Description:
The politicizing of facts and factual claims has led some to abandon all talk of a meaningful distinction between a fact and a strongly held political commitment. This book argues that what we need, instead, are better accounts of facts and their relationship to explanation.
Review Quotes:
Jackson's Facts and Explanations is a must-read for scholars and students, regardless of epistemology or political persuasion. It makes a convincing case that how we claim to know matters as much as, if not more than, what we claim to know. In making this case, Jackson marshals an impressively broad body of literature on knowledge, fact, and science, providing a singular perspective that combines the complexities of hundreds of years of thought and the many conflicting messages of the 21st century in an elegant and parsimonious way. We will all be stronger analysts more capable of navigating international studies ....and beyond for having read this book.
- Laura Sjoberg, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
With his usual panache, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson argues convincingly that explanations rely not only on facts, but on general claims that connects those facts and suggest how they may have effects. From now on, MaFGA stands for Making Facts Great Again.
- Iver B. Neumann, Director of The Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway
Patrick Jackson's new book offers a highly original investigation into three activities which are of fundamental importance for all social sciences: description, causal explanation, and interpretive explanation. Jackson's style is engaging, and his contentions are thought-provoking, guided by his desire inter alia to facilitate a mutual understanding, on the subject of causal explanation in particular, between neopositivists, faith communities, and those social scientists who broadly share his stance, based on the manipulationist theory of causation. He also provides an insightful discussion about what an interpretive explanation may achieve, informed by his thoughtful engagement with the work of Charles Manning, a foundational member of the so-called 'English School of International Relations'.
- Hidemi Suganami, Aberystwyth University, UK