The philosophical bogeyman: misunderstanding the relation of theory and method

When my article ‘The relation of theory and method: causal relatedness, historical contingency and beyond’appeared in The Sociological Review August 1988, it was followed by two critical responses in the same issue by Platt and Bulmer. In my opinion both of these responses seriously misrepresent and profoundly misunderstand my arguments. In what follows I identify the more salient of these errors and attempt to rectify them.