Abstract

Theoretical problems originally posed by science can be considered as constellations, observed by a philosophical discipline known as the philosophy of science. Methodology occupies the central position in such constellations. Thus, in order to grasp the modus operandi of science, the first step requires the determination of the significance of methodology, i.e., are the methodological categories significantly autonomous vis-a-vis the theoretical concepts? In scientific practice, theoretical concepts overdetermine all the scientific relevant issues including the methodological categories. In fact, the aforementioned "constellations" are the articulations of basically scientific issues by some basically philosophical homologies. ;Theoretical controversies in physics, as the result of the rise of modern physics, created a situation in this science being immediately labeled "crisis" by philosophers of science. As a matter of fact, it was this theoretical situation, detached from its concrete scientific contex, which provided the most important basis for the philosophy of science to grow. Now we witness precisely the same event taking place in social science. This "crisis" development in social science is the result of the increasingly widespread challenges to the once dominant theoretical system, i.e., empiricist social science. This state of "crisis" in social science has, interestingly enough, also paved the way for the emergence of the philosophy of social science. ;Humanism, as an ostensible alternative to positivist social science, has long argued that social science cannot become as scientific as natural science. Whatever justification it has for this claim, humanism has, in practice, legitimized the hold of positivism over social science--either by its overt irrationalist assertions, or by mediocre discourses, which never go beyond empiricism. ;The philosophical adventures of the philosophy of social science are based upon the familiar epistemological doctrines having a common denominator: an attempt to delineate the general forms of relations between "subject" and "object." This essentially abstract project poses ideological questions regarding the nature of scientific practice being essentially concrete. Scientific practice is free from two notions: subject and teleology, which are the matrix of ideological theoretical discourses. ;Ideology is the space of non-science or pre-science which is heterologous to that of science. Science becomes possible only as the result of a rupture from ideology. There is no external criterion capable of distinguishing science from ideology. For instance, mythologies are no less theoretical, or even predictive, than sciences. ;Being merely different instances of the problematic of empiricism, humanism and positivism pose ideological questions in social science. The reflections of the contemporary French intellectual movement--which has been superficially labeled structuralism--on social science have proved to be partially of great signification in the effort to break away from empiricist social science as a theoretical ideological discourse, i.e., for scientific social science