The Questions
1.What is the ultimate purpose of conducting
social scientific research?The ultimate purpose of research is to obtain
scientific explanation—to discover and document
universal causal lawsof human behavior. As Turner
(1985:39) stated, the “social universe is amenable to
the development of abstract laws that can be tested
through the careful collection of data” and re-
searchers need to “develop abstract principles and
models about invariant and timeless properties of
the social universe.” Scientists engage in a never-
ending quest for knowledge. As we learn more and
discover new complexities, we still have more to
learn. Some versions of PSS maintain that humans
can never know everything: Only God possesses
such knowledge; however, God gave humans the
capacity for knowledge, and we have a duty to dis-
cover as much as we can.
2.What is the fundamental nature of social
reality?
Modern positivists adopt a realist ontology.
They hold that reality exists “out there” and is wait-
ing to be discovered. Human perception and intellect
may be flawed, and reality may be difficult to pin
down, but it exists, is patterned, and has a natural
order. Without this assumption (i.e., if the world
were chaotic and without regularity), logic and pre-
diction would be impossible. Science lets humans
discover this order and the laws of nature. “The
basic, observational laws of science are considered
to be true, primary and certain, because they are built
into the fabric of the natural world. Discovering a
law is like discovering America, in the sense that
THE MEANINGS OF METHODOLOGYboth are already waiting to be revealed” (Mulkay,
1979:21).
The assumptions of realist ontology (also called
essentialist, objectivist,or empirical realist) about re-
ality prevail in commonsense thinking, especially in
Anglo-European societies. The assumption is that
what we can see and touch (i.e., empirical reality) is
not overly complex. What we observe reflects the
deeper essence of things, people, and relations in the
world. It is a “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” or
“show-me” type of stance. Things are as they appear,
created out of a natural order of the world. Thus, race,
gender, and measurements of space and time just
“are.” This view has many implications. For example,
males commit more crime than females do because
of something involving their “maleness.” A related
assumption about time is that it is linear or flows in a
straight line. What happened in the past always dif-
fers somewhat from the present because time flows
in only one direction—forward to the future.
Other PSS assumptions are that social reality
is stable and our knowledge about reality is addi-
tive. While time flows, the core regularity in social
reality does not change, and laws we discover today
will hold in the future. The additive feature of
knowledge means we can study many separate parts
of reality one at a time, then add the fragments to-
gether to get a picture of the whole. Over time, we
add more and more knowledge, ever expanding our
understanding of the world.3.What is the basic nature of human beings?
PPS assumes that humans are self-interested,
pleasure-seeking/pain-avoiding, rational mam-
mals. A cause will have the same effect on every-
one. We can learn about people by observing their
behavior that we see in external reality. This is more
important than what happens in internal, subjective
reality. Sometimes, this is called a mechanical
model of manor a behaviorist approach. It means
that people respond to external forces that are as
real as physical forces on objects. Durkheim
(1938:27) stated, “Social phenomena are things
and ought to be studied as things.” This emphasis
on observable, external reality suggests that re-
searchers do not have to examine unseen, internal
motivations.Causal laws General cause–effect rules used in
causal explanations of social theory and whose
discovery is a primary objective of positivist social
science.
Mechanical model of man A model of human
nature used in positivist social science stating that
observing people’s external behaviors and document-
ing outside forces acting on them are sufficient to
provide adequate explanations of human thought and
action.