BEYOND THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL DILEMMA - GENERAL-THEORY IN A POSTPOSITIVIST MODE

Socially grounded and personally rooted knowledge can be based, not in particularistic and local frames, but in the most generalized and critically reviewed experiences of the most inclusive social institutions and groups. From the continuous debate that accompanies the search for such knowledge, standards of evidence and reasoning develop that press toward rational, impersonal criteria of validity. In the course of this search it has proved crucial and practical for knowing actors to decenter themselves from the objects of their regard, thus separating the knower from the known. The objective world thus studied depends for its perception upon the construction of a worldview. Human beings create the view, but not the world that is viewed. Our theories do not simply and directly reflect the world "out there," but they do allow for the relatively consensual comprehension of powerful regularities in society. Standards of validity are thus immanent in the very practice of social science, hence this postpositivist case is of critical importance for general theory, which aims for provisional acceptance on the basis of universal argument. © 1990 Plenum Publishing Corporation.