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The article describes critical realism as a philosophical approach that stresses some themes central to all sociological thought: the relation between philosophy and sociology; the notion of cause; the problem of naturalism; the relation between concepts, models, and reality; the relation between agency and structure, and so on. It is further argued that in positing the non-dissolution of the ontological and epistemological dimensions of knowledge, critical realism may represent a viable alternative to the dead-ends of conventionalism and skepticism found in the positivist and pragmatist approaches.