Social sciences, philosophy of

3. Contemporary movements

A third way in which to approach the subject is through the study of either contemporary movements and schools of philosophy, or specific philosophers, who bring a specific slant to the subdiscipline. Controversy marks the natural as well as the social sciences, but observers have noted that there seems to be even less consensus, even less of an agreed paradigm at any particular time, in the latter than in the former.

Critical reflection on society, or on social science, or both, is very different in France and Germany from the way it is in the English-speaking world. The problems are the same, but the traditions and the manner in which the discussions proceed are markedly distinctive. The hope is that each tradition may learn something from the other (see Social science, contemporary philosophy of; Behaviourism in the social sciences; Critical realism; Evolutionary theory and social science; Lévi-Strauss, C.; Naturalism in social science; Positivism in the social sciences; Post-structuralism in the social sciences; Scientific realism and social science; Sociology of knowledge; Structuralism in social science; Symbolic interactionism; Systems theory in social science; Bourdieu, P.; MacIntyre, A.; Schütz, A.).