Realism for Social Sciences

Ken Urai received the BS, MS and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 1985, 1987 and 2005, respectively.  From 1988 to 1991, he worked as an assistant professor at the Institution of Social and Economic Research in Osaka University (ISER), and from 1991 to 1995, as a lecturer at the Department of Economics of Kyoto Sangyo University, Kyoto Japan.  In 1995, he joined the Department of Economics of Osaka University as an associate professor. Since 2008, he has been a Professor in the Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University.  He specialized in mathematical economics, general equilibrium theory, cooperative and non-cooperative game theory, and fixed point theory. Dr. Urai served as a vice-president of the Japanese Society for Mathematical Economics (2013-2014, 2019-2022) and as a board member of the Japan Society for Process Studies (2022-present), and has contributed to dozens of books and journal papers.  Masaaki Katsuragi is associate professor at the Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University, teaching Economic Philosophy and Methodology, specifically following a realist tradition established in the last three decades in Cambridge UK. At first, he made research into Japanese service industries in the graduate school of economics at Kyoto University and obtained a grant as JSPS research fellow at Kyoto Institute of Economic Research (KIER). The turning point came in 1999 when he attended the Cambridge Realist Workshop for the first time as a visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge. Later he became a graduate student at the Judge Business School, Cambridge. Since then, he is a member of the Cambridge Social Ontology Group.  Yoshiyuki Takeuchi is an Associate Professor of Applied Statistics and Econometrics at the Graduate School of Economics and the Center for Mathematical Modeling and Data Science, Osaka University. He was an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Economics at Fukushima University from 1989 to 1992. His research interests focus on data science, including statistics. In addition, he has been working on the history of statistical thought, in particular the migration of mathematical statistics into Japan, and the anthropology of business administration. He is the author of “On a Statistical Method to Detect Discontinuity in the Distribution Function of Reported Earnings” (Mathematics and Computers in Simulation 64(1), 2004). He is co-editor of Enterprise as an Instrument of Civilization (2016) and Translating and Incorporating American Management Thought into Japan (2022).

• Chapter 1. A Case for Social Ontology: Why Does Reality Matter for Social Sciences?.- Chapter 2. Realities and Ideologies in Social Sciences.- Chapter 3.Between Probability and Animal Spirits: Reading Keynes.- Chapter 4. “Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness” and the Reality for the Sciences.- Chapter 5. Dynamic Constitution for the Place of Reality to Enclose and Nurture our Knowing: Realism as a Methodology of Science.- Chapter 6. The Design of Democracy from a Market Point of View.- Chapter 7.Reality of Money and Credit: The General Equilibrium Point of View.- Chapter 8.The Reality of Public Goods and State Finances Based on General Equilibrium Theory: A Case Study in Public Health during COVID-19 Pandemic.- Chapter 9. Memento Mori in Medicine and the Universality of Forces from Below: On the Reality of Markets.- Chapter 10. Politics, Human Agency and Reality: Rethinking Arendt’s Concept of the Social.- Chapter 11. Thinking About “community” in Everyday Life.- Chapter 12. An Essay on the Realism of Management Theory: The Actuality of Management Phenomena and the Reality of Management Theory.- Chapter 13. Realism, Science, Statistics & Data Science.