I certainly can't claim to be an expert on "naturalistic" vs
"quantitative" research in psychology or sociology; however, I thought
that the motivation for "naturalistic" research in these area (for the
non-cogniscenti "naturalistic" is the kind of non-intrusive, observational
research that the old-fashioned "naturalist" biologists did) was to
establish hypotheses to be tested by much more rigorous quantitative work.
Thus, WWK might be viewed as a collection of hypotheses to be tested, but
not as results to be accepted.....
In a slightly different, but related vein, I ran across an essay
by Michael R. Mathews offering a critique of the "constructivist" view of
educational philosophy that you might be interested in reading. It is
entitled "Old Wine in New Bottles: A Problem with Constructivist
Epistemology", and it is available on the web at