Social science is fundamentally about humanity and human relationships. Humans, alone and in interaction with one another, are situated--in a context, a time, and a place. Their action and interaction has potential for unpredictability, agency, growth, change. As a science, it rests uncomfortably in the positivistic framework: the social always disruptive to the scientific. The authors argue here that if educational researchers committed to the well-being of youth and children attend in their research to ontology (what is) rather than epistemology (surety in claims to know), the research that emerges will have greater veracity and be more powerful for policymakers and more useful for practitioners. Attention to ontology can give researchers and scholars a way to imagine realities other than their own.