Explaining and Understanding in the Social Sciences: Is it Beneficial for our Understanding of IR to Combine Positivist and Post-Positivist Philosophies of Science?

Explaining and Understanding in the Social Sciences –
Is it Beneficial for our Understanding of IR to Combine
Positivist and Post-Positivist Philosophies of Science?

by Patrick Wagner

85 years after its formal establishment1, the discipline of International Relations is currently engaged in what is known as the ‘Third Debate’. At the heart of this debate is the question “to what extend can society be studied in the same way as nature?”2 Positivists hold that the social world is not fundamentally different form the natural world and that, as a result, the same epistemology applies. Positivists aim to explain the social world and believe that causal laws and generalisations can be found through observation. Post-positivists argue that the social and the natural world are not alike and that scientific explanation is neither a valid nor an adequate form of inquiry for the social sciences. According to this view, the social world primarily consists of ideas and concepts that cannot be translated into scientific terms but need to be interpreted. Hence, the aim of post-positivists is understanding social phenomena.

The two positions are commonly perceived as mutually exclusive and the advocates of the two camps are hardly willing to engage in a constructive debate. “This Third Debate will not be much of a ‘debate’ if its protagonists are not speaking to each other, but that is where things largely stand.”3 Nevertheless, Wendt, among others, has argued that social science in general and International Relations in particular might benefit less from siding with either positivism or post-positivism, but more from combining the two, and that it is indeed possible to build a bridge between the two philosophies of science. Such a combination would acknowledge the ontology of social science to be post-positivist, that is idea-based, while at the same time proposing to adopt a positivist epistemology4, although pure scientific explanation and empiricism are not seen as appropriate methods.

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1 With the establishment of the Chair of International Relations at the University of Wales in 1919, International Relations were for the first time recognized as a separate discipline.
2 Roy Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences (2nd edition), Harvester Press, Hemel Hempstead, 1989, p.1
3 Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, p.90
4 Wendt argues that, although post-positivists want to make us believe the opposite, it is possible to acquire knowledge about society and that “nothing in the nature of social kinds means they are uncaused.” (Wendt 1999, op.cit., p.77)