BOOK REVIEW. „FUNDAMENTELE METODOLOGICE ALE ȘTIINȚELOR SOCIALE” [‟THE METHODOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES”], BY TRAIAN ROTARIU. IAȘI: POLIROM, 2016, 235 P.

Abstract

Traian Rotariu's The Methodological Foundations of the Social Sciences is a contribution to the epistemological foundation of sociology. It is the work of a scholar who ponders on his four decades of research work and evaluates the transformation of the sociological field since the 1970s. The six chapters approach major epistemological issues, covering the central dichotomies which have organized from the end of the 19^th century the debates in the field around the scientific nature of sociology as a discipline: idiographic and nomothetic, qualitative and quantitative data, individualism and holism, realism and constructivism, methodological monism and dualism. The book is construed as a polemical engagement with the postmodernist attacks on science and, especially, with the various trends of postmodernism in sociology. The old dichotomies are repurposed to put in perspective the criticism on the rationality of science and give a firmer foundation to the contemporary sociological endeavours as a coherent collective scientific project.