The Bet, The

This volume works within the (relatively) new emergent school of thought known as critical realism and further develops some of its ideas. It shares this school of thought's emphasis upon (structured) ontology but differs from it in two ways. First, it begins from a reflection upon the conditions of possibility for producing everyday knowledges rather than upon scientific practice. Second, it attempts to provide its strongest justification through a reflection upon what might be considered its most difficult case - the analysis of non-naturalistic fiction. It thus also provides, as well as an epistemology, a philosophy of science and a theory of reference and meaning, a critique of contemporary (poststructuralist and postmodernist) literary theory and criticism. The disciplinary extension of a stylistic celebration of ambiguity to social scientific analysis and writing comes in for particularly strong criticism.