Public Health Research From a Theoretical Scientific Perspective
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: Different scientific traditions represent different epistemological perspectives, and the scientific perspective that you advocate will govern the way in which you view what is being investigated, e.g. a natural science approach would have a completely different focus from a social science one. Since the 1600s, the heyday of rationalism, and towards the twenty-first century, different philosophical directions have developed either as a result of the historical–cultural context of which the philosophers have been a part, or as a reaction to the worldview and/or the dominant political situation in society at the current time. Based on clear connections with both rationalism and empiricism, in this paper I attempt to clarify public health research by a more extended understanding of the concept of rationalism. The discussion is based on Bent Flyvbjerg’s book Rationality and Power (1991), in which the author reflects on how the criteria of good science were seen in the light of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues. The essence in Flyvbjerg’s analysis can be seen as social science research needing to distance itself from approaches using natural science’s episteme (knowledge), rather than initiating creative thought processes to develop satisfying methods to investigate humans and society in the direction of phronesis (wisdom).
Author: Svein Barene
Language: English
Subfield: General Social Sciences
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2184937592