Beyond the Linear Frequentist Orthodoxy

Abstract

Every good book has a small bit—a sentence, paragraph, maybe a page—that the authors intended as a simple aside but which brings an epiphany to the reader. In Brady and Collier (2004), this occurs at the beginning of chapter 3: Brady's critique of the “quantitative template,” where the recovering seminarian frames our discourse on the philosophy of social inquiry in terms of pragmatic theology and homeliletics, rather than science or sociology. Hey, that is it!—while this debate is not in any sense about religion, its dynamics are best understood as though it were about religion. We have always known that, it just needed to be said.