Philosophy of social science, properly conceived, has something to offer practicing social scientists. Social scientists cannot help but have some philosophy of social science implicitly involved in their research, and to avoid blind alleys, it is best to be explicit and critically aware of what that philosophy is and its merits. Philosophy of the social sciences, in turn, cannot be done without close engagement with social research. The article outlines some developments in postpositivist philosophy of science and their implications for philosophy of social science. This general perspective is then applied to debates in the social sciences over the nature of causation, the place of mechanisms in social research and the legitimacy of purely macrosociological explanations, qualitative vs. quantitative research, observational vs. experimental evidence, and questions about individualism vs. holism in social explanation.
Philosophy of science; Philosophy of social sciences; Causation; Explanation
