CMNS 260 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Causal Reasoning, Thomas Kuhn, Determinism
8 May 2018
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Chapter 1 – An Introduction to Inquiry
• Science: A body of knowledge about reality as well as a set of systematic methods for generating
this knowledge.
• Ageeet eality: What e ko as part and parcel of the culture we share with those
around us.
• Expeietial eality: What e ko fo personal experience and discovery.
• Concrete experience: The empirical experience of sensation including touch, taste, sight, smell,
and hearing.
• Percepts: Components of concrete experience.
• Abstract experience: Imaginary experience occurring in the mind.
• Concepts: Abstract terms for organizing sensory experience.
Social theories and concepts are used in developing research designs
• Social theory can be defined as a system of interconnected abstractions or ideas that condenses
and organizes knowledge about the social world.
• A concept is an idea expressed as a symbol or in words.
• Nealy all soial eseah ioles soe theoy. The uestio is ot if you use theoy, ut ho.
• Theory: A set of interrelated propositions providing a logical explanation of empirical regularities.
• Propositions: Statements (ideas) expressing the relationship between concepts.
• Values: Statements of what is ultimately preferable or desirable.
Logic & relations between theory and empirical research
• Testing theories through empirical observation (deductive)
• Using empirical observation to develop theories (inductive)
• Induction: A form of reasoning that moves from specific cases to the general case.
• Deduction: A form of reasoning that moves from the general principles to a specific case.
Social research and empirical observations
• Social research involves thinking scientifically about questions about the social world and
following scientific processes.
• Empirical research involves a process that includes topic selection, formulating a research
question, designing a way to interpreting data, communicating the results of the research
process in the form of arguments.
• Data is defined here as the empirical evidence of information that a person gathers carefully
according to established rules or procedures; it can be qualitative or quantitative.
• Empirical: the criterion requiring sensory experience as evidence.
• Methodology: A set of practices and techniques used to collect, process, and interpret
information aimed at enhancing our understanding of reality.
• Causal reasoning: The recognition that future circumstances are rooted in or conditioned by
present ones.
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