Realism and Social Science

Abstract

What are the implications of the approach outlined in the previous chapter for the practice of social research? We can begin to answer this question by reviewing some of the realist principles which have already been mentioned. In the sphere of ontology, we have:

• 1. The distinction between transitive and intransitive objects of science: between our concepts, models etc. and the real entities, relations and so forth which make up the natural and the social world.

• 2. The further stratification of reality into the domains of the real, the actual and the empirical. The last of these is in a contingent relation to the other two; to be (either for an entity or structure or for an event) is not to be perceived.

• 3. The conception of causal relations as tendencies, grounded in the interactions of generative mechanisms; these interactions may or may not produce events which in turn may or may not be observed.

• 4. In addition to these three ontological claims, and related to the first one, we have the rejection of both empiricism and conventionalism above. The practical expression of this epistemological position is the concept of real definition. Real definitions, which are important for both realist and rationalist philosophies of science, are neither summaries of existing verbal usage nor stipulations that we should use a term in a particular way. Although they are of course expressed in words, they are statements about the basic nature of some entity or structure. Thus a real definition of water would be that its molecules are composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. This human discovery about water comes to be expressed as a definitional property of it.

• 5. Finally, and related to (3) above, the realist conception of explanation involves the postulation of explanatory mechanisms and the attempt to demonstrate their existence.