Critical realism
Encyclopedia
In the philosophy of perception
, critical realism is the theory that some of our sense-data (for example, those of primary qualities) can and do accurately represent external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense-data (for example, those of secondary qualities and perceptual illusions) do not accurately represent any external objects, properties, and events. Put simply, Critical Realism highlights a mind dependent aspect of the world, which reaches to understand (and comes to understanding of) the mind independent world.
Contemporary critical realism most commonly refers to a philosophical approach associated with Roy Bhaskar
. Bhaskar's thought combines a general philosophy of science
(transcendental realism) with a philosophy of social science
(critical naturalism) to describe an interface between the natural and social worlds. Critical realism can, however, refer to several other schools of thought, such as the work of the American critical realists (Roy Wood Sellars
, George Santayana
, and Arthur Lovejoy). The term has also been appropriated by theorists in the science-religion interface community. The Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan
developed a comprehensive critical realist philosophy and this understanding of critical realism dominates North America's Catholic
Universities.
and Descartes
, some sense-data, namely the sense-data of secondary qualities, do not represent anything in the external world, even if they are caused by external qualities (primary qualities). Thus it is natural to adopt a theory of critical realism.
By its talk of sense-data and representation, this theory depends on or presupposes the truth of representationalism
. If critical realism is correct, then representationalism would have to be a correct theory of perception.
), as well as to idealism
and pragmatism
. In very broad terms, American critical realism was a form of representative realism, in which there are objects that stand as mediators between independent real objects and perceivers.
One innovation was that these mediators aren't ideas (British empiricism), but properties, essences, or "character complexes."
, John Cook Wilson
, H. A. Prichard, H. H. Price
, and C. D. Broad.
. Bhaskar developed a general philosophy of science
that he described as transcendental realism, and a special philosophy of the human sciences that he called critical naturalism. The two terms were combined by other authors to form the umbrella term critical realism.
Transcendental realism attempts to establish that in order for scientific investigation to take place, the object of that investigation must have real, manipulable, internal mechanisms that can be actualised to produce particular outcomes. This is what we do when we conduct experiments. This stands in contrast to empiricist scientists' claim that all scientists can do is observe the relationship between cause and effect
and impose meaning. Whilst empiricism, and positivism more generally, locate causal relationships at the level of events, Critical Realism locates them at the level of the generative mechanism, arguing that causal relationships are irreducible to empirical constant conjunction
s of David Hume
's doctrine; in other words, a constant conjunctive relationship between events is neither sufficient nor even necessary to establish a causal relationship.
The implication of this is that science should be understood as an ongoing process in which scientists improve the concepts they use to understand the mechanisms that they study. It should not, in contrast to the claim of empiricists, be about the identification of a coincidence between a postulated independent variable and dependent variable. Positivism
/falsification
are also rejected due to the observation that it is highly plausible that a mechanism will exist but either a) go unactivated, b) be activated, but not perceived, or c) be activated, but counteracted by other mechanisms, which results in it having unpredictable effects. Thus, non-realisation of a posited mechanism cannot (in contrast to the claim of positivists) be taken to signify its non-existence.
Critical naturalism argues that the transcendental realist model of science is equally applicable to both the physical and the human worlds. However, when we study the human world we are studying something fundamentally different from the physical world and must therefore adapt our strategy to studying it. Critical naturalism therefore prescribes social scientific method which seeks to identify the mechanisms producing social events, but with a recognition that these are in a much greater state of flux than those of the the physical world (as human structures change much more readily than those of, say, a leaf). In particular, we must understand that human agency is made possible by social structures that themselves require the reproduction of certain actions/pre-conditions. Further, the individuals that inhabit these social structures are capable of consciously reflecting upon, and changing, the actions that produce them—a practice that is in part facilitated by social scientific research.
Critical realism has become an influential movement in British sociology
and social science in general as a reaction to, and reconciliation of, so-called "postmodern" critiques.
/relativism
/interpretivism
.
