Metodologie sociálních věd

This book focuses on the principal methodological problems in social sciences. At the beginning, it defines the main problem: the question of “commensurability and incommensurability” of social sciences with natural sciences. Does a statement in social sciences represent an explanation similar to that in natural sciences or is it rather a revelation of the meaning and understanding of social phenomena based on explanation of systems of rules? Does the nature of social knowledge lie in causal explanation or its interpretation? The search for answers to these questions is closely linked with the question of delaying the essence of cognition in social sciences, possible methods of construction of scientific theories and defining concepts, explanation and narration in the social sciences. Learning about social reality is possible through the means of explanation as well as through narration. This process produces two different scientific images of the world, which differ both in the methodological points of departure and different approach to the researched object as well as in the normative or non-normative nature of the scientific discourse. Explanation is based on the idea of the “nomological laws” as we know them from the non-normative methodology of social sciences. The question of narration is newly elaborated in a retrograde analysis. Although explanation and narration differ from each other, in scientific examination of social reality they can be used as two mutually complementary approaches of scientific cognition of society.