Exploring the Epistemology and Methodology of Social Sciences: From Positivism to Complexity

The aim of the paper is to explore the main paradigms and methodology of social research, framing them in historical path and highlighting the epistemological foundations. It moves from reflection on research methodology as a ‘discourse of method’ to focus on the paradigmatic dimension of the social sciences, according to Kuhn’s meaning for which paradigm indicates a shared and recognized theoretical perspective within the scientific community. The paper highlights the role of paradigms in shaping theoretical and empirical inquiry. It further examines the positivist and neo-positivist paradigms, which emphasize observation and empirical verifiability, quantification, formulation of laws, and cause-and-effect relationships, arguing for the uniqueness of the scientific method. Lazarsfeld brings to the social sciences the language ‘of variables’, borrowed from mathematics and statistics. The distinction introduced by Windelband between ‘nomothetic’ and ‘idiographic’ sciences is followed by Weber’s elaboration of the concept of ‘Verstehen’, which shifts the focus to the understanding of social reality through the meanings that individuals attribute to their actions. The interpretive paradigm paves the way for qualitative research methods. Finally, the paper delves into the complexity paradigm, which challenges the reductionist and deterministic models of classical science and outlines an epistemological shift in the key notions of science, introducing concepts such as ‘emergence’, ‘auto-eco-organization’ and ‘recursive processes’. The complexity of social reality calls for a rethinking of sociological methods, favoring multidimensional and event-based analysis over statistical regularities, privileging observation, intervention and the ‘in vivo method’ on the level of empirical research. Complexity pushes sociology to redefine itself along with its object traditionally understood as ‘society’.

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