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| List of Figures | |
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| List of Tables | |
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| Preface and Acknowledgements | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Methodological Foundations | |
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| Naturalism | |
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| Constructivism | |
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| Scientific Realism | |
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| Chapter Outline and Logic | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| The Naturalist Philosophy of Science | |
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| The Birth of the Philosophy of Science | |
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| Francis Bacon and the Method of Induction | |
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| Locke, Hume and the Modern Philosophy of Knowledge | |
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| The Basic Assumptions of the Naturalist Methodology | |
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| On Doubt and Reductionism: The Cartesian Revolution | |
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| Post-Cartesian Developments: From Comte to Vienna | |
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| Logical Positivism | |
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| Karl Popper | |
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| Post-Popper | |
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| Recapitulation: The Naturalist Way of Knowing | |
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| The Broad Joists of the Naturalist Methodology | |
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| The Naturalist Hierarchy of Methods | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| The Experimental Method | |
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| The Logic at the Core of Experiments | |
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| Historical and Definitional Preliminaries | |
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| Galileo's Design | |
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| The Classic Design | |
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| Exemplary Illustrations | |
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| Ideological Innocence | |
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| Media Influence | |
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| Collective Action | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| The Statistical Method | |
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| Descriptive Statistics | |
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| Pioneers: Graunt, Petty and Conring | |
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| Basic Concepts and Examples | |
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| Inferential Statistics | |
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| Multivariate Analysis | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| The Comparative Method | |
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| The Methods of John Stuart Mill | |
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| The Method of Difference | |
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| The Method of Agreement | |
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| The Indirect Method of Difference | |
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| The Method of Concomitant Variation | |
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| Shortcomings | |
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| Over-determination | |
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| Sampling Bias | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| History, Interviews and Case Studies | |
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| The Historical Method | |
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| Leopold von Ranke | |
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| Barbara Tuchman | |
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| Criticism | |
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| Surveys, Polls and Interviews | |
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| The Case-Study Method | |
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| Types of Case Studies | |
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| On Case Selection | |
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| The Utility of Case Studies | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| Sowing Doubts About Naturalist Methodology | |
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| Ontological Doubts | |
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| The Natural World | |
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| The Social World and Its Paradoxes | |
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| Epistemological Doubts | |
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| Presuppositions | |
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| Meaning | |
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| Scientific Authority | |
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| An Example | |
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| Methodological Doubts | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| A Constructivist Philosophy of Science | |
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| On Natural and Other Worlds | |
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| The Awakening | |
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| On Pure Concepts and Natural Ideas | |
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| The World of Our Making | |
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| The Unwieldy World of William Whewell | |
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| Disparate Pieces to a New Philosophy of Science | |
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| The Role of History | |
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| The Impact of Society | |
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| The Role of Ideas | |
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| On Communication and Language | |
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| Recapitulation: A Constructivist Way of Knowing | |
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| The Constructivist Other | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| From Story Telling to Telling Histories | |
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| The Mysterious Ways of Miss Marple | |
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| On Eccentricities and Serendipities | |
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| Social Framing | |
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| Scholars and Society | |
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| Ethnomethodology: Explaining Context | |
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| Ideas Matter | |
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| From Mentalities to Discourse | |
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| Patterns of Communication | |
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| Imprisoned by Plots | |
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| Patterns in Time | |
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| Process Tracing | |
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| The Problem of Generations | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| Comparing Contexts | |
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| Apples and Oranges | |
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| Identifying Constructivist Comparisons | |
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| On Laws and Patterns | |
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| On Case Selection | |
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| On Data Selection | |
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| Constructivist Comparisons | |
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| Challenging the Old and Constructing the New | |
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| Leveraging Opportunities | |
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| Hermeneutic Understanding | |
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| Contrasting Us with Them | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| Contextualizing Statistics | |
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| The Dark Side of Statistics | |
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| A Second Look at Sir Francis Galton | |
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| Statistics Lack a Sense of Context | |
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| The Statistical Worldview | |
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| On the Bright Side | |
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| Descriptive Statistics and Quantitative Graphics | |
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| Bayesian Statistics | |
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| Social Patterns of Interest | |
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| Quantifying Discourse | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| Interpretive Experiments | |
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| Contextual Experiments | |
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| Group Effects | |
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| Pygmalion Effects | |
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| Generational Effects | |
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| Imaginary Journeys | |
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| Discovering Vinland | |
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| Mayan Decline | |
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| Social Thought Experiments | |
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| Action Research | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Recommended Further Reading | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| On Design | |
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| On Methodological Bridge-building | |
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| Rational Thought Experiments | |
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| Within-Case Approaches | |
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| On the Numerology Divide | |
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| References | |
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| Index | |