Since his development of critical realism, Bhaskar has gone on to develop a philosophical system he calls dialectical critical realism, which is most clearly outlined in his weighty book, Dialectic: the pulse of freedom.
Bhaskar is frequently criticized for the density and obscurity of his writing. That said, some readers may actually appreciate his meticulous linguistic precision, which can be time consuming to read, but read properly, it is possible to understand the precise and unambiguous meaning behind his writing. An accessible introduction was written by Andrew Collier. Andrew Sayer has written accessible texts on critical realism in social science. Danermark et al. have also produced an accessible account. Margaret Archer
is associated with this school, as is the ecosocialist writer Peter Dickens.
David Graeber
relies on critical realism, which he understands as a form of 'heraclitean' philosophy, emphasizing flux and change over stable essences, in his anthropological book on the concept of value, Toward an anthropological theory of value: the false coin of our own dreams.
Robert Willmott has developed the realist ("morphogenetic") social theory of Margaret Archer
in his Education Policy and Realist Social Theory: primary teachers, child-centred philosophy and the new managerialism, published by Routledge.
. Polanyi's ideas were taken up enthusiastically by T. F. Torrance whose work in this area has influenced many theologians calling themselves critical realists. This community includes John Polkinghorne
, Ian Barbour
, and Arthur Peacocke
. The aim of the group is to show that the language of science
and Christian theology
are similar, forming a starting point for a dialogue between the two. Alister McGrath
and Wentzel van Huyssteen (the latter of Princeton Theological Seminary) are recent contributors to this strand. N.T. Wright, New Testament
scholar and retired Bishop of Durham (Anglican) also writes on this topic:
N.T. Wright's fellow biblical scholar—James Dunn
—encountered the thought of Bernard Lonergan
as mediated through Ben Meyer. Much of North American critical realism—later used in the service of theology—has its source in the thought of Lonergan rather than Polanyi.
are trying to work the ideas of critical realism into economics, especially the dynamic idea of macro-micro interaction.
According to critical realist economists, the central aim of economic theory is to provide explanations in terms of hidden generative structures. This position combines transcendental realism
with a critique of mainstream economics
. It argues that mainstream economics (i) relies excessively on deductivist methodology, (ii) embraces an uncritical enthusiasm for formalism, and (iii) believes in strong conditional predictions in economics despite repeated failures.
The world that mainstream economists study is the empirical world. But this world is "out of phase" (Lawson) with the underlying ontology
of economic regularities. The mainstream view is thus a limited reality because empirical realists presume that the objects of inquiry are solely "empirical regularities"—that is, objects and events at the level of the experienced.
The critical realist views the domain of real causal mechanisms as the appropriate object of economic science, whereas the positivist view is that the reality is exhausted in empirical, i.e. experienced reality. Tony Lawson argues that economics ought to embrace a "social ontology" to include the underlying causes of economic phenomena.
, whom Göran Therborn
calls the 'most prolific of contemporary Marxist writers' in the UK, has argued for a 'critical realist' ontology in the philosophy of social science and explicitly acknowledges Bhaskar's influence (while also rejecting the latter's 'spiritualist turn' in his later work). The relationship between critical realist philosophy and Marxism has also been discussed in an article co-authored by Bhaskar and Callinicos and published in the Journal of Critical Realism
Philosophy of perception
The philosophy of perception is concerned with the nature of perceptual experience and the status of perceptual data, in particular how they relate to beliefs about, or knowledge of, the world. Any explicit account of perception requires a commitment to one of a variety of ontological or...
, critical realism is the theory that some of our sense-data (for example, those of primary qualities) can and do accurately represent external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense-data (for example, those of secondary qualities and perceptual illusions) do not accurately represent any external objects, properties, and events. Put simply, Critical Realism highlights a mind dependent aspect of the world, which reaches to understand (and comes to understanding of) the mind independent world.
Contemporary critical realism most commonly refers to a philosophical approach associated with Roy Bhaskar
Roy Bhaskar
Roy Bhaskar is a British philosopher, best known as the initiator of the philosophical movement of Critical Realism.-Early life:Bhaskar was born in Teddington, London, the elder of two brothers...
