Social sciences between knowledge and ideologies: need for philosophy -- Part I. Social and cognitive roots for reflexivity upon the research process -- Social sciences, what for? On the manifold directions of social research -- Vitenskapsteori-- - what, how and why? -- Culture or Biology? If this sounds interesting, you might be confused -- Conditional Objectivism: A Strategy for Connecting the Social Sciences and Practical Decision-Making -- Towards Reflexivity in Science: Anthropological Reflections on Science and Society -- Part II. Philosophies of explanation in the social sciences -- Explanation: guidance for social scientists -- From causality to catalysis in the social sciences -- How to identify and how to conduct research that is informative and reproducible -- Explaining social phenomena: Emergence and Levels of Explanation -- Part III. Social normativity in social sciences -- Normativity in psychology and the social sciences: Questions of universality -- The crisis in psychological science, and the need for a person-oriented approach -- Open access, a remedy to the crisis in scientific inquiry? -- Part IV. Social processes in particular sciences: challenges to interdisciplinarity -- Fragmented and Critical? Some challenges for a social organization of Norwegian sociology, and implications for innovation -- How do economists think? -- Part V.General Conclusion -- What can social science practitioners learn from philosophies of science? -- Index. .