In this session, we’ll explore the meaning of science and discuss whether the scientific method can be meaningfully applied to the study of society. To do this, we’ll try to answer two questions: first, “What makes knowledge scientific?” and second, “With what must science begin?” For a jumping off point, we’ll review the philosophical face-off between matter and ideas—in other words, the struggle between materialism and idealism. We'll also explore how to actually conduct a scientific study. In particular, we’ll be focusing on the relationship between investigation and analysis, on the one hand, and theory and practice, on the other.