. Bhaskar's thought combines a general philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
(transcendental realism) with a philosophy of social science
Philosophy of social science
The philosophy of social science is the study of the logic and method of the social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology and political science...
(critical naturalism) to describe an interface between the natural and social worlds. Critical realism can, however, refer to several other schools of thought, such as the work of the American critical realists (Roy Wood Sellars
Roy Wood Sellars
Roy Wood Sellars was an American philosopher of critical realism and religious humanism, and a proponent of emergent evolution. His son was the philosopher Wilfrid Sellars...
, George Santayana
George Santayana
George Santayana was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States and identified himself as an American. He wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters...
, and Arthur Lovejoy). The term has also been appropriated by theorists in the science-religion interface community. The Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan
Bernard Lonergan
Fr. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, CC, SJ was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian widely regarded as one of the most important Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century....
developed a comprehensive critical realist philosophy and this understanding of critical realism dominates North America's Catholic
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
Universities.
Locke and Descartes
According to LockeJohn Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
and Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
, some sense-data, namely the sense-data of secondary qualities, do not represent anything in the external world, even if they are caused by external qualities (primary qualities). Thus it is natural to adopt a theory of critical realism.
By its talk of sense-data and representation, this theory depends on or presupposes the truth of representationalism
Direct and indirect realism
The question of direct or "naïve" realism, as opposed to indirect or "representational" realism, arises in the philosophy of perception and of mind out of the debate over the nature of conscious experience; the epistemological question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself...
. If critical realism is correct, then representationalism would have to be a correct theory of perception.
American critical realism
The American critical realist movement was a response both to direct realism (especially in its recent incarnation as new realismNew realism (philosophy)
New realism was a philosophy expounded in the early 20th century by a group of six US based scholars, namely Edwin Bissell Holt , Walter Taylor Marvin , William Pepperell Montague , Ralph Barton Perry , Walter Boughton Pitkin and Edward Gleason Spaulding .The central feature of the new...
), as well as to idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
and pragmatism
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
. In very broad terms, American critical realism was a form of representative realism, in which there are objects that stand as mediators between independent real objects and perceivers.
One innovation was that these mediators aren't ideas (British empiricism), but properties, essences, or "character complexes."
British realism
Similar developments occurred in Britain. Major figures included Samuel AlexanderSamuel Alexander
Samuel Alexander OM was an Australian-born British philosopher. He was the first Jewish fellow of an Oxbridge college.-Early life:...
, John Cook Wilson
John Cook Wilson
John Cook Wilson was an English philosopher. The only son of a Methodist minister, after Derby School he went up to Balliol College, Oxford in 1868, where he read both Classics and Mathematics, gaining a double First in both. Wilson became a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford in 1873...
, H. A. Prichard, H. H. Price
H. H. Price
Henry Habberley Price was a Welsh philosopher, known for his work on perception. He also wrote on parapsychology....
, and C. D. Broad.
General philosophy
Critical realism is presently most commonly associated with the work of Roy BhaskarRoy Bhaskar
Roy Bhaskar is a British philosopher, best known as the initiator of the philosophical movement of Critical Realism.-Early life:Bhaskar was born in Teddington, London, the elder of two brothers...
. Bhaskar developed a general philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
that he described as transcendental realism, and a special philosophy of the human sciences that he called critical naturalism. The two terms were combined by other authors to form the umbrella term critical realism.
Transcendental realism attempts to establish that in order for scientific investigation to take place, the object of that investigation must have real, manipulable, internal mechanisms that can be actualised to produce particular outcomes. This is what we do when we conduct experiments. This stands in contrast to empiricist scientists' claim that all scientists can do is observe the relationship between cause and effect
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
and impose meaning. Whilst empiricism, and positivism more generally, locate causal relationships at the level of events, Critical Realism locates them at the level of the generative mechanism, arguing that causal relationships are irreducible to empirical constant conjunction
Constant conjunction
"Constant conjunction" is a phrase used in philosophy as a variant or near synonym for causality and induction. It can be construed to contradict a more common phrase: Correlation is not causation...
s of David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
's doctrine; in other words, a constant conjunctive relationship between events is neither sufficient nor even necessary to establish a causal relationship.
