Description
Book SynopsisFollowing on from Roy Bhaskar's first two books, A Realist Theory of Science and The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, establishes the conception of social science as explanatoryand thence emancipatorycritique.
Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation starts from an assessment of the impasse of contemporary accounts of science as stemming from an incomplete critique of positivism. It then proceeds to a systematic exposition of scientific realism in the form of transcendental realism, highlighting a conception of science as explanatory of a structured, differentiated and changing world.
Turning to the social domain, the book argues for a view of the social order as conditioned by, and emergent from, nature. Advocating a critical naturalism, the author shows how the transformational model of social activity together with the conception of social science as explanatory critique which it entails, resolves th
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"Roy Bhaskar is one of the most original and versatile philosophers of the post-war generation, and one of the very few whose work has had a really lasting and world-wide impact." --William Outhwaite (Times Higher Education Supplement 1986)
"Roy Bhaskar’s work stands comparison with the work of the contemporary giants of philosophy on the continent . . . a unique achievement, and it will no doubt be at the centre of discussion, both English and continental, for some time to come." --Roy Edgley
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Table of ContentsPreface, Introduction, Chapter One — Scientific Realism and the Aporias of Contemporary Philosophy, Chapter Two — Critical Naturalism and the Dialectic of Human Emancipation, Chapter Three — The Positivist Illusion: Sketch of a Philosophical Ideology at Work, Index
