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Naturalism

The term is used in three different ways. Philosophical naturalism is the assertion that there is an objective, natural order in the world to which all things belong (see Papineau, 1993). It is, then, a denial of Cartesian dualism, which assumes a separation of physical things and mind. Philosophical naturalism usually implies materialism, that what we experience as mind can be accounted for materially (although it would be just as consistent with a naturalistic position to say all was reducible to mind). Philosophical naturalism is no more than metaphysical reasoning or speculation, but it underlies the most important version of naturalism, scientific naturalism.

Scientific Naturalism

Scientific naturalism spans a wide range of views. Some maintain that a unity of nature implies a unity of approach to investigating nature, and this is likely to entail the best methods of science currently available to us. At the other extreme is a much harder version of naturalism that embraces an extreme form of physicalism and reductionism. In this view, all phenomena are reducible to physical properties, and things such as the senses and moral values are simply epiphenomena.

Although natural scientists will place themselves at different points on such a continuum, almost by definition they are naturalists of some kind, but this is not always the case with those who study the social world and even call themselves social “scientists.” If the ontological assumptions of naturalism are applied to the social world, then it must follow that the latter is continuous with, or arises from, the physical world (Williams, 2000, p. 49). Furthermore, if we are to explain the relation of humans to the world in terms of that order, with appropriate adaptations, scientific methods can be used to study the social world. This view underlies two of the most prominent approaches in social science, POSITIVISM and REALISM.

What kind of assumptions we can make about the world and the methods that follow from these assumptions divide realists in both the natural and the social sciences, but they are united in the belief that those things considered the proper outcomes of natural science—explanations and generalizations—are appropriate for social science. Naturalists do not deny that there are important differences in the way the social world (as compared to the physical world) manifests itself to other human beings, and it is accepted that this will produce methodological differences. How-ever, it is argued, such differences already exist in natural science. Physicists, for example, use experimental methods, whereas astronomers use passive observational methods.

Objections to Naturalism

There are a number of objections to naturalism from within both philosophy and social studies.

Antirationalists, such as postmodernists and those in the social studies of science, direct their attack not at the ontological claims of naturalism, but at science itself, claiming that it is “just one kind of conversation or one form of social organisation” (Kincaid, 1996, p. 8) and can claim no special epistemological privilege. This renders naturalism redundant, because it has no means by which it can demonstrate the existence of a natural order. However, the counterargument must come not from a defense of naturalism, but from scientific method itself (Williams, 2000, chap. 4).

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