Modeling in the Social Sciences: From Concept to Indicators

Abstract

Discussion of the sciences may be approached from two fundamental levels. The first concerns the subject matter, while the second pertains to the methodology. Whereas the first level addresses the question, What do we study?, the second seeks to answer, How do we study it? Consequently, scientific perspectives and theoretical frameworks vary according to different conceptions of the object of study, as well as the methodological principles and techniques adopted in its investigation. Scientific inquiry is therefore governed by a logic of dualities. The interaction between the two poles of each duality gives rise to diverse forms of knowledge production and varying epistemological outcomes.

These dualities assume a particularly distinctive position in the social sciences and humanities, where they generate numerous epistemological and methodological challenges, especially concerning research methods and the procedures involved in producing scientific knowledge. The structure of social and human knowledge is fundamentally rooted in the process of abstraction performed by the knowing subject. Accordingly, the knowledge produced represents an abstraction of the essence from the empirical object, and the subject's appropriation of this essence constitutes knowledge itself. In other words, the social sciences proceed from the premise that knowledge of the empirical object forms an integral part of the very reality that the researcher seeks to understand.

Within this epistemological framework, the present article examines the efforts undertaken by scholars in the social sciences and humanities—and sociology in particular—to overcome the challenge of abstraction and to enhance the credibility and objectivity of scientific inquiry. It further explores how the knowledge thus produced can serve as a foundation for generating new knowledge. To this end, the article focuses on the methodological concept of modeling, highlighting its role in scientific research, while presenting the methodological and technical procedures required to overcome the limitations imposed by the subjective abstraction of the research object.