Editing Philosophy of science (section)

===Philosophy of social science===
{{Main|Philosophy of social science}}
The philosophy of social science is the study of the logic and method of the [[social sciences]], such as [[sociology]] and [[cultural anthropology]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Martin |last=Hollis |author-link=Martin Hollis (philosopher)|year=1994 |title=The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction|publisher=Cambridge|isbn=978-0-521-44780-5 }}</ref> Philosophers of social science are concerned with the differences and similarities between the social and the [[natural science]]s, causal relationships between social phenomena, the possible existence of social laws, and the [[ontology|ontological]] significance of [[structure and agency]].

The French philosopher, [[Auguste Comte]] (1798–1857), established the epistemological perspective of [[positivism]] in ''The Course in Positivist Philosophy'', a series of texts published between 1830 and 1842. The first three volumes of the ''Course'' dealt chiefly with the [[natural sciences]] already in existence ([[geoscience]], [[astronomy]], [[physics]], [[chemistry]], [[biology]]), whereas the latter two emphasised the inevitable coming of [[social science]]: "''[[sociology|sociologie]]''".<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/ |title=Stanford Encyclopaedia: Auguste Comte |access-date=2010-01-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171011041841/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/ |archive-date=2017-10-11 |url-status=live }}</ref> For Comte, the natural sciences had to necessarily arrive first, before humanity could adequately channel its efforts into the most challenging and complex "Queen science" of human society itself. Comte offers an evolutionary system proposing that society undergoes three phases in its quest for the truth according to a general '[[law of three stages]]'. These are (1) the ''theological'', (2) the ''metaphysical'', and (3) the ''positive''.<ref>{{cite book|last=Giddens|title=Positivism and Sociology|first = Anthony|publisher = Heinemann |date = 1974|isbn = 978-0435823405}}</ref>

Comte's positivism established the initial philosophical foundations for formal sociology and [[social research]]. [[Durkheim]], [[Marx]], and [[Max Weber|Weber]] are more typically cited as the fathers of contemporary social science. In [[psychology]], a positivistic approach has historically been favoured in [[behaviourism]]. Positivism has also been espoused by '[[Technocracy (bureaucratic)|technocrats]]' who believe in the inevitability of [[social progress]] through science and technology.<ref>Schunk, ''Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective'', 5th, 315</ref>

The positivist perspective has been associated with '[[scientism]]'; the view that the methods of the natural sciences may be applied to all areas of investigation, be it philosophical, social scientific, or otherwise. Among most social scientists and historians, orthodox positivism has long since lost popular support. Today, practitioners of both social and physical sciences instead take into account the distorting effect of observer [[bias]] and structural limitations. This scepticism has been facilitated by a general weakening of deductivist accounts of science by philosophers such as [[Thomas Kuhn]], and new philosophical movements such as [[critical realism (philosophy of the social sciences)|critical realism]] and [[neopragmatism]]. The philosopher-sociologist [[Jürgen Habermas]] has critiqued pure [[instrumental rationality]] as meaning that scientific-thinking becomes something akin to [[ideology]] itself.<ref>Outhwaite, William, 1988 ''Habermas: Key Contemporary Thinkers'', Polity Press (Second Edition 2009), {{ISBN|978-0-7456-4328-1}} p. 68</ref>