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Mario Bunge. Finding Philosophy in Social Science Yale University Press. xii, 432. us $45.00
Bunge has long been an outspoken critic of philosophies of science that are out of touch with the content and practice of actual science, philosophies that fit science to preconceived philosophical models or spin out rational reconstructions of the science presented in prefaces, textbooks, stock historical examples, and isolated cases. Nearly twenty- five years ago he argued the case for a resolutely a posteriori program of inquiry to be undertaken by 'amphibious' scholars who 'work in - not just study - some science' and whose 'metascientific' questions arise as much from critical reflection on science as from philosophy (in Method, Model and Matter, 1973, chapter 1). Finding Philosophy in Social Science is the first of two volumes in which Bunge promises a 'science-oriented' account of social and behavioural research. Such an intervention is especially welcome; all too often the social sciences have been treated as an export destination for philosophical models of science based primarily on physics. Only recently has there begun to appear a body of philosophical work that takes seriously the actual problematics and practices of the social sciences, in the 'amphibious' spirit recommended by Bunge.
Finding Philosophy in Social Science begins with a summary of areas of common and overlapping interest between philosophy and the social sciences in which Bunge stresses the fundamental role of philosophical presuppositions; whether recognized or not, scientific inquiry of all kinds, especially social scientific inquiry, depends on ontological assumptions about its subject domain, epistemological commitments concerning the nature and grounds of 'authentic' scientific knowledge, and various forms of evaluative (moral) judgment. In so far as social scientists rely on philosophies that are 'obsolete,' or on imprecise concepts and poorly articulated assumptions, their substantive research is likely to be compromised; philosophical analysis that refines this conceptual base can have a practical payoff.
It is this work of formulating a clearly specified, 'exactifiable' conceptual...