Since its publication in 1982, Beyond Positivism has become established as one of the definitive statements on economic methodology. The book‘s rejection of positivism and its advocacy of pluralism were to have a profound influence in the flowering of work methodology that has taken place in economics in the decade since its publication. This editi
Introduction The Argument in Brief -- Economics Is in Scientific Trouble -- An Antique, Unethical, and Badly Measured Behaviorism Doesn't Yield Good Economic Science or Good Politics -- Economics Needs to Get Serious about Measuring the Economy -- The Number of Unmeasured "Imperfections" Is Embarrassingly Long -- Historical Economics Can Measure Them, Showing Them to Be Small -- The Worst of Orthodox Positivism Lacks Ethics and Measurement -- Neoinstitutionalism Shares in the Troubles -- Even the Best of Neoinstitutionalism Lacks Measurement -- And "Culture," or Mistaken History, Will Not Repair It -- That Is, Neoinstitutionalism, Like the Rest of Behavioral Positivism, Fails as History and as Economics -- As It Fails in Logic and in Philosophy -- Neoinstitutionalism, in Short, Is Not a Scientific Success -- Humanomics Can Save the Science -- But It's Been Hard for Positivists to Understand Humanomics -- Yet We Can Get a Humanomics -- And Although We Can't Save Private Max U -- We Can Save an Ethical Humanomics.
This book provides a major review of the state of international theory. It is focused around the issue of whether the positivist phase of international theory is now over, or whether the subject remains mainly positivistic. Leading scholars analyse the traditional theoretical approaches in the discipline, then examine the issues and groups which are marginalised by mainstream theory, before turning to four important new developments in international theory (historical sociology, post-structuralism, feminism, and critical theory). The book concludes with five chapters which look at the future of the subject and the practice of international relations. This survey brings together key figures who have made leading contributions to the development of mainstream and alternative theory, and will be a valuable text for both students and scholars of international relations.
Since its publication in 1982, Beyond Positivism has become established as one of the definitive statements on economic methodology. The book's rejection of positivism and its advocacy of pluralism were to have a profound influence in the flowering of work methodology that has taken place in economics in the decade since its publication. This edition contains a new preface outlining the major developments in the area since the book's first appearance. The book provides the first comprehensive treatment of twentieth century philosophy of science which emphasizes the issues relevant to economics. It proceeds to demonstrate this relevance by reviewing some of the key debates in the area. Having concluded that positivism has to be rejected, the author examines possible alternative bases for economic methodology. Arguing that there is no best method, he advocates methodological pluralism.
This work adopts the premise that the metatheoretical debates about positivists and post-positivists have reached an impasse; it suggests that an approach driven by theoretical reflexivity offers a basis on which alternative understandings of international relations can be developed.
Volume 36A of Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology features a symposium on Bruce Caldwell’s Beyond Positivism after 35 years. The volume also features general-research essays from Luis Mireles-Flores and Alain Marciano. Luca Fiorito presents a new discovery from the archives.
Laudan argues that the debate between positivists and post-positivist relativists can only be resolved by seeing that these unacceptable positions rest on the same unexamined set of assumptions. By targeting and critiquing these assumptions, he lays the groundwork for a post-positivist philosophy of science that does not provide aid and comfort to the enemies of reason.
This book provides an overview of qualitative research models and their applications in organization and management studies. Focusing on the philosophical underpinnings and practical implications of diverse qualitative methods, this comprehensive text offers a guided tour of the options available to qualitative researchers, highlighting aspects of research design, execution, and analysis in each tradition. In clear, readable prose, the author offers insight into the ambiguities, tensions, and interconnections of diverse qualitative research traditions without resorting to oversimplification. The book’s four main sections include examples and applications specifically designed for the field of management. Each chapter is devoted to a specific methodology, describing techniques and applications as well as current controversies and emerging issues. Summary boxes and practical examples will help the reader to navigate this terrain and generate research that is both relevant and of high scholarly quality. With its detailed and easy-to-understand coverage, this will be the text of choice for students working with qualitative methods in organization studies, consumer research, public administration, information systems, and media and communication studies. Instructors teaching qualitative approaches in a research methods course and researchers wanting to acquaint themselves with non-positivist traditions will also find this a useful resource.
This book discusses aspects of the theory and practice of qualitative research in the specific context of language and literacy education. It addresses epistemological perspectives, methodological problems, and practical considerations related to research involvements in areas of language education and literacy studies rather than generic issues of other fields of social sciences. The volume starts with Theoretical Considerations in the first part and raises some epistemological and theoretical concerns that are rarely debated in the specific context of research on language and literacy teaching. The second part, Methodological Approaches explores issues of the design and implementation of language and literacy education research within the framework of some of the major established qualitative research traditions. Finally, the part on Research in Action discusses practical aspects of a few actual instances of qualitative research on language and literacy education in different contexts.
Thomas Kuhn's celebrated work, 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' revolutionized thinking in the philosophy of science and to a large extent his 'paradigm shift' view has replaced logical positivism and the philosophy of Karl Popper. This book goes beyond Kuhn by explicating the non-deductive notion of 'paradigm shift' in terms of the new concept of representational space. In doing so, Edwin H.-C. Hung is able to produce the first-ever unitary theory that solves the five central problems in the philosophy of science: scientific explanation, the structure of scientific theories, incommensurability, scientific change and physical necessity. The book identifies the main task of science as representing reality. This involves the construction of a representational space and the subsequent modeling of reality with configurations of 'objects' in that space. Newton's mechanics, Einstein's relativity and quantum mechanics, then, all serve as representational spaces. 'Beyond Kuhn' is a significant progression in scientific methodology. Other than serving as a sequel to Kuhn's 'Scientific Revolutions', it will be of great use in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology and education.