Rabelais

method of explanation and the nature of scientific laws in the human sciences in no way differ from those in the natural sciences. Scientific laws in the human sciences describe generative mechanisms that underlie events. For example, the Freudian Unconscious is a description of a number of generative mechanisms that underlie psychological events. The human sciences differ from the natural sciences only in the means by which hypotheses are tested. The human sciences are denied decisive experimental test situations, but instead test hypotheses empirically by means of their explanatory power. Building on his arguments about the stratified nature of reality and science, Bhaskar then develops a persuasive anti-reductionist argument, which effectively demolishes the claims made by Weber and Popper, amongst others, that social explanations are ultimately reducible to explanations about individuals. He lucidly demonstrates that social phenomena must possess real causal effectivity. Perhaps the most exciting section in The possibility of naturalism is the chapter on 'Agents' in which Bhaskar demonstrates with great clarity and vigour that reasons are causes, thereby challenging a shibboleth that has bedevilled so much research in psychology and psychiatry. In demonstrating that reasons are causes Bhaskar creates a space for a true psychology, a space that has all too often been occupied in the past by behaviourism or a specious biologism. Disavowing positivism, Bhaskar demonstrates that the only adequate means of testing a theory in the human sciences is by reference to its explanatory power. Disavowing the hermeneutic tradition, he argues that theories must have an empirical basis in reality and be testable, rather than be judged by special criteria founded on an epistemology of meaning. In sailing such an elegant course between the distractions of positivism and hermeneutics, Bhaskar charts out an exciting future for the human sciences. One major implication of his argument is that it should now be possible to develop an adequate typology of the social and psychological sciences. This field has, up till recently, been so dominated by sectarianism, reductionism, and polemic that the central question of the pertinence and explanatory power of different theories has not been adequately addressed. Bhaskar's work implies that the theories of behaviourism, psychoanalysis, or cognitive psychology, for example, each describe, more or less adequately , a certain stratum of generative mechanisms that underlie human behaviour and experience. What is urgently required is the construction of an adequate typology by means of which these areas …