사회과학(社會科學)에 있어서의 론리실증주의적(論理實證主義的) 연구방법론(硏究方法論) = A Study on the Logical Positivist View of Social Sciences

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Logical positivism which came into being in the early 1920s in Germany with the establishment of the so-called Vienna Circle by Moritz Schlick has become one of the mainstreams in the methodology of social sciences in Korea as well as in the United States after World War II. It contributed to a myth of methodology. However, such an exogenous methodology should be examined and reviewed from the viewpoint of autonomous development of social sciences in Korea. In this connection, the objective of this study is to clarify the characteristics and acceptability of logical positivist view of social sciences. For the sake of this objective, this study has clarified in the second chapter the epistemological basis of logical positivism. According to the logical positivists, scientific knowledge can be obtained through sense-experience; only sense-experience can give us an intersubjectively verifiable or at least falsifiable account of the social world. In other words, logical positivists recognized only the data of experiences as the grounds of validity for scientific knowledge. In the third chapter, this study reviewed the practices of logical positivist view of social sciences i.e. behavioral sciences. The behavioral sciences are characterized by its concentration on the behavior of human beings, and by the explicit advocacy of scientific method. According to the behavioral scientists, the real stuffs of social sciences are not the institution, history and law, but the behaviors of individuals. And their objectives are the development of empirical generalizations and a systematic theory. Thus the social sciences are, according to them, unified because of their common interests in behavior and scientific method. In conclusion, the writer examined in the last chapter the acceptability of logical positivist view of social sciences in Korea. It was concluded that logical positivism and the theory of behavioral sciences might be acceptable in Korea, not as the only possible methodolgy and theory applicable to any situations and problems, but as one of the methodologies and theories to resolve the societal problems of Korea.