Contemporary philosophies of science and the qualitative paradigm in the social sciences

The aim of this article is to assess in which way recent developments in Anglo-American philosophy of science bear on the problem of the epistemological status of the qualitative” paradigm. The main thesis of the article is that important aspects of post-positivistic philosophy of science should be accepted as necessary philosophical underpinnings of the qualitative approach to social science research. The first section of the article is devoted to a brief discussion of ‘methodological naturalism’, that is, the view that research in the social sciences should be based on the model of the natural sciences. The second section is an argument in favour of a very ‘loose’ relationship between philosophical and methodological analyses of social science research — more specifically for ‘weak methodological naturalism’. In the next two sections some of the main points of the qualitative critique of positivism and recent developments in Anglo-American philosophy of science, respectively, are discussed. In the final section it is shown that the historicist thesis regarding the underdetermination of theories and the realist model of structural explanation are not only compatible with the epistemological values of the qualitative paradigm, but are in fact essential conditions for such an approach to research in the social sciences. S. Afr. J. Sociol. 1985, 16(3): 81–89 This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the International Conference on Research Methodology in the Social Sciences held at the University of Durban-Westville, 16-18 July 1984.