Epistemology, demography and the social sciences

What progress and what risks come with the new approaches in the social sciences? Where do they stand in the history of demography? Particular attention is given to answering the following methodological and epistemological questions: is it possible to define causality and the search for explanation in the social sciences? What programs are supporting research on these approaches? Do the positions defended by behavioural genetics have credibility, and if not, by what can they be replaced? What is the contribution of the multilevel approach compared with more conventional demographic analysis? Do agent-based models permit to understand macroscopic regularities? What role is there for the Bayesian approach, whether subjectivist or logicist, in the social sciences and in demography, where the objectivist approach is usually employed? Is there cumulativity in the social sciences, and in demography in particular, and what forms does it take? Are all the methods used in paleodemography valid and which methods can replace those that are not? What are the paradigms of demography and can they be expressed as axioms? What are the relationships between mathematics, biology, and the social sciences? How to modelize human migration and the spatial distribution of populations?
This reflection – vital for demography and for all the social sciences – has involved researchers from around the world (see the list of the project’s participating authors in the detailed description of objectives). The books in the ‘Methodos’ series published by Springer, edited by Robert Franck, philosopher at the University of Louvain, and Daniel Courgeau, provide the project and its findings with an international platform. Nineteen volumes had already been published and two are in the publication process.