Response: Scientific Progress in a Nontheoretical Discipline: History and Constructive Realism

Abstract

I agree with essentially all of Philip Gorski's arguments. His critiques of Hempel, Burawoy, Lieberson, and Skocpol seem to me entirely correct. I see his alternative realist approach as providing a cogent philosophical underwriting of what the best historical and cultural sociologists have in fact been doing in practice for years. Moreover, Gorski argues that constructive realism describes what quantitative sociologists have been doing in practice as well. The philosophy of science Gorski espouses provides a big tent. Although formulated from the standpoint of a historical and cultural sociologist, it does not attempt to cast quantitative research into the outer darkness by claiming that only explicitly interpretivist methods and theories are worthwhile-although it does, properly in my opinion, indicate that self-consciously positivist researchers in fact engage in a lot more interpretative work than they would like to believe. I am pleased to have at hand such a clear, concise, convincing, astute, and sensible philosophical statement, which I expect to come in handy in many future debates. One of the most attractive features of Gorski's constructive