Social Science: A Constructivist Account

Abstract What sort of inquiry is social science? This question used to preoccupy philosophers, but fell off their agenda due to a stalemate between so-called naturalists, who took the ideal to benatural science, and exceptionalists, who allied social sciences with the humanities. I show that both positions commit the error of contrastivism, namely, defining social science in contrast to these two traditions, which inevitably ends up caricaturing them. Using recent advances in philosophy, I formulate constructivism about social sciences, a view that denies an essence to this inquiry and grounds it in the needs of communities to understand and improve themselves.