1. ‘Science is essentially about prediction. Since successful
prediction is mostly infeasible in the social realm the study
of social phenomena cannot be scientific in the sense of
the non-social sciences.’ Discuss.
2. ‘The superiority of the causalist over the predictionist
account of science is clear once the real significance of
experimental activity in the non-social sciences is
appreciated’. Discuss.
3. ‘A substantial constraint on progress in social science,
particularly acutely felt in economics, is the tendency
among contemporary practising social scientists to deploy
methods without considering whether they are
appropriate to the phenomena studied’. Discuss.
4. Outline Keynes’s account of the volatility of stock market
prices that he sets out in Chapter 12 of the General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money and consider
whether it conforms to a causalist account of the nature of
science.
