Groff, Ruth - Critical Realism, Post-positivism and the Possibility of Knowledge

The problem at the heart of this book is the recent resurgence of relativism. In the wake of the well-deserved breakdown of positivism, it no longer seems possible to rationally assess competing knowledge claims. In the social sciences in particular, the fashionable post-positivist view is that any belief can be valid, depending upon one's perspective; that truth is simply a term of praise (or, alternately, a display of power); and that there is in fact no such thing as a reality that does not belong in quotation marks.