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discipline at any given stage. We are referring to sets of beliefs, values andassumptions which, because their origin can usually be traced to non-scientificcontexts, are not directly related to the theoretical goals of the practice ofscientific research. By the very nature of social science disciplines, this wouldinclude beliefs about the nature of social reality as well as more disciplinespecificbeliefs relating to society, labour, education, history, and so on. Forthese reasons, we find that in a discipline like sociology the intellectual climateconsists of a variety of beliefs about human beings (behaviourism, humanism,existentialism) as well as definite beliefs about the nature of society(mechanistic, organistic, cybernetic, systems-theoretical). The origin of manyof these values may be traced back to traditions in philosophy. Because it has,however, become part and parcel of the intellectual climate of a particulardiscipline in the social sciences, it has acquired, even if only indirectly, specifictheoretical relevance and content.A further distinguishing characteristic of the intellectual climate of a disciplineis the fact that these beliefs tend to display the qualities of postulates orassumptions. Sociological beliefs (which we encounter in positivist thought) tothe effect that human beings are passive bearers of meaning and that, for thisreason, they are more reactive than active within their environments, or that theresearch domain of sociology consists of concrete social facts (Durkheim)rather than meaningful interactions (Blumer), obviously display thecharacteristics of assumptions rather than those of hypotheses. The clearimplication is that beliefs of this nature are frequently neither testable, nor werethey ever meant to be tested. They constitute postulates or commitments whichunderlie testable statements.Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.zaMARKET OF INTELLECTUAL RESOURCESThe market of intellectual resources refers to the collection of beliefs whichhas a direct bearing upon the epistemic status of scientific statements, i.e. totheir status as knowledge-claims. The two major types are: theoretical beliefsabout the nature and structure of phenomena on the one hand, andmethodological beliefs concerning the nature and structure of the researchprocess.Theoretical beliefs are those beliefs of which testable statements about socialphenomena are made. Theoretical beliefs may, therefore, be regarded asassertions about the what (descriptive) and why (interpretative) aspects ofhuman behaviour. It would, therefore, include all statements which form partof hypotheses, typologies, models or theories. Turning once again to sociology,theoretical beliefs would, for example, include all testable statements derivedfrom macro-sociological theories (for example, structural functionalism,conflict theories, symbolic interactionism) and from micro-theories (forexample, Simon and Gagnon’s theory of homosexual behaviour or Smelser’stheory of collective behaviour).21