Introduction

Most debate in the philosophy of social science still works on the assumption that there are two basic options: positivism or some form of interpretivism. However, as we have seen (Chapter 4), there are alternative, non-empiricist views of the natural sciences, and there are also significant limitations to even a critical form of interpretivism, such as that offered by Habermas.

Although the implications of this ‘critical realist' approach for the conduct of the human sciences remain controversial, it has proved very fruitful in stimulating a new research agenda in a number of human sciences and interdisciplinary fields. The approach was pioneered by a number of writers in the UK during the 1970s. Rom Harres realist philosophy of the natural sciences was influential (Harre 1970, 1972, 1986; Harre and Madden 1975), as was the work of Mary Hesse on models and metaphors in scientific thinking (Hesse 1966). Roy Bhaskars Realist Theory of Science first appeared in 1975, while attempts to develop new ways of understanding the social sciences in realist terms included Russell Keat (1971), Keat and John Urry (1975), Ted Benton (1977, 2015) and Roy Bhaskar (1979, 1998). The work of Roy Bhaskar has provided the most systematically developed and influential version of the approach, especially in its account of the natural sciences. The implications of this for the social sciences are subject to more disagreement among critical realists, and we will attempt to convey something of the issues which remain unresolved. However, Bhaskars more recent development of an ambitious ‘dialectical’ philosophy and engagement with Eastern philosophies take us beyond the scope of this introductory book.

So, what is ‘realism’, and what is ‘critical’ about this version of it? In non-technical contexts of everyday life people often claim to be ‘realistic’, commonly meaning that they don’t have very high expectations of themselves, or of some activity they are about to engage in. The word often expresses a resigned and world-weary acceptance that the way things are can’t be expected to live up to our hopes and desires. (Something of this was evident in the shift to an approach called ‘New Realism’ in the UK trade union movement. This followed massive defeats in the 1980s, and signalled a new attitude of collaboration and compromise with the employers.) However, the term also comes into play in some art forms - the novel, painting, sculpture and drama especially. Here, realism often signals a contrast with fantasy, escapism, imagination, or generally non-representational forms of expression. In these contexts, adopting a ‘realist’ mode of expression may be motivated by quite the opposite of resigned acceptance. The school of British Victorian painters known as the ‘Social Realists’, for example, used detailed representational forms to bring home to the middle classes the suffering associated with poverty, unemployment and ill-health among the working classes of the period.

Critical realism takes something from both these uses of the term ‘realism’, but it also differs from them in important ways. It takes from the ‘resigned acceptance’ usage the latter’s clear recognition of the existence of an external world, independent of, and often defying, our desires of it and attempts to understand and change it. However, as the adjective ‘critical’ might suggest, critical realists tend to share the social realists’ commitment to changing unsatisfactory or oppressive realities. In this respect, at least, they inherit the Enlightenment’s optimistic view of the role of knowledge in human self­emancipation.

So, realists in the theory of knowledge are committed to the existence of a real world, which exists and acts independently of our knowledge or beliefs about it.

There are four features of critical realism which distinguish it from this caricature. First, critical realism holds that we can make sense of cognitive practices such as the sciences only on the assumption that they are about something which exists independently. It does not pronounce on whether the truth-claims of any particular science at any particular time are true - only the science concerned can make and evaluate such claims. Second, critical realism shares with most contemporary philosophy a reflexivity about the conditions of possibility for thought, or language, to represent something outside itself: as we will see, critical realism differs from empiricism in theorizing knowledge as a social process which involves variable ‘means of representation’. Third, critical realism differs from some other forms of realism in regarding the surface appearance of things as potentially misleading as to their true character. This is why knowledge has to be a process and an ‘achievement’: work has to be done to get beyond or behind misleading appearances. This is why it is sometimes called a ‘depth’ realism, as distinct from the ‘empirical’ realism of the empiricists. Finally, and most importantly, critical realist insistence on the independent reality of the objects of our knowledge, and the necessity of work to overcome misleading appearances, implies that current beliefs will always be open to correction in the light of further cognitive work (observations, experimental evidence, interpretations, theoretical reasoning, dialogue and so on). Critical realism is thus ‘fallibilist’, in contrast to idealist and relativist theories of knowledge which insulate themselves from the possibility of being proved wrong by doing away with the idea of a knowable independent reality.

We will begin by giving an account of the critical realist view of natural science, focusing in particular on the version pioneered by Roy Bhaskar. Then we will consider to what extent that view of natural science might provide a model for a ‘scientific’ but non-positivist approach to the social sciences.