The Lively Science is Michael Agar's accessible, idiosyncratic, often humorous, and sometimes controversial explication of his own polestar truth: "Research on humans in their social world by other humans is not a traditional science like the one created by Galileo and Newton." However, if the social world is not a lab, neither is it a collection of random events.
The book lays out a clear, straightforward path to carrying out the basic scientific tasks of forming questions and answering them to explore and account for that non-randomness. The author deploys myriad engaging examples drawn from a lifetime of applied and basic research to demonstrate how human science researchers can produce discoveries that are scientifically defensible and useful in the real world. Agar grounds his how-to guide in an approachable discussion of epistemology and draws on thinkers whose writings may be unfamiliar to many social scientists. He blends that work with new intellectual tools, such as complexity theory, disasters research, and conversational analysis. The result is an innovative and practical methodology that is true to the realities and surprises of research by and about humans, yet preserves scientific standards of falsifiability, empiricism, logic, and systematic presentation of results.
This book represents the best of Michael Agar's visionary work. With a new foreword by Michael Brown celebrating Agar's enormous contribution to social science methodology, The Lively Science is for all researchers who seek to explore the full potential of a human social science.
Author(s): Michael Agar
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2021
Cover
Endorsements
Series Page
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
CONTENTS
Foreword
Foreword
Preface
1. Behavioral/Social Science—An Oxymoron?
Human Social Science?
The Fork in the Road
A Trailer for the Movie
HSR Ascendant in the Real World
Where Book Titles Come From
2. Experiments and Real Worlds
The Logic
Out of the Lab
Buying a Car
Ecological Validity
The Heartbreak of Timeless Reduction
Reductionism
Pattern on Drugs
Cause
Paths Taken, and Not
Mill: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
An HSR Parable
3. The Road to HSR Is Paved with Everyday Intentions
A Fallen Jesuit
Intentionality
Intention and Purpose
Research Handles to Get a Grip on Intentions
Rational Reconstruction
An Example
Anglos and Saxons
The Birth of the Human Sciences
The Dismal BSS Sciences
Same, Different, and a Little of Both
An Example of How BSS Missed a Local Person
Time on Our Side
Is Reality a Dream?
Reality Is Kicking a Rock
Dilthey’s Long Ride
What Is Human Social Research About?
4. Taking HSR to Court
The Anglo-German Hybrid
The Courtroom Model
Human Social Science: Land of Contrasts
Is HSR Only Qualitative?
Just Among Us Subjects
An Un-reliable Science
Writing the Results
5. The Heartbreak of Monotony
Where Do New Ideas Come From?
An Abductive Parable
Abduction in Action
HSR Logic
6. When Researcher Meets Subject
The “M” and “C” Words
Language
Translation
Getting From Here to There
Translation as Intersubjective Science
Crossing a Languaculture Canyon
The Space Between
An Example of Universal Progress: An Anthropologist’s Epiphany
The Universal Person
When Is a Theory Not a Theory?
7. Human Social Science
The Man Who Shocked the World
The Experiment
Back to Human Universals
No Researcher Before His Time
In Whose Interests?
Exactly Who and Why
The Jewish Nun
The End
Chapter Notes
