Journals Proceedings

Abstract

In the history of philosophy of social science, there were two different dominant approaches in making sense of social science. The first approach is dubbed as humanist which claims that social life cannot adequately be studied scientifically while the second approach is dubbed as naturalist which claims that social life can be adequately studied scientifically using the methods of natural science. The problem with these two approaches is that each claims to be the only right approach. As a result, an adequate philosophy of social science is found wanting. This paper seeks to address that problem by trying to develop an adequate philosophy of social science in making sense of the following three important questions which neither the two approaches of humanism nor naturalism is capable of answering because of their assumptions. The three important questions are: First; what is the relationship between interpretation and explanation in social science? Second; what is the nature of social scientific theory? And third; what is the role of critique in social science? After giving sense to those three important questions, the paper concluded that there are truths found in the two approaches. The paper also ends in an attitude of optimism about the future of social science whether the phenomenon of singularity, which means humans and machine may combine, will happen or not in the near future.