atheoretical "foundation" of (scientific) knowledge, capable of arbitrating between
paradigms. Kuhn, as I understand him, sought to explain that different paradigms
comprehend and explain the world in ways that correspond, not to some illusory external
realm of "fact", but to the knowledge rules and linguistic conventions at their
(metatheoretical) heart. The notion of incommensurability, in this sense, sought to
establish the parameters for inter-paradigmatic comparison, rather than declare such
comparison impossible.
For all this, and for all its (controversial) impact upon social theory, the "post
positivist" voice of Kuhn has rarely been echoed, directly, in International Relations.
When it has been so utilised the results have been rather disappointing, and rarely has the
Kuhnian interest in "language communities" been afforded serious attention
.42There are,
of course, good reasons for Critical Social Theorists to be cautious about accepting the
Kuhnian arguments, given the feeling in some quarters that his arguments are not
necessarily "transferable" to social theory generally, and the lingering suspicion that a
commitment to scientism persists. And there is also the broader, and understandable,
concern about the whole paradigmatic structure, which perceives of thought and social
behaviour in terms of discrete, hermetically sealed, frameworks. Whatever else this
represents, it resonates with the same modernist tendencies which demarcated
"philosophy" from "science", "theory" from "practice", "subjects" from "objects",
"Realism" from "idealism" etc.
4 ^I refer here to the "paradigm” approach of some British International Relations scholarship in particular, which in Chapter Eight will receive more extended attention. On this issue see for example Michael Banks, "The Inter-Paradigm Debate", in International Relations: A Handbook of Current Theory edited by M. Light and A.J.R. Groom (London: Frances Pinter, 1985); Ernie Keenes, "Paradigms of International Relations: Bringing Politics Back In", International Journal 44 (1989), pp.42-67; and Mark Hoffman, "Critical Theory and the Inter-Paradigm Debate", Millennium 16 (1987), pp.231-249. I exclude Vasquez from this general critique, his Power of Power Politics, for all its silences did seek to take the Kuhnian position seriously.
This is acknowledged to some extent at least in another interesting "post positivist" perspective which has utilised Kuhnian, and general post-Kantian influences, to go beyond the Popperian dominated positivist agenda. This is the (mainly British) Scientific Realism of scholars such as Mary Hesse, Roy Bhaskar, Russell Keat and John Urry and Rom Harre, which is beginning to have an influence on the Third Debate in International Relations.43
Beyond Modernism and Positivism? riii): Scientific Realism
Scientific Realism has sought to fundamentally restructure thinking on philosophy of science issues, in particular, and social theory issues in general, in recent times. As part of this restructuring attempt it has attacked the whole positivist agenda, including its Popperian dimension, while developing an alternative approach to knowledge and society based on a form of critical hermeneutics. The Popper question is treated seriously in this literature, but very much as a lingering residue of a discredited Enlightenm ent epistem ology.44 Critical Rationalism, consequently, is conceived of as another (if high profile) contemporary variant of the Cartesian system of understanding. In this sense, and for all its protestations to the contrary, the fa ls ific a tio n s principle and the hypothetico-deductive approach in general, are perceived as derivatives of an atomistic ontology, a rationality based in "meaningful" propositions (connected to atomistic sense
4 3 See, for example, Mary Hesse, Revolutions and Reconstruction in the Philosophy o f Science: Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory o f Science 2nd ecL (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978); Bhaskar, The Possibility o f Naturalism (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1979); Bhaskar, "Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation", Radical Philosophy 26 (1980), pp. 16-28; Rom Harre, The Principles of Scientific Thinking (London: Macmillan, 1970); Russell Keat and John Urry, Social Theory as Science: (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975). For a useful overview o f this literature see Susan Hekman, Hermeneutics and the Sociology of Knowledge (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), pp.40-50. The best introduction to Scientific Realism in an International Relations context is by Josef Lapid in "The Third Debate: On the Prospects o f International Theory in a Post-Positivist Era", International Studies Quarterly 33(3) (1989), pp.235-254. For an individual work of the genre see Alexander Wendt, "The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory"; and Tooze "The Unwritten Preface".
im pressions) and "the belief that the ideal form for knowledge, and especially for scientific knowledge, is the deductive system".45
This is a view evident in the work of Mary Hesse who, more clearly than her Scientific Realist colleagues, has outlined an alternative "post-positivist" direction for the future, which seeks once and for all to move beyond even the most sophisticated of modem "scienticisms" as represented by Popperian positivism. The basis of this new direction lies in an inversion of the notion that there is a unity of method between the natural and social sciences. There is such a unity, Hesse has argued, but it is based in herm eneutic logic.46 More explicitly, Hesse's Scientific Realism has rejected the modernist axiom that posits a dichotomy between the (pure) knowledge of science and the (im pure) historically conditioned knowledge of social life. She has maintained, accordingly, that Western social theory can now release itself from the relentless search for a scientific knowledge of human society akin to that of the natural sciences, and begin to redirect its inquiries to the far more complex, but far more relevant, complexities of social interpretation. Indeed, in Hesse's view this process is already under way, in the extended social theory "conversation" of the 1980s. The crux of the conversation for Hesse, however, is the debate between those who, in a non-positivist manner, seek to carry forward some elements of the more sensitive Enlightenment approach to science (e.g. herself) and those (the'Telativists") who eschew any notion of a universal scientific rationality in any terms 47
This has been a central theme also in other Scientific Realist literature. An interesting variation on it is to be found in Roy Bhaskar's work. For the past decade or so Bhaskar has developed an argument in favour of a "restructured" science of social reality which goes beyond positivist dichotomy but which continues to acknowledge "real
Harre, The Principles of Scientific Thinking, p.8; see also Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science pp. 120-138.
4^Hesse, Revolutions and Reconstructions, pp. 170-174.