Rennes Joint Sessions 2008

Between April 11-16 2008 I will attend the ECPR Joined Sessions, which will be held in Rennes, France. There, I will participate in a workshop on `Methodological Pluralism’, hosted by Jonathon Moses and Benoit Rihoux . Also, I’ll present a paper , called `Uncertainty as a guiding principle’.The paper will challenge the often used metaphor of science: the labyrinth. Often this leads to the belief of a single, unified science. Although I do not fully reject the idea of a unified science, I simply don’t believe in its’ present day viability. The question I pose is how to act, faced with a multitude of methodologies, methods, techniques, and most importantly: scientific disciplines.In order to find an answer, I’ll rewrite the metaphor of labyrinths, by arguing the importance to recognize the existence of both labyrinths and mazes. I’ll formalize the argument by placing Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend opposed to each other. Finally, I’ll give some excellent (I hope) examples from the literature of social scientific research.To upcoming few months I expect to write more often about the conference and the development of my paper. This page, and thus this URL, will serve as a central point of my Rennes Joint Sessions 2008 – preparation and experiences. Everything I wrote about this will be linked to from here.

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