Philosophical foundations of statistical research

Abstract

Every researcher desires to uncover the truth about the object of the undertaken study. When conducting statistical research, however, scientists frequently give no deeper thought as to their motivation underlying the choice of the particular purpose and scope of the study, or the choice of analytical tools. The aim of this paper is to provide a reflection on the philosophical foundations of statistical research. The three basic understandings of the term ‘statistics’ are outlined, followed by a synthetic overview of the understanding of the concept of truth in the key branches of philosophy, with particular attention devoted to the understanding of truth in probabilistic terms. Subsequently, a short discussion is presented on the philosophical bases of statistics, touching upon such topics as determinism and indeterminism, chance and chaos, deductive and inductive reasoning, randomness and uncertainty, and the impact of the information revolution on the development of statistical methods, especially in the context of socio-economic research. The article concludes with the formulation of key questions regarding the future development of statistics.