Abstract

After distinguishing "social philosophy" from "philosophy of social science" on the basis of the former's "more overtly normative" concerns and the latter's primary concern with methodological and confirmation issues in the social sciences, Rudner argues in support of the fully-formalized, axiomatic model of scientific theories and the deductive-nomological model of explanation as paradigms to guide the process of social scientific understanding; though, as Rudner willingly acknowledges, these paradigms hardly characterize the present product of the social sciences. Rudner's primary motivation is the desire to leave open the ideal of the "unity of science." Thus, he argues against such "separatist" approaches as the classical, verstehen theory of Weber, against the more recent wedding of this type of position to ordinary language philosophy in, especially, the work of Winch, and, finally, in the last chapter, against positions which employ teleological and functional analyses. This last chapter fails, mainly because Rudner uses "teleological" in an indiscriminate way, which is not at all characteristic of some of the more recent defenses of teleological explanation. In addition, Rudner ignores the question of the extent to which methodological commitments may reflect underlying ontological commitments, a level of analysis and justification which cannot be bypassed in any consideration of the type of unity envisioned for science.—E. A. R.