Elucidating the Certainty uncertainty principle for the Social Sciences: Guidelines for hypothesis formulation in the Social Sciences for enhanced objectivity and intellectual multi-polarity

This paper is the second in our series on scientific method for the social sciences, and is presented in
relation to what we call the “Globalization of science”. It is like our earlier works, designed to provide
multi-vocality and multi-polarity to the sciences, and discourage Eurocentrism or any other form of
ideology or centrism. It uses existing theories on uncertainty and incompleteness as a starting point and
further utilizes them to construct an approach that can be used chiefly in the social sciences, but also in
the other sciences, albeit to a smaller extent and degree. Our first paper on scientific method delineated
“the sociological ninety-ten rule”, and the principle of what we called exceptionism, while this paper
weighs the twin concepts of certainty and uncertainty in relation to each other, to evaluate hypothesis
and paradigms in science. The papers also discusses various avenues for the misuse of science, with
data and evidence culled from various disciplines, and contexts, and suggests various methods to curb,
and mitigate unwanted tendencies, and proposes concepts such as ‘cross-cultural research design’,
which are in keeping with the ideals accumulated in our previous papers. Our paper also discusses and
revisits other concepts such as the idea of “fuzzy logic” as can be applied to the social sciences, besides
the philosophy of neo-centrism and the theory of paradoxes. All these ideas and ideals, we fervently
hope will serve the cause of science well, by leading to better quality of scientific endeavour developed
with data collected from diverse social and cultural contexts all over the world, and serve the cause of
society much better.