The pace of change in an ancient discipline such as philosophy is not rapid.
However, there have been developments in the philosophy of social science since Ian and I wrote the first edition of this book. In this set of comments, I have selected a small number of new works and topics that either open up further areas of controversy or promise to re-organize the field in some way.
Two substantial works seem to me to require more extensive discussion. Hutchinson, Read and Sharrocks (2008) trenchant defence of Peter Winch's attack on the very idea of a social science gives me an opportunity to take the discussion of Winch's crucially important work rather further than we (mainly Ian) were able to do in the first edition. Glynos and Howarth (2007), also influenced by a ‘Winchian' emphasis on meaning and interpretation, have provided us with a rigorous development of the philosophical underpinnings of the post-Marxist discourse theory pioneered by Laclau and Mouffe (1985). This is certainly a major new development in social and political analysis, and the philosophical development of it given by Glynos and Howarth demands a more detailed engagement than Ian and I were able to give in our Chapter 10 on the ‘posts'.Since the late 1970s, the development of critical realism has seemed to many (including both co-authors of this work) a promising way of overcoming the rather sterile opposition between hermeneutic and ‘scientific' or naturalistic orientations to the study of society. Critical realists drew on newer understandings of the history and explanatory methods of the natural sciences to argue that the social studies could be objective, even scientific, without conceding to a widely criticized ‘positivism'. However, it quickly emerged that there was no consensus even among those committed to a critical realist approach on how to take forward this prospect. In the decade or so since the first edition of this book, an extensive literature has developed in which rival versions of critical realism have engaged critically with one another.
At the same time, critical realists of various persuasions have been engaging with other traditions in philosophy of social science, and, more substantively, with some of the long-established theoretical issues in social science explanation. I have concluded this set of comments with an overview of some of the main themes and developments in this literature. Unavoidably, this is less detailed than the treatment of the texts by Hutchinson et al. and Glynos and Howarth, and is offered as a guide to further reading for those readers who wish to delve at greater depth.As mentioned in the preface to this edition, I have taken up the suggestion of one of the reviewers of the first. This commentary is somewhat more explicit in the stance it takes than was (and remains) the main body of the book. Nevertheless, my intention, at least, has been to treat positions with which I disagree respectfully and as generously as is feasible. Partly because of its somewhat more ‘committed’ style, readers may find this new material more demanding in level than is the rest of the book. It might be helpful to read, or re-read the relevant sections of the main part of the book first.