,
cultural power was being waged. The empiricist view of science "can be seen as
providing clear justification for the claims of science: its objectivity is under-
written by its observational basis and its openness to empirical testing. How-
ever, if this claim about science is itself open to question, then perhaps we
should give equal credence to religious, metaphysical, magical and other non-
scientific ways of understanding the worldf why should science be accorded
rhe 'anarchist' philosopher of science paul Feyerabend
exclusive privilegef
(seechapter 4)was one of the most forceful advocates of this view, and he has
been followed in the same direction by a number of post-modernist writers
(Chapterl0).

A Naturol Science of Society?

The third tener of positivism is its advocacy of extending the methods of the
natural sciences (as represented in the empiricist view of knowledge) to the study
of human social life. In chapters 5,6 and z we will be considering the argumenrs
of those, such as Max weber, Peter winch and ltirgen Flabermas, who have
offered strong arguments against this. The view that there is, or could be, such
a thing as a scientific study of society, in the same sense (but not necessarily using
the same methods) as natural processes can be studied scientifically is often
48 Philosophy of Social Science

termed 'natwalistn'. Weber, Winch and Habermas are) in this sense, anti-
naturalists, and positivists such as Comte are naturalists. I{owever, the criti-
cisms of the empiricist view of science, and the fact that we now har.e quite
well-worked-out altematives to empiricism open up the possibiliry of forms of
naturalism which are not positivist. It may be that tiere cannot be an empirici*
science of social life, but the social sciences might count as scientific from the
point of view of alternative, non-empiricist models of science. Chapter 4 pro-
vides a review of at least some of the main alternative views of science rvhich have
been developed so far. The question, 'What might a social science modelled
on natural science might be likef ' could be asked on the basis of anv of riese
alternatives. The answers would not be positivist in our strict sense of the
term, and would no doubt raise interesting philosophical issues. We do nor have
the space to explore all of these possibilities, but we do give more detailed consid-
eration to the implications of tvi'o non-empiricist understandings of science for
the practice of social science. These are feminist approaches (Chapter 9) and crit-
ical realism (Chapter 8). The issue of epistemological relativism, a fearure of
several non-empiricist approaches, also has its counterpart in the philosophy
of social science, and we will return to it, in particular in Chapters 6 and 10.

Socinl Sci.ence nnd. Socinl Engineering

The fourth tenet of positivism is its view of social scientific knowledge as useful
knowledge, in the sense that it can be fed into tie process of social policy-
making in the form of projects of social engineering. Despite his differences
rvith positivism in other respecrs, Popper endorsed this view of the role of social
scientific knowledge, so long as it was confined to small-scale reforms 'piece-
meal' social engineering) rather than revolutionary attempts at wholescale social
transformation, what he called 'utopian' social engineering (see his Poverty of
Historitisw, f961). However, it is not clear that, in the absence of the sym-
meuy of explanation and prediction which (on the empiricist view) character-
izes natural scientific knowledge, the social sciences can provide the right sort of
knowledge for this reformist project of social engineering. Any particular policy
intervention is likely to be modified in its effects by complex inreracrions
between social processes, and unless there is some means of taking these into
account) reform strategies are liable to generate unintended and possibly
unwanted consequences.
A more practical problem has to do with the institutional power required to
implement reforms. The underlying assumption of mosr social policy is that
government, acting through state institutions, will be the agent of change. But
it is at least arguable that there are economic and socio-cultural sources of social
power which are able to resist or modify reform strategies, or obstruct their
implementation. The institutions of the state, itself, are also heterogeneous, and
can by no means be assumed to offer a smooth transmission belt for the

_,r
 Sonoe Pyoblem.s of Ernpiricistn and. positiyisyn 49

application of social science in social policy. Having noted

all of this, however, ir
would be hard to deny the considerable achievements of the
link berw,een social
science and policy in the formation of the post-war
welfare state, in expanding
opportunities for women in social and economic life, and
in providing social
ized health care in response to need rather than ability
to p"y. f]ho.,gt achieve-
ments such as these remain fragile and open to reversal,
and in many countries
are heavily compromised, tlrey are a significant testimony
to the strengrhs of
policy-oriented research generated on bioadly positivist assumptions.
But the issue of power in relation to social engineering .air"s ethicar
questions. The post-structuralist writer Michel Fouiault, foi "lro
example (chapter
l0), has argued that forms of knowledge in the human sciences irrdirrol.rbly
linked to strategies of power, whereby human subjects (such as "..the mad, trre
sexually deviant, or the criminal) are classified and subjected
to regimes of sur-
veillance and regulation in institutions such as the asyrum,
clinic and prison.
This reveals a much more sinister dimension of social engineering
than would
be accepted by its positivist advocates. At least part of the reason
why social
engineering seems so sinister to Foucault is his view of human
agency and sub-
jectivity as constituted and manipulated by relations
of power. s"o there is little
space in his account for agents to acquire and exercise
agency. By
contrast) the critical theorist Habermas (chapter z) "orono-o.r,
would share loucault,s
opposition to manipulation and incarcerarion, while arguing for
an enrarged
and democratic public sphere, in which ernancipatoty fo-rms"of
understandlng
could be effective.
So far, then, we have considered some of the possibre lines
of criticism of the
positivist tradition, focusing especially on thi problems of the
empiricist
account of science upon which it relies. In the next chapter
we will take
a necessarily rat-her selective look at some of the
alternative views of science,
most of them closely related to the sociological or historical
study of science in
action, but in each case posing important philosophical issues.

Further Reading
chalmers (1999) provides an excenent conremporary introduction
to the philosophy of
older texts which are still of great value include Harr6 (L972), *a
science .
an. relevant
chapters in Keat and Urry (L97s) and oldroyd (19g6).
No'-empiricisr aftemprs ro
defend the rario'ality of science include Newton-smith (l9gl),
Brown (1994), Hacki'g
(1983), Longino (1990) and Lauclan (i996). For alternative
accourrs ofscience, see
Chapter 4. For hermeneutic criticisms ofpositivism in the sociai
sciences, se e Chapters 5,
6 and7.