 The contribution of critical realism as an underpinning philosophy for OR/MS and systemsJ Mingers ()
Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2000, vol. 51, issue 11, 1256-1270 Abstract: Abstract Many issues are under debate as to the philosophical nature of OR/MS: is it science or technology? Is it natural or social science? Can it be realist as well as being interpretivist? There are also many debates within the philosophy of science itself. This paper proposes that a particular account of the philosophy of science, known as ‘critical realism’, is especially suitable as an underpinning of OR/MS. The structure of the argument of this paper is to outline the main positions within the philosophy of science and highlight their problems, especially from the point of view of OR/MS; then to introduce critical realism and to show how it addresses these problems and how it is particularly appropriate for OR/MS; and finally to illustrate this by considering examples of various practical OR methods. Keywords: critical realism; epistemology; multimethodology; ontology; philosophy; systems (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:51:y:2000:i:11:d:10.1057_palgrave.jors.2601033 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601033 Access Statistics for this article Journal of the Operational Research Society is currently edited by Tom Archibald and Jonathan Crook More articles in Journal of the Operational Research Society from Palgrave Macmillan, The OR Society |
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