The autonomy of the social sciences

This chapter offers a reassessment of the main import of Peter Winch’s philosophy of the social sciences. Critics argue that Winch presented a flawed methodology for the social sciences, while his supporters deny that Winch’s work is about methodology at all. Contrary to both, this chapter argues that Winch did address fundamental questions about the methodology of the social sciences and that there is something substantial to learn from his account of the autonomy of the social sciences. Importantly, Winch engaged methodological questions without putting forwards a social ontology. Winch’s philosophy of the social sciences was concerned with the fundamental, methodological questions about the epistemic character of social knowledge and, as a consequence, with the ethical dimension of cultural understanding. This alternative interpretation highlights the close link between Winch’s argument for the methodological distinctiveness of the social sciences and R. G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history. In conclusion, this chapter shows the way in which Winch’s book on ‘the Idea’ was, similar to Collingwood’s ‘idea of history’, an attempt to provide a descriptive metaphysics of social inquiry.