Fonder le pluralisme méthodologique en sciences humaines et sociales par l’usage d’un mode triadique de production du savoir

In the humanities and social sciences (HSS), the prevailing view regarding the mode of knowledge production is that it must be based on methodological pluralism (MP). This view simply means that the mode that has become dominant in the natural sciences—namely, the dualistic empirical-formal mode codified by Karl Popper—cannot be used. In this respect, the case of economic knowledge is unique, since the majority of members of the "community of economists" have always been, and still are today, in favor of methodological monism (MM). However, because MP is identified negatively, the problem with choosing it is that it allows for a wide diversity of methods, like a mixed bag. The purpose of this text is to propose a positive foundation for MP by employing a critical appropriation of abduction, the mode of inference that Charles Sanders Peirce defined as distinct from induction and deduction. This foundation consists of saying that there is a need to practice in the humanities and social sciences a triadic mode, that is to say a mode with three spaces of analysis for which the third space added to the two spaces commonly taken into account is the structural space insofar as it proceeds from a spatiotemporal distancing and to which is associated the concept of vision, then clearly distinguished from a theory.