Repository | Book | Chapter

The essence of social science

Jonathan Tuckett

pp. 109-134

Now that we know what proper phenomenology is, the next task is to show that proper phenomenology conforms to the idea of genuine social science as the pursuit of nonpractical knowledge about "man" in situation and therefore capable of being a philosophy of social science. But in order to say that phenomenology is social scientific we also need to be able to say what this idea of genuine social science is in a more formal sense. This requires we give some formal expression to the "scientific way of thinking". In following the argument, of the previous chapter, this chapter will develop the notion of genuine social science as a particular type of cognitive style and province of meaning. To discern this eidetic structure, I will clarify and amend Alfred Schutz's postulates of social science. Schutz never stated all the postulates in a single essay, or at the least, never in a way which kept terminology consistent. Thus, at various times different postulates were referred to by different names. Amendments are necessary in order to avoid confusions that have since arisen with some of the more general terminology that Schutz relies upon.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-92120-4_4

Full citation:

Tuckett, J. (2018). The essence of social science, in The idea of social science and proper phenomenology, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 109-134.

This document is unfortunately not available for download at the moment.