Is there a way to conceal the questions of method?

Abstract

The insertion of research in the areas of the humanities is sometimes used as an alibi to justify a certain lack of attention to the questions of method. Differently from the exact and natural sciences in which methodological protocols are relatively clear and students are trained to do so, in the humanities, on the other hand, there is a great variation of types of research, a variation that already begins because it is impossible to restrict these researches to the key binomial between basic and applied research that guides the so-called empirical sciences. In agreement with Latour, when he states that there are no hard sciences and soft or flexible sciences, but only indifferent scientists and scientists capable of establishing a difference between states of things hitherto confused, this article proposes that, in order to establish differences in confusion, one must stick to the paths and procedures that are proper to any research at the heart of which is the question of method. This becomes much more imperious precisely because methods are not only pluralistic but proliferate without interruption in the scientific humanities.