Towards an Empirical Theory of Science? Challenges and (Possible) Standards of Scientific Research Today

Abstract

The paper represents the introduction to a HSR Special Issue on the empirical theory of science (EToS). Given the massive refiguration of the (social) sciences and the need of knowledge about these changes for those who do science, the introduction suggests a way of studying the knowledge production of sciences in a way which has been suggested by various descriptive and empirical approaches in the social sciences, and to combine them with questions and issues about the normativity of science from the philosophy of science. The introduction also provides an overview on the contributions to the volume which elaborate the concept of empirical theory of science, provide cases for its application in various cases of scientific re-search, or discuss it with respect to other approaches in the social study of the social science.