This book discusses the growing interest in realism in social sciences of the twenty-first century. The first part of this book provides recent discussions on realism in philosophy. The second part describes specific problems that have returned to realism in various fields of the social sciences, such as economics, cultural anthropology, management science, and statistics. This book clarifies what kinds of movements are taking place and consequently the direction in which the social sciences are heading in the future.
Readers would also find that there is great diversity in the way realism and reality are perceived and understood, depending on the objectives and circumstances of each field of social science. This suggests that rather than having a unified view (stance) of realism and reality, it may be more meaningful to value the differences, diversity, and range itself. Therefore, this book does not present a unified view of realism, reality, and actuality. Although the definitions of realism and reality may differ from chapter to chapter, this represents a corner of the current state of the social sciences.
This book is unique in that it examines how the issues of realism and reality are viewed, understood, and dealt with in the various fields of social science, instead of examining them by philosophers and philosophers of science. This would clarify how philosophical discussions have been translated into the various fields of social science.
Author Biography:
Ken Urai received the BS, MS and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 1985, 1987 and 2005, respectively. From 1988 to 1991, he worked as an assistant professor at the Institution of Social and Economic Research in Osaka University (ISER), and from 1991 to 1995, as a lecturer at the Department of Economics of Kyoto Sangyo University, Kyoto Japan. In 1995, he joined the Department of Economics of Osaka University as an associate professor. Since 2008, he has been a Professor in the Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University. He specialized in mathematical economics, general equilibrium theory, cooperative and non-cooperative game theory, and fixed point theory. Dr. Urai served as a vice-president of the Japanese Society for Mathematical Economics (2013-2014, 2019-2022) and as a board member of the Japan Society for Process Studies (2022-present), and has contributed to dozens of books and journal papers.
Masaaki Katsuragi is associate professor at the Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University, teaching Economic Philosophy and Methodology, specifically following a realist tradition established in the last three decades in Cambridge UK. At first, he made research into Japanese service industries in the graduate school of economics at Kyoto University and obtained a grant as JSPS research fellow at Kyoto Institute of Economic Research (KIER). The turning point came in 1999 when he attended the Cambridge Realist Workshop for the first time as a visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge. Later he became a graduate student at the Judge Business School, Cambridge. Since then, he is a member of the Cambridge Social Ontology Group.
Yoshiyuki Takeuchi is an Associate Professor of Applied Statistics and Econometrics at the Graduate School of Economics and the Center for Mathematical Modeling and Data Science, Osaka University. He was an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Economics at Fukushima University from 1989 to 1992. His research interests focus on data science, including statistics. In addition, he has been working on the history of statistical thought, in particular the migration of mathematical statistics into Japan, and the anthropology of business administration. He is the author of “On a Statistical Method to Detect Discontinuity in the Distribution Function of Reported Earnings” (Mathematics and Computers in Simulation 64(1), 2004). He is co-editor of Enterprise as an Instrument of Civilization (2016) and Translating and Incorporating American Management Thought into Japan (2022).
