Abstract empiricism has two common justifications. If we accept them, it turns out that the severity of the results is achieved not due to some essential characteristic of the "Method", but due to the reasons "random in nature", namely due to money and time.
Firstly, it may be assumed that, since such research is very expensive, its problems are to some extent inevitably influenced by the interests of those who pay for it, and it may be added that these interests are related to completely unrelated problems. Consequently, researchers are not in a position to choose issues in such a way as to ensure that the data are truly incremental, i.e. that the knowledge accumulated is meaningful. They do the best they can. And because they cannot deal with serious future-proof problems, they have to specialise in developing methods that can be used regardless of the relevance of the subject matter.
In short, the economics of truth, i.e. the cost of research, conflicts with the politics of truth, using research to clarify the essence of critical social problems and to bring political debate closer to real social processes. The conclusion is that if the organizations engaged in social research had, say, a quarter of the funds of all the country's science funding agencies, and if they were able to manage these funds as they see fit, the situation would be significantly improved. I must admit that I do not know how justified these expectations are. And nobody knows, though, most likely, our intellectuals-managers, who replaced social science with business activity, are convinced of this. But to accept this as the only real problem would be to exclude any intellectual criticism. One thing is clear: due to the high cost of the Method, the work of its adherents is often used for commercial and bureaucratic purposes, which has a certain impact on the style of research.
Secondly, we can say that critics are clearly impatient: it is enough to remember that the duration of husbands' disputes about "scientific criteria" is counted not for decades, but for centuries.
It can be argued that private research will "take its course" in such a way as to provide a general pattern of social development based on its data. This way of justifying it, it seems to me, is based on the idea of opncpeqqe social sciences as a mosaic game. It suggests that the results of such research may be "bricks and mortar" in nature, which at some point in the future can be "stacked" and "fitted" in order to "erect" a credible and verifiable image of a whole. This is not just an assumption; it is an explicit policy.
The empirical sciences," says Lazarsfeld, "must develop special problems and expand knowledge by combining the results of many long and painstaking detailed studies. It is highly desirable that more researchers turn to the social sciences, not because it will save the world overnight, but because it will ultimately speed up the daunting task of developing an integrated social science that can help us understand and manage social processes. This programme, if we distract ourselves from its political ambiguity for a moment, proposes to limit ourselves to "detailed" research on the grounds that the results of this research, in turn, will lead to "integrated social science". In order to prove this point of view to be erroneous, I will not look at the external causes of the lack of content in the results achieved by empiricists, but rather at the reasons related to the internal features of their style and program. First of all, it is necessary to consider the relationship between theory and specific research, i.e., the line that the Vedas should follow in determining the priority of broader concepts and in choosing objects for detailed exposition.
Of course, every scientific school is generous in its deliberations on the blindness of empirical data without theory and on the emptiness of the theory, which is not supported by data. Therefore, instead of weaving philosophical lace, we will turn directly to practice and its results.
