Roy Bhaskar 1944 – 2014
Ram Roy Bhaskar was a British philosopher and the principal founder of the school of critical realism. After studies at Oxford under Rom Harre, he produced his foundational A Realist Theory of Science, which argued that the practices of the natural sciences are intelligible only on the supposition of a stratified, mind-independent world of structures, generative mechanisms, and events. The Possibility of Naturalism extended the analysis to the social sciences, and his later Dialectic and the books on what he called the philosophy of meta-Reality developed his system in increasingly comprehensive directions. Critical realism shapes much contemporary philosophy of social science.
Key facts
- Nationality
- British
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic, Critical Theory
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Roy Bhaskar:
“Science presupposes a world that has structures independent of our knowledge of it.”
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Attributed to Roy Bhaskar:
“Open systems are the rule, closed systems the exception.”
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Attributed to Roy Bhaskar:
“Reality has depth: actual events ride on underlying causal mechanisms.”
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Attributed to Roy Bhaskar:
“Emancipation requires a science of social structures, not just of behavior.”
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Attributed to Roy Bhaskar:
“Critical realism takes both reality and critique seriously.”