Ways of Knowing: Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research Book

List of Figures     xi
List of Tables     xii
Preface and Acknowledgements     xiii
Introduction     1
Methodological Foundations     3
Naturalism     8
Constructivism     10
Scientific Realism     13
Chapter Outline and Logic     15
Philosophy of Naturalist Science     19
The Birth of the Philosophy of Science     20
Francis Bacon and the Method of Induction     21
Locke, Hume and the Modern Philosophy of Knowledge     24
The Basic Assumptions of the Naturalist Methodology     28
On Doubt and Reductionism: the Cartesian Revolution     30
Post-Cartesian Developments: From Comte to Vienna     33
Logical Positivism     36
At the Threshold of the Millennium     44
Post-Popper     47
Recapitulation: the Naturalist Way of Knowing     49
The Broad Joists of the Naturalist Methodology     50
The Naturalist Hierarchy of Methods     51
Recommended Further Reading     52
The Experimental Method     53
Historical and Definitional Preliminaries     55
Galileo's Design     56
TheClassic Design     57
Exemplary Illustrations     64
Maier's Rats     64
Ideological Innocence     66
Conclusion     68
Recommended Further Reading     69
The Statistical Method     70
Descriptive Statistics     71
Pioneers: Graunt, Petty and Conring     71
Galton: Basic Concepts and Examples     73
Inferential Statistics     83
Multivariate Analysis     89
Conclusion     92
Recommended Further Reading     93
The Comparative Method     94
The Methods of John Stuart Mill     96
The Method of Difference     97
The Method of Agreement     100
The Indirect Method of Difference     103
The Method of Concomitant Variation     107
Shortcomings     109
Over-determination     109
Sampling Bias     111
Conclusion     114
Recommended Further Reading     115
History and Case Studies     116
The Historical Method     117
Leopold von Ranke     118
Barbara Tuchman     123
Criticism      128
The Case Study Method     130
Types of Case Studies     132
Conclusion     139
Recommended Further Reading     141
Sowing Doubts about the Naturalist Methodology     142
Ontological Doubts     143
The Natural World     144
The Social World     146
Epistemological Doubts     149
Presuppositions     149
Meaning     153
Scientific Authority     155
Przeworski and Teune     157
Methodological Doubts     160
Recommended Further Reading     164
A Constructivist Philosophy of Science     165
On Natural and Other Worlds     166
The Awakening     169
On Pure Concepts and Natural Ideas     170
The World of Our Making     172
The Unwieldy World of William Whewell     173
Disparate Pieces to a New Philosophy of Science     175
The Role of History     176
The Impact of Society     178
The Role of Ideas     181
On Communication and Language     187
Summing Up: Context Matters     190
Recapitulation: the Constructivist Way of Knowing      190
The Constructivist Other     191
Conclusion     195
Recommended Further Reading     196
From Story Telling to Telling Histories     197
The Mysterious Ways of Miss Marple     200
The Serendipitous Approach     202
Ethnomethodology     204
Presentational Approaches     206
From Facts to Narrative     206
Narrative Structures     207
Ideational Approaches     210
From Mentalities to Discourse     210
Contextualizing Approaches     214
Scholars and their Contexts     214
From the Lessons of History to the History of Lessons     216
Multiple Stories     217
Approaching Naturalism     219
Conclusions     220
Recommended Further Reading     221
Comparing Interpretations     222
Temptations of Similitude     223
In the Shade of the Old Mill     225
On Laws and Patterns     226
On Case Selection     232
On Data Selection     234
Constructing Comparisons     236
Challenging the Old and Constructing the New     237
Hermeneutic Understanding      240
Contrasting Us with Them     242
Conclusion     244
Recommended Further Reading     245
Contextualizing Statistics     246
The Dark Side of Statistics     247
Sir Francis Galton     248
Statistics Lack a Sense of Context     250
The Statistical Worldview     251
On the Bright Side     252
Descriptive Statistics and Quantitative Graphics     253
Bayesian Statistics     260
Statistic Narratives     264
Conclusion     266
Recommended Further Reading     266
Interpretive Experiments     267
Experiments in Science     268
Imaginary Journeys     270
Social Thought Experiments     276
Rational Thought Experiments     278
An After Thought     281
Conclusion     283
Recommended Further Reading     284
Conclusion     285
On Design     285
On Methodological Pluralism     288
On Methodological Rapprochement     291
On the Numerology Divide     293
Notes     295
References     302
Index      318