The implication of this is that science should be understood as an ongoing process in which scientists improve the concepts they use to understand the mechanisms that they study. It should not, in contrast to the claim of empiricists, be about the identification of a coincidence between a postulated independent variable and dependent variable. Positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
/falsification
Falsification
Falsification may refer to:* The act of disproving a proposition, hypothesis, or theory: see Falsifiability* Mathematical proof* Falsified evidence...
are also rejected due to the observation that it is highly plausible that a mechanism will exist but either a) go unactivated, b) be activated, but not perceived, or c) be activated, but counteracted by other mechanisms, which results in it having unpredictable effects. Thus, non-realisation of a posited mechanism cannot (in contrast to the claim of positivists) be taken to signify its non-existence.
Critical naturalism argues that the transcendental realist model of science is equally applicable to both the physical and the human worlds. However, when we study the human world we are studying something fundamentally different from the physical world and must therefore adapt our strategy to studying it. Critical naturalism therefore prescribes social scientific method which seeks to identify the mechanisms producing social events, but with a recognition that these are in a much greater state of flux than those of the the physical world (as human structures change much more readily than those of, say, a leaf). In particular, we must understand that human agency is made possible by social structures that themselves require the reproduction of certain actions/pre-conditions. Further, the individuals that inhabit these social structures are capable of consciously reflecting upon, and changing, the actions that produce them—a practice that is in part facilitated by social scientific research.
Critical realism has become an influential movement in British sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and social science in general as a reaction to, and reconciliation of, so-called "postmodern" critiques.
Developments
Since Bhaskar made the first big steps in popularising the theory of critical realism in the 1970s, it has become one of the major strands of social scientific method - rivalling positivism/empiricism, and post-structuralismPost-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
/relativism
Relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....
/interpretivism
Interpretivism
Interpretivism is a school of thought in contemporary jurisprudence and the philosophy of law. The main claims of interpretivism are that*Law is not a set of given data, conventions or physical facts, but what lawyers aim to construct or obtain in their practice. This marks a first difference...
.
Since his development of critical realism, Bhaskar has gone on to develop a philosophical system he calls dialectical critical realism, which is most clearly outlined in his weighty book, Dialectic: the pulse of freedom.
Bhaskar is frequently criticized for the density and obscurity of his writing. That said, some readers may actually appreciate his meticulous linguistic precision, which can be time consuming to read, but read properly, it is possible to understand the precise and unambiguous meaning behind his writing. An accessible introduction was written by Andrew Collier. Andrew Sayer has written accessible texts on critical realism in social science. Danermark et al. have also produced an accessible account. Margaret Archer
Margaret Archer
Margaret Archer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK, since 1973. She is best known for coining the term elisionism in her 1995 book Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach....
is associated with this school, as is the ecosocialist writer Peter Dickens.
David Graeber
David Graeber
David Rolfe Graeber is an American anthropologist and anarchist who currently holds the position of Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He was an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, although Yale controversially declined to rehire him, and his...
relies on critical realism, which he understands as a form of 'heraclitean' philosophy, emphasizing flux and change over stable essences, in his anthropological book on the concept of value, Toward an anthropological theory of value: the false coin of our own dreams.
Robert Willmott has developed the realist ("morphogenetic") social theory of Margaret Archer
Margaret Archer
Margaret Archer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK, since 1973. She is best known for coining the term elisionism in her 1995 book Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach....
in his Education Policy and Realist Social Theory: primary teachers, child-centred philosophy and the new managerialism, published by Routledge.
Theological critical realism
Critical realism is employed by a community of scientists turned theologians. They are influenced by the scientist turned philosopher Michael PolanyiMichael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi, FRS was a Hungarian–British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and the theory of knowledge...
