The Problematic of Method in the Social Sciences According to Karl Popper

Abstract

This study aims to analyze Karl Popper's philosophical approach to the social sciences method. which he addressed from an epistemological perspective that contributed to illuminating various aspects of the philosophy of the human sciences. Popper began this project by critiquing historicism in both of its forms: the first being the naturalist-positivist-inductivist approach, which holds that the method of the natural sciences can be applied to the social sciences, and that social phenomena can therefore be explained scientifically in the same way as natural phenomena. The second form is the anti-naturalist, contemplative approach, which denies the possibility of applying the natural sciences methodology to the social sciences, considering that human specificity makes social phenomena a subject of understanding only, not of scientific explanation, generalization, or scientific codification. Popper rejected both positions and instead proposed an alternative:  his deductive method, known as the falsification method. emphasizing its validity as a common methodological framework for both the natural and social sciences. It is a method capable of steering the social sciences away from subjectivity and towards rationality and objectivity.Bas du formulaire