The present-day epistemology of social science resembles a picture puzzle whose pieces are scattered to and fro across the vast domain of philosophical inquiry. This study attempts to assemble them in what appears to be a common thread of thinking for a necessary epistemic reconstruction, the historical specificity of social sciences. This understanding reveals itself as a method of validating truth in acknowledgement of three logical principles: (1) causality indeterminately becomes embedded in spatial—temporal distortions; (2) linear time is replaced by (...) multiple, overlapping timescales, ‘multiple’ being a cultural rather than numerical concept; and (3) prediction remains associated with the least historical events, the particulars; that is, event-regularities normally specific for short periods of time. (shrink)

When Tooby and Cosmides published their famous article “Psychological foundation of culture”, most readers could read it as just another paper addressing evolutionary psychology. Its aspirations were, however, much far-reaching. Tooby and Cosmides attacked the so-called constructivists. In this way, the paper ushered in another turn in the controversy over the method of social sciences. In my paper I claim that Tooby and Cosmides are right when they criticize constructivists and relativists. On the other hand, I claim that they do (...) not live up to their aspirations, i.e. they do not provide for a rapprochement of the standards of social sciences and those of natural sciences. (shrink)