For those who are not expert or enthusiast epistemology, the title of this book may induce fear him or anticipated boredom. However, in these pages aseptic models of empirical research in the social sciences are presented, and discussed what the best models of scientific explanation for sociology or political science. Neither a comprehensive historical overview of the discipline is provided or is disguised as neutrality perspective of the authors. By contrast, in Philosophy and Social Sciences methods speaking from the social science from the reflective experience of those who practice it. Not the voice of a school or a particular thought stream which here is present, but a plurality of approaches that today give life to major social and political theories. The tour includes the transition between empiricism and postempirismo; the problem of methodological individualism and the search for alternatives to the theory of rational choice; comprehensive sociology and phenomenological background; the rise of hermeneutics; contributions to the theory of the structure; Habermas's contribution to the redefinition of objectivity in social sciences, and the emergence of a "pragmatist camp" articulator of multiple initiatives of social analysis. Anyway, the attraction of this book may not reside mainly in the range of topics, but that invites us to capitalize teaching: all theoretical intervention means changing the subject of study. But that "under study" is not something distant; the unsuspecting reader should know that in the discussion about the philosophy and methods of the social sciences what is at stake is the fate of their society