Add to ORKGThe question over the objectivity of the social science has traditionally focused on three 'demands', framed by a comparison with analogous requests in the natural sciences: grabbing only onto real objects and real facts; driving out values from descriptions and explanations; using only methods likely to secure true outcomes. in the face of these three demands social science had to prove its credentials as an objective domain of inquiry often borrowing a style of reasoning and of investigation which did not do justice to its subject matter and to the questions it pursued. in this article I analyse each of the three demands, keeping an eye both on what the received view asks social science to comply with and on how the actual practice of soc...