Abstract
Defenders of methodological singularism have traditionally sought to unify the natural and human sciences. Their traditional opponents insist that while explanation is appropriate to the natural sciences, interpretation should be the goal of the social sciences. Breaking from this tradition, the volume Designing Social Inquiry (henceforth KKV) largely ignores the natural sciences and interpretivism. The authors instead advocate a unified approach to explanation within the social sciences, arguing powerfully and provocatively that qualitative analysis should adopt the context-independent rules of valid inferences represented by quantitative analysis.
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© 2007 Richard Ned Lebow and Mark Irving Lichbach
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Waldner, D. (2007). Transforming Inferences into Explanations: Lessons from the Study of Mass Extinctions. In: Lebow, R.N., Lichbach, M.I. (eds) Theory and Evidence in Comparative Politics and International Relations. New Visions in Security. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230607507_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230607507_6
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