Interlude

Abstract

At this stage, a more general epistemological question may be posed: Does counterfactual reasoning belong to a “non-Popperian” realm of social scientific reasoning as elaborated by Jean-Claude Passeron?1 Let’s briefly introduce the key elements of the problem at hand. For the philosopher of science, Karl Popper, induction is a myth in the realm of science. Refutability is the central characteristic that allows one to distinguish between science and pseudoscience; theory must precede observation. The key issue is that the status of history and the social sciences is not entirely clear in this framework. On the one hand, history and social sciences can claim to be scientific under certain conditions (the establishment of facts based on a critique of sources), but on the other hand, and notably in their efforts toward generalization, they cannot deliver on this claim. The domain of the social sciences does not obey the laws of the physical sciences (laws that are true always and everywhere), and this is the essential point: thanks to this condition, the liberty of human action is preserved. Predicting the future, Popper argues, the futures of the present as well as of the past, is an unfounded and dangerous ambition that supposes that human reality is subject to immutable laws. ...