. Polanyi's ideas were taken up enthusiastically by T. F. Torrance whose work in this area has influenced many theologians calling themselves critical realists. This community includes John Polkinghorne
John Polkinghorne
John Charlton Polkinghorne KBE FRS is an English theoretical physicist, theologian, writer, and Anglican priest. He was professor of Mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1979, when he resigned his chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained Anglican priest...
, Ian Barbour
Ian Barbour
Ian Graeme Barbour, born 5 October 1923, is an American scholar on the relationship between science and religion. According to the Public Broadcasting Service his mid-1960s Issues in Science and Religion "has been credited with literally creating the contemporary field of science and religion."In...
, and Arthur Peacocke
Arthur Peacocke
The Reverend Canon Arthur Robert Peacocke MBE was a British theologian and biochemist.-Biography:Arthur Robert Peacocke was born at Watford in on 29 November 1924...
. The aim of the group is to show that the language of science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and Christian theology
Christian theology
- Divisions of Christian theology :There are many methods of categorizing different approaches to Christian theology. For a historical analysis, see the main article on the History of Christian theology.- Sub-disciplines :...
are similar, forming a starting point for a dialogue between the two. Alister McGrath
Alister McGrath
Alister Edgar McGrath is an Anglican priest, theologian, and Christian apologist, currently Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at Kings College London and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture...
and Wentzel van Huyssteen (the latter of Princeton Theological Seminary) are recent contributors to this strand. N.T. Wright, New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
scholar and retired Bishop of Durham (Anglican) also writes on this topic:
… I propose a form of critical realism. This is a way of describing the process of "knowing" that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence "realism"), while fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiralling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence "critical"). (The New Testament and the People of God, p. 35)
N.T. Wright's fellow biblical scholar—James Dunn
James Dunn
James Dunn, Jim Dunn or Jimmy Dunn may refer to:James Dunn:*James Dunn , an actor who performed in Bad Girl and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn*James Dunn , Australian Senator...
—encountered the thought of Bernard Lonergan
Bernard Lonergan
Fr. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, CC, SJ was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian widely regarded as one of the most important Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century....
as mediated through Ben Meyer. Much of North American critical realism—later used in the service of theology—has its source in the thought of Lonergan rather than Polanyi.
Critical realism in economics
Heterodox economists like Tony Lawson, Frederic Lee or Geoffrey HodgsonGeoffrey Hodgson
Geoffrey M. Hodgson is a Research Professor of Business Studies in the University of Hertfordshire, and also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics.Prof...
are trying to work the ideas of critical realism into economics, especially the dynamic idea of macro-micro interaction.
According to critical realist economists, the central aim of economic theory is to provide explanations in terms of hidden generative structures. This position combines transcendental realism
Transcendental Realism
Transcendental realism is a concept stemming from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant that implies individuals have a perfect understanding of the limitations of their own minds.-Kantian roots:...
with a critique of mainstream economics
Mainstream economics
Mainstream economics is a loose term used to refer to widely-accepted economics as taught in prominent universities and in contrast to heterodox economics...
. It argues that mainstream economics (i) relies excessively on deductivist methodology, (ii) embraces an uncritical enthusiasm for formalism, and (iii) believes in strong conditional predictions in economics despite repeated failures.
The world that mainstream economists study is the empirical world. But this world is "out of phase" (Lawson) with the underlying ontology
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
of economic regularities. The mainstream view is thus a limited reality because empirical realists presume that the objects of inquiry are solely "empirical regularities"—that is, objects and events at the level of the experienced.
The critical realist views the domain of real causal mechanisms as the appropriate object of economic science, whereas the positivist view is that the reality is exhausted in empirical, i.e. experienced reality. Tony Lawson argues that economics ought to embrace a "social ontology" to include the underlying causes of economic phenomena.
