The Methodology Significance Of Fourth Paradigm To The Social Science Research

Big Data, changed not only people’s way of life completely, but also the scientific research’s ways and means profoundly. This article, from the point of view of philosophical methodology, analyzes the significance and innovative effect of fourth paradigm to the social science research, which born in the natural sciences research. And it not only has the academic value for the theoretical research of the methodology, but also has the important practical significance by using better the fourth paradigm to accelerate the development of social science.This article starts from the historical changes of scientific research paradigm, the scientific research paradigm has experienced a long history of development, the way of scientific research has been influenced by natural science deeply. Natural science research paradigm has developed from four different stages:Qualitative research --- Quantitative experimental study --- Simulation research --- Fourth paradigm. And the research paradigm of the corresponding social science has also gone from Qualitative research - Quantitative empirical research - Simulation research of society, and is into the new phase of the study under the guidance of the fourth paradigm. The fourth paradigm developed in 21st century, it refers to that the scientific researchers take the Big Data as the object, rely on the tools to obtain or simulation to produce the scientific data, process and store the data in the computer, and then analyze the research content. On the base of the empirical analysis of the application of the fourth paradigm in environmental science and biomedical sciences, this article notes that the new features of fourth research paradigm are fault tolerance, full-volume sample and relevance. Compared with the past scientific research paradigm, the fourth research paradigm takes the whole changes in the data acquisition and storage, data processing, data management and visualization, etc., and also can solve many problems which cannot be done by purely theoretical study, experimental study, and simple modeling Institute. The revolutionary significance of fourth paradigm in natural science research is data transformation, facilities improvement,and communication development.Compared with the natural science research, the social science research, related to the complicated social phenomena and social processes involved by people, has the features of dynamics of research object, diversity of constitute elements, variability of causality and subjectivity and constructivism of research subject, etc. Traditional social science research has the problems in massive data collection difficulty, relatively simple analytical tools, delay, etc. The fourth paradigm is more suitable for social science research:the full-volume sample breaks through the limitation of sample survey, fault tolerance allows the existence of inaccurate content, relevance changes the traditional research mode, etc. which have the revolutionary methodological significance for social science research.