Karl Popper and the Social Sciences

SUMMARY

be characterized as exercises in critical problem solving is unobjectionable as far as it goes. But this unity is gained only by eliding some very important differences between the two areas, especially with respect to falsifiability, which I have argued is a more worthy Popperian candidate for uniting the sciences than problem solving. SUMMARY This chapter completes our exploration of Popper’s response to positivism and its implications for his social science. We can now say that Popper clearly was not a positivist, at least not after the fashion of the Vienna Circle. In chapter 2 we saw that Popper rejected verificationism in favor of falsificationism, and he rejected the positivists’ claim that purified sense data form the foundation of science and knowledge, arguing instead that all scientific inquiry begins with theory and all empirical evidence is laden with theory. He also argued, against the positivists, that metaphysics is not meaningless but can be rationally criticized , and that the aim of science is to describe a real world that lies beyond appearance.That is, he was a scientific realist. Our findings in this chapter regarding Popper’s stance toward other aspects of positivism—namely, causation as constant conjunction, the coveringlaw model of explanation, and the unity of scientific method—produced more ambiguous results. We saw that Popper embraced the notion of natural necessity and thereby repudiated causation as constant conjunction. However, he continued to endorse the covering-law model of explanation, which I suggested is at best superfluous if, like Popper, one supports the concept of natural necessity and, more broadly, scientific realism. I suggested that the covering-law model should be viewed as an artifact of his earlier philosophy of natural science and can be severed from his mature philosophy without harm.Turning to social science, I argued that the covering-law model of explanation can have no place in Popperian social science. This is because, first, genuine lawlike social regularities are nonexistent, and, second, laws play no role in Popper’s situational analysis anyway. Regarding causation and situational analysis, I contended that the actions of an agent at the center of a situational model should not be construed in causal terms.To be consistent with Popper’s support for the doctrine of human free will, we should view an agent’s action as freely chosen, albeit generally rational and therefore fairly predictable in many situations. Finally, we saw that models based on situational analysis are not subject to the same degree of falsifiability as natural science theories. In the end,whether Popper should or should not be labeled a positivist is,in itself, ultimately of little importance. As Popper would surely say—in fact, as he did say with respect to this question—words do not matter (ISBW, 89). What matters are the ideas behind them. The main value of examining Popper vis-àvis positivism is to elucidate his general philosophy of science and to enrich our understanding of Popperian social science and situational analysis in particular. 58 KARL POPPER AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES ...