Patterns of Discovery in the Social Sciences

Paul Diesing is professor emeritus of political science at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He did his graduate studies in philosophy from the University of Chicago and has taught at that university, the University of Illinois, and the University of Colorado. Diesing has also been a faculty associate at the Buffalo Center for International Conflict Studies, where he participated in the Center's program of researching in bargaining theory and international crises. He is the author of Reason in Society: Five Types of Decisions and Their Social Conditions and Science and Ideology in the Policy Sciences.

• 1: Introduction; I: Formal Methods and Theories; 2: General Characteristics of Formal Theories; 3: The Development of a Formal Theory; 4: Experimental Work with Mathematical Models; 5: The Analysis and Verification of Computer Models; 6: Types of Formal Theories; 7: Uses of Models; 8: Formalization; 9: The Implicit Ontology of Formalists; II: Participant–Observer and Clinical Methods; 10: The Holist Standpoint; 11: Main Steps of a Case Study; 12: Holistic Uses of Statistics; 13: Comparative Methods and the Development of Theory; 14: Typologies : Real and Ideal Types; 15: Some Characteristics of Holist Theories; 16: The Use and Verification of General Theory; 17: Structural–Functional Theories; 18: The Practical Use of Case Studies; 19: Weaknesses and Problems of Case Study Methods; 20: The Implicit Ontology of Case Study Methods; III: Methods in the Philosophy of Science; 21: The Participant–Observer Method; 22: The Method of Rational Reconstruction; 23: The Typological Method; 24: The Method of Conceptual Analysis; 25: Science, Philosophy, and Astrology