Suchergebnisse

Briefly sketches the history of formal education in major institutes and professional associations and international co-operation in the social sciences in Ireland. Concludes that its development has been relatively late, slow and small when compared with the metropolitan countries of Europe. (GAW)

A review essay on books by (1) Kim S. Cameron, Jane E. Dutton, & Robert E. Quinn (Eds), Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Disciple (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003); (2) Howard Gardner, Milhaly Csikszentmihalyi, & William Damon, Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meets (New York: Basic, 2001); & (3) Martin E. P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness (New York: Free Press, 2002). 41 References.

The debate on the scientific status of the Social Sciences and their bid to achieve objectivity in their inquiries is an unending debate within and outside the Social Science family. The positivists are of the opinion that objectivity in Social Science is achievable and that scientific methods can be used in Social Science inquiry, just the same or similar way(s) the natural scientists do their scientific endeavor. To the positivists 'value-free Social Science' is possible. This position is however criticized even within the Social Sciences, let alone in the scientific world. All these debates centered on whether or not the Social Scientists are truly scientific in their quest for knowledge. No matter the outcome of the debate what is obvious is that there is a philosophical problem with scientific objectivity in general. Based on a historical review of the development of certain scientific theories, in his book, 'the Structure of scientific revolutions', a scientist and a historian Thomas Kuhn raised some philosophical objections to claims of the possibility of scientific understanding being truly objective. Against this backdrop, the paper seeks to unravel the varied theoretical debates on the subject.