Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences
Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences
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DOI：
10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102632
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发表时间：
2010-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Ylikoski, Petri
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Hedstroem, Peter;Ylikoski, Petri
在过去的十年中，社会机制和基于机制的解释在社会科学和科学哲学中受到了相当大的关注。本文批判性地回顾了对机制方法最重要的哲学和社会科学贡献。第一部分从科学哲学的角度讨论了基于机制的解释思想，并将其与因果关系和解释的覆盖律解释联系起来。第二部分着重于机制的概念是如何在社会科学中使用的。最后一部分讨论了分析社会学的最新发展，包括社会学的性质，行动理论在基于机制的解释中的作用，默顿的中程理论思想，以及基于代理的模拟在基于机制的解释发展中的作用。
During the past decade, social mechanisms and mechanism-based explanations have received considerable attention in the social sciences as well as in the philosophy of science. This article critically reviews the most important philosophical and social science contributions to the mechanism approach. The first part discusses the idea of mechanism-based explanation from the point of view of philosophy of science and relates it to causation and to the covering-law account of explanation. The second part focuses on how the idea of mechanisms has been used in the social sciences. The final part discusses recent developments in analytical sociology, covering the nature of sociological explananda, the role of theory of action in mechanism based explanations, Merton's idea of middle-range theory, and the role of agent-based simulations in the development of mechanism-based explanations.