Critical Realism

Critical realism is the philosophical approach, initiated by Roy Bhaskar, that frames this book. It rejects both the empiricist attempt to restrict science to what can be observed and the Kantian split between knowable appearances and unknowable things-in-themselves. In their place it proposes a monist realist ontology: reality is one substance but is stratified into layers, so that unobservable structures and mechanisms count as real and causally efficacious. This is what makes systematic, rigorous investigation of unobservable mechanisms possible.

Critical realism also distinguishes the intransitive dimension (what exists independently of us) from the transitive dimension (our changing, fallible knowledge of it) — the move that lets it avoid collapsing into either positivism or relativism.

Discussed throughout chapter-03, especially §II.

Further reading: Critical realism (Wikipedia) · Roy Bhaskar (Wikipedia)