Induction and construction: Teetering between worlds.

The article comments on the paper of sociologist Serge Moscovici on social psychology. Moscovici believes that social psychology was once becoming an influential crossroads discipline, one that could shape and nurture other social sciences such as economics, anthropology and sociology. Moscovici's solution to the problem of how to become a powerful discipline seems to be along the lines of getting back to basics. Throughout his paper, Moscovici urges other social psychologists to consider the importance of creating rich descriptions garnered through careful, painstaking observations. In various ways an inductivist model of science within a positivist-empiricist framework informs Moscovici's views of the ideal social psychology. Moscovici seems to believe that the positivist-empiricist mode of scientific method is unchallenged within social psychology and sciences more generally. The author stresses the similarities between Moscovici's philosophy of science and that of the most traditional mainstream laboratory social psychologist.