Social Life and Social Science: The Significance of the Naturalist/Intentionalist Dispute

Abstract

In recent years, historicist understandings of science have come to prominence in philosophy of science and philosophy of social science. These approaches have been credited with putting forward a persuasive case that social scientific theories, like societies, are themselves historical entities. (Laudan 1979, p. 43; McMullin 1979, p. 57). Historicist studies have forced a re-evaluation of a number of important issues, among them the question of how methodologies are to be evaluated, and questions about how the relation of theory to observation is to be understood. (Laudan 1979, pp. 47-48).Despite their successes, however, historicist approaches fail in two important ways: 1) they are unable to solve the problems posed by methodological relativism, and 2) they fail to go beyond treating theories as personages to the important questions of how these theories arise from particular social structures.