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| physical human movement or behavior done for a reason. |
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| An approach to knowledge that asserts humans actually construct--through their social interactions and cultural and historical practices--many of the facts they take for granted as having an independent, objective, or material reality |
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| the philosophical stance that disciplines such as political science should assess critically and change society, not merely study it objectively |
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| characteristic of scientific knowledge; new substantive findings and research techniques are built upon those of previous studies |
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| A process of reasoning from a theory to specific observations |
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| A statement that summarizes the relationship between individual facts and that communicates general knowledge |
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| Characteristic of scientific knowledge; demonstration by means of objective observation that a statement is true |
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| Characteristic of scientific knowledge; signifying that a conclusion can be derived from a set of general propositions and specific initial considerations; providing a systematic, empirically verified understanding of why a phenomenon occurrs as it does |
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| a property of a statement or hypothesis such that it can (in principle, at least) be rejected in the face of contravening evidence |
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| characteristic of scientific knowledge; applicable to many rather than to a few cases |
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| induction is the process of drawing an inference from a set of premises and observations. The premises of an inductive argument support its conclusion but do not prove it |
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| philosophical approach to the study of human behavior that claims that one must understand the way individuals see their world in order to understand truly their behavior or actions; philosophical objection to the empirical approach to political science |
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Knowledge concerned not with evaluation or prescription but with factual or objective determinations. |
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| knowledge that is evaluative, value laden, and concerned with prescribing what ought to be |
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| The principle that among explanations or theories with equal degrees of confirmation, the simplest--the one based on the fewest assumptions and explanatory factors--is to be preferred(sometimes knon as Ockham's razor) |
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| probabilistic explanation |
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| an explanation that does not explain or predict events with 100% accuracy |
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| a statement or series of statements that organize, explain, and predict phenomena. |
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| characteristic of scientific knowledge; indicates that the methods used in making scientific discoveries are made explicit |
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