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1. Introduction
Natural sciences are generally viewed as being descriptive because physical behaviors are explained through mathematical formulae, empirical because relevant variables denote observables, functional because each input is related to exactly one output, and deterministic because the future is in principle predictable (Brodbeck, 1954). The epistemological status of social sciences may be viewed either as a factual question that could in principle be answered scientifically, or as a normative question that cannot be answered empirically (Gewirth, 1954). Nevertheless, positivism, which views physics as science par excellence (Kincaid, 1990b), maintains that social sciences are in essence no different from natural sciences (Føllesdal, 1979), and that, as such, they should also principally aim for nomological prediction and explanation (Hempel and Oppenheim, 1948). Scholars argue that “There are numerous valid reasons for positivists to follow the natural sciences as a role model for work in the social sciences” (Hasan, 2014, p. 4). It may be assumed that few practicing social scientists disagree since quantitative research methods, which originate in the positivistic natural sciences, have also been dominating the social and the behavioral sciences (Alise and Teddlie, 2010; Lopez-Fernandez and Molina-Azorin, 2011; Yang, 2013; Rod, 2009; Black, 2006; Kapoulas and Mitic, 2012). Moreover, “Qualitative scholars struggle to obtain tenure, their research is often underfunded, the journals they publish in are given low impact scores” (Denzin, 2017, p. 15).
However, critics have argued that due to their distinct problem domains the social and the natural sciences cannot be regarded as alternatives and, thus, should not be directly compared (Machlup, 1961). In contrast to natural sciences, which largely deal with quantitative aspects, it may be maintained that social sciences are primarily interested in qualitative characteristics (Weber, 1949). Viewed as such, social sciences should principally aim for hermeneutical understanding (Verstehen) (Taylor, 1974). Others have reasoned that natural sciences are analytic, whereas the social sciences are synthetic in nature (Hayek, 1952). In addition to being much more heterogeneous than natural sciences (Gewirth, 1954), social sciences are also largely context dependent (Faber and Scheper, 2003). For instance, it has been argued that results of quantitative marketing research have a “limited lifetime and applicability because background contexts and consumer behaviours are in perpetual flux” (Robertshaw, 2007, p. 11).
Reflecting on the ongoing...