Realist Methodology and the Articulation of Modes of Production (ص 45)

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عنوان
Realist Methodology and the Articulation of Modes of Production (ص 45)
المحتوى
experimental activity has been exceedingly efficacious in
scientific practice, as one of the leading idealogues' of
positivist epistemology, Carl Hempel, has pointed out:
It is a remarkable fact... that the greatest
advances in science have not been accomplished by
laws referring explicitly to observables... but
rather by means of laws that speak of various
hypothetical or theoretical entities, i.e.
Presumptive objectives which cannot be perceived or
otherwise directly observed by us. (72)
The positivist does not conceptualise these “ "theoretical
entities" as depicting real phenomena which causally activate
the empirical phenomena we observe, rather s/he conceives
“theoretical entities" as "logical constructions" which
heuristically order the phenomena of the empirical world.
(73) This ordering procedure is a mental ordering of fact and
not a real ordering of events. This is a result of the basic
assumptions of positivist epistemology, which it shares with
empiricism in general, namely, concepts which transcend the
domain of experience of the empirical world have no
legitimate causal function. This has resulted in a_ critical
dilemma for those positivists, such as Hempel, who are quite
clearly aware of the efficaciousness of "theoretical
entities" to the advancement of scientific knowledge. (74)
One potential applicant for the resolution of the dilemma,
which theoretical entities present to positivist and
empiricist epistemology, is operationalism. (75)
Operationalism, while taking the basic tenets of empiricist
epistemology as incontrovertible, attempts to resolve’ the
Hy
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المنشئ
Alex Pollock

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