Commentary: Explaining Social Behavior In Situ: The Study of Points of View

The social sciences have long struggled with a terminology that is multifarious and polysemic. The present call to establish a common and clear conceptual framework for idiographic science is a laudable aim. In this chapter, we further efforts for strict thinking by identifying the point of view concept as the primary object of inquiry for idiographic science. Idiographic science aims at a situational explanation of human social behavior. At this level, the individual is more than a cognitive-processing entity. Individuals are social subjects in social relations that relate together in a shared sphere of human activity that involves everyone’s idiosyncratic outlook contemporarily. For the individual, this outlook constitutes a point of view that makes reality what it is for the individual. Through the study of points of view, idiographic science can provide an explanation of human social behavior as it occurs in situ, given the conditions and contingencies in which it takes shape.