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  1. Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science.Mary S. Morgan & Margaret Morrison (eds.) - 1999 - Cambridge University Press.
    Models as Mediators discusses the ways in which models function in modern science, particularly in the fields of physics and economics. Models play a variety of roles in the sciences: they are used in the development, exploration and application of theories and in measurement methods. They also provide instruments for using scientific concepts and principles to intervene in the world. The editors provide a framework which covers the construction and function of scientific models, and explore the ways in which they (...)
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  • Foucault and his interlocutors.Arnold Ira Davidson (ed.) - 1997 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    Containing the debate between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky on epistemology and politics, this book also features the most significant essays by the most important French thinkers who influenced and were influenced by Foucault. Foucault's teachers, colleagues, and collaborators take up his major claims, from his first to final works, and provide us with the authoritative context in which to understand Foucault's writings. This volume also includes several important works by Foucault previously unpublished in English. The other contributors are Georges (...)
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  • The conditions of fruitfulness of theorizing about mechanisms in social science.Arthur L. Stinchcombe - 1991 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 21 (3):367-388.
    Mechanisms in a theory are defined here as bits of theory about entities at a different level (e.g., individuals) than the main entities being theorized about (e.g., groups), which serve to make the higher-level theory more supple, more accurate, or more general. The criterion for whether it is worthwhile to theorize at lower levels is whether it makes the theory at the higher levels better, not whether lower-level theorizing is philosophically necessary. The higher-level theory can be made better by mechanisms (...)
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  • Introductory remarks to Pierre Hadot.Arnold I. Davidson - 1997 - In Arnold Ira Davidson (ed.), Foucault and his interlocutors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 195--202.
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  • Explanatory and non-explanatory goals in the social sciences: A reply to Reiss.Thomas Brante - 2008 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 38 (2):271-278.
    The paper has three aims. First, to show that Julian Reiss' critique of what he calls the New Mechanist Perspective in the social sciences is built on a number of misconceptions; second, to provide some arguments for the need of reflections and discussions about common and "ultimate" goals for the social sciences; and third, to suggest a focus on mechanisms as one such viable goal. Key Words: social science • goals • explanations • mechanisms.
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  • Consequences of realism for sociological theory-building.Thomas Brante - 2001 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 31 (2):167–195.
    It is argued that the Achilles heel of contemporary sociology-and great parts of social science-is a) weak theory development, and b) absence of a meta-theory providing a common platform and a shared goal for its practitioners, fostering cumulativity. A meta-theory called causal realism (a variant of critical realism) is suggested for these purposes. The main tenets and key concepts of realism, such as causality and explanation, mechanism, stratified reality, are presented. Thereafter, via an anology to the physical sciences, it is (...)
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