The current controversy over the scientific nature of the social sciences

Abstract

The purpose of this text is to present a collective review –in comparative terms– of a certain number of authors who have recently dealt with the epistemological nature of the social sciences. They are authors that belong, on the one hand, to the Anglo school of thought –most of them philosophers who cultivate the so-called philosophy of science– and, on the other hand, authors of the French tradition –sociologists who have developed the epistemology of the social sciences following the tradition of Canguilhem and Bachelard–. The external, normative and naturalistic epistemology of the new English speaking philosophers of the social sciences is compared with that of the internal, descriptive and analytical epistemology of the French school, highlighting their similarities and differences.