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

Essay from the year 2004 in the subject Politics - International Politics - General and Theories, grade: 2+ (B+), University of Kent (Brussels School of International Studies), language: English, abstract: 85 years after its formal establishment , 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?' 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.' 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 epistemology , although pure scientific explanation and empiricism are not seen as appropriate methods.