Abstract
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson’s The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations constitutes a crucial intervention into issues of philosophy of science and their implications for the discipline of International Relations (IR). Drawing attention to the problems caused by the pursuit of a single scientific method, it proposes a framework that attempts to clarify the variety of ways that IR scholars establish the authority and validity of their claims in relation to their underlying philosophical assumptions. Published in 2011 to considerable critical acclaim, winning the Yale Ferguson Award from the ISA-Northeast and spawning multiple discussions online and at ISA panels, the book is now the subject of Millennium’s volume 41 issue 2 forum. Having followed Professor Hidemi Suganami’s insightful recommendations, for which we are thankful, we have invited Michael Torsten, Adam Humphreys, Christine Sylvester, Colin Wight and Fred Chernoff to contribute their takes on the book. We would like to thank them all for their participation along with Jackson for providing a detailed and thoughtful reply.