The paper tries to inquire comprehensively and concisely into the philosophical nature of social science in a comparative way with the philosophy of natural science. Social science is examined with “ontology-epistemology-methodology” as a frame of reference. It shows that the philosophical nature of social science, in all its dimensions of ontology, epistemology and methodology, can be characterized as a pattern, and they are respectively “substance of liberty-social phenomenon in connection with value”, “practical reason-understanding” and “conception-transcendent deduction”. And their counterparts in natural science are respectively “substance of causality-natural phenomenon”, “theoretical reason-transcendental synthesis” and “conception-empirical deduction.”
当代知识论（contemporary theory of knowledge）作为哲学运动，是两股支流的汇合：一是它作为关于“知识是信念”的理论，乃孕育于作为方法论的分析哲学；二是它作为关于主体之经验直观能力的理论，乃是对从笛卡尔到康德的传统认识论的延伸。这决定了它包括两个部分，分别作为方法论和认识论。
Reality and validity are the focus of post?modern philosophy of science.Post?modern scientific realism grasps the unity between reality and validity, and exhibits the true aspect of scientific reality. Instrumental realism is against the reduction of reality to the foundation of “empirically direct given”,revealing its dependence of reality on instrumental data.Constructive empiricism shows that it is not necessary to distinction between the transcendent world of essence and experience world.I think it is only available in observation.Ontological relativism denies universal scientific theory,and claims that scientific theory and its object are directly connected with presence which is naturally related to non?
