Scientific Objectivity

The question over the objectivity of the social science has traditionally focused on three 'demands', framed by a comparison with analogous requests in the natural sciences: grabbing only onto real objects and real facts; driving out values from descriptions and explanations; using only methods likely to secure true outcomes. in the face of these three demands social science had to prove its credentials as an objective domain of inquiry often borrowing a style of reasoning and of investigation which did not do justice to its subject matter and to the questions it pursued. in this article I analyse each of the three demands, keeping an eye both on what the received view asks social science to comply with and on how the actual practice of social research achieves its best results in terms of objectivity pace comparison.