Causality, Acausality and the Implicate Order

Abstract

In chapters 2 and 3 I have concentrated primarily on the epistemological context of realist knowledge claims. That is, I have dealt with such things as the origins, the scope, the nature and validity of knowledge produced under the auspices of realism. In this chapter, I want to begin to address some primarily ontological issues. In chapter 1 I suggested that the realist model (or models) of social ontology unnecessarily constricts the domain of legitimate explanation in the social sciences and as a consequence, narrows its explanatory scope. In chapter 5 I shall argue more generally for an extension of the model of social ontology and outline some specific recommendations. Here I shall concentrate on one particular ontological feature which does not appear in the realist scheme of things; that is, the notion of an implicate order.