Critical realism and Marxism
A development of Bhaskar's critical realism lies at the ontological root of contemporary streams of Marxist political and economic theory. The realist philosophy described by Bhaskar in A Realist Theory of Science is compatible with Marx's work in that it differentiates between an intransitive reality, which exists independently of human knowledge of it, and the socially produced world of science and empirical knowledge. This dualist logic is clearly present in the Marxian theory of ideology, according to which social reality may be very different from its empirically observable surface appearance. Notably, Alex CallinicosAlex Callinicos
Alexander Theodore Callinicos is a Trotskyist political theorist, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party and its International Secretary, and is Director of the Centre for European Studies at King's College London...
, whom Göran Therborn
Göran Therborn
Göran Therborn is a professor of sociology at Cambridge University and is amongst the most highly cited contemporary Marxian-influenced sociologists. He has published widely in journals such as the New Left Review, and is notable for his writing on topics that fall within the general political and...
calls the 'most prolific of contemporary Marxist writers' in the UK, has argued for a 'critical realist' ontology in the philosophy of social science and explicitly acknowledges Bhaskar's influence (while also rejecting the latter's 'spiritualist turn' in his later work). The relationship between critical realist philosophy and Marxism has also been discussed in an article co-authored by Bhaskar and Callinicos and published in the Journal of Critical Realism
See also
- Structure and agencyStructure and agencyThe question over the primacy of either structure or agency in human behavior is a central debate in the social sciences. In this context, "agency" refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. "Structure", by contrast, refers to the recurrent...
- Philosophy of social sciencePhilosophy of social scienceThe philosophy of social science is the study of the logic and method of the social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology and political science...
- Transformative Studies InstituteTransformative Studies InstituteThe Transformative Studies Institute is an independent 501 nonprofit educational think tank based in the United States. It “was created to provide an inclusive educational space for research and practice for social justice by academics, community organizers, activists, and political leaders”...
Further reading
- Archer, M., Bhaskar, R., Collier, A., Lawson, T. and Norrie, A., 1998, Critical Realism: Essential Readings, (London, Routledge).
- Bhaskar, R., 1975 [1997], A Realist Theory of Science: 2nd edition, (London, Verso).
- Bhaskar, R., 1998, The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences: Third Edition, (London, Routledge)
- Bhaskar, R., 1993, Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, (London, Verso).
- Coelho, Ivo, 2010. "Critical Realism." ACPI Encyclopedia of PhilosophyACPI Encyclopedia of PhilosophyThe ACPI Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an encyclopedia of philosophy produced by the Association of Christian Philosophers of India , with Johnson J. Puthenpurackal as Editor-in-Chief and George Panthanmackel as Associate Editor...
. Ed. Johnson J. Puthenpurackal. (Bangalore, ATC).1:341-344. - Collier, A, 1994, Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar's Philosophy, (London, Verso).
- Lonergan, B. 1957. "Insight", (London, DTL).
- Lopez, J. and Potter, G., 2001, After Postmodernism: An Introduction to Critical Realism, (London, The Athlone Press).
- Losch, A., 2009. On the Origins of Critical Realism. Theology & Science vol. 7 no.1, 85-106
- McGrath, A. E., 2001, A Scientific Theology, (London, T&T Clark)
- Meyer, B. 1989 "Critical Realism and the New Testament", (San Jose, Pickwick Publications)
- Page, J. 2003 'Critical Realism and the Theological Science of Wolfhart Pannenberg: Exploring the Commonalities'. Bridges: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, Theology, History and Science 10(1/2):pp. 71–84
- Polkinghorne, J, 1991, Reason and Reality: The Relationship between science and theology, (London, SPCK)
- Polkinghorne, J., and Oord, T.J., 2010, * The Polkinghorne Reader
] : Science, Faith, and the Search for Meaning (SPCK and Templeton Foundation Press) ISBN 1-59947-315-1 and ISBN 978-0-281-06053-5 - Sayer, A. (1992) Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach, (London, Routledge)
- Sayer, A. (2000) Realism and Social Science, (London, Sage)
- Willmott, R. (2002) Education Policy and Realist Social Theory, (London, Routledge)
External links
- Chapter XI: Realism (Introduction to Philosophy by Dallas M. Roark)
- Critical Realism (philosophypages.com)