This unit is a compulsory unit for candidates in the Bachelor of Social Science degree. It addresses fundamental issues of methodology, epistemology, and value in the social sciences, drawing particularly on examples from sociology and psychology. The unit develops skills in critical thinking about social scientific practices, and examines the viability of major social scientific methodologies, such as empiricism, positivism, behaviourism, functionalism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and critical realism. It develops skills in ethical enquiry into social scientific practices by means of selected case studies. The unit aims to teach students of the social sciences how to reflect on the epistemological rigour and ethical probity of the social scientific practices into which they are being inducted.