The significance of critical realism in 19th century

General philosophy
Critical realism is presently most commonly associated with the work of Roy Bhaskar. Bhaskar developed a general philosophy of science that he described as transcendental realism, and a special philosophy of the human sciences that he called critical naturalism. The two terms were elided by other authors to form the umbrella term critical realism.

Transcendental realism attempts to establish that in order for scientific investigation to take place, the object of that investigation must have real, manipulable, internal mechanisms that can be actualised to produce particular outcomes. This is what we do when we conduct experiments. This stands in contrast to empiricist scientists' claim that all scientists can do is observe the relationship between cause and effect. Whilst empiricism, and positivism more generally, locate causal relationships at the level of events, Critical Realism locates them at the level of the generative mechanism, arguing t