Is sociology a science?
- Created by: Hollymurray99
- Created on: 01-02-18 16:13
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- Is sociology a science?
- Natural sciences
- Searching for natural laws
- Investigations lead to theories on objective facts
- Based on empirical evidence derived from observation and experimentation, logical thought and reasoning
- Positivists
- Reality is a separate thing existing outside of the mind, so society can be studied objectively as factual reality
- Can use scientific methods such as observations to study the patterns of society, in order to discover the laws that determine how society works
- Can then be used to predict future events and guide social policies made as a result of these predictions and past events
- Positivists
- Reality is a separate thing existing outside of the mind, so society can be studied objectively as factual reality
- Can use scientific methods such as observations to study the patterns of society, in order to discover the laws that determine how society works
- Can then be used to predict future events and guide social policies made as a result of these predictions and past events
- Can then be used to predict future events and guide social policies made as a result of these predictions and past events
- Durkheim studied suicide official statistics to investigate what causes a person to commit suicide
- Durkheim believed that if he could show that there were social patterns and causes applicable to suicide
- Durkheim studied suicide official statistics to investigate what causes a person to commit suicide
- Popper
- Falsification = find evidence to prove theory wrong
- Longer no falsification, truer it is
- However, science it defended through verification
- Quantitative data, such as official statics
- See natural sciences as verificationalism applied to the study of observable patterns, and they feel that sociology should follow its
- Positivists
- Can then be used to predict future events and guide social policies made as a result of these predictions and past events
- Durkheim believed that if he could show that there were social patterns and causes applicable to suicide
- Popper
- Falsification = find evidence to prove theory wrong
- Longer no falsification, truer it is
- However, science it defended through verification
- Quantitative data, such as official statics
- See natural sciences as verificationalism applied to the study of observable patterns, and they feel that sociology should follow its
- Interpretivists
- Work of natural sciences cannot be applied to sociology as the studies of people is different
- Sciences deal with matters that have no consciousness, therefore its behaviour and any effects on it is an automatic reaction to external forces
- Focus on meanings and people have their own internal reactions given to certain situations
- Douglas rejected Durkheim’s view that suicide is a social fact
- Depends on the internal meanings that would lead to the eventual result of a person committing suicide
- Qualitative data such as personal documents and analysis
- Sociological theory as a purpose to uncover people’s meanings, by seeing the world through another viewpoint (verstehen)
- Kuhn
- Scientific paradigms, a shared framework held by members of any given scientific community
- Paradigm provides a definition of science and a set of shared ideas, assumptions and methods, allowing them to do productive work. Scientists are socialised into the paradigm by means of education and training
- Science cannot exist without a shared paradigm as that would indicate rivalling scientific theories, not a unified science
- Kuhn therefore see’s sociology as pre-paradigmatic and pre-scientific based due to the fact that there are rivalling sociological theories
- Realism
- Similarities between certain types of natural science and sociology, such as the degree to which the researcher has control over the variables of which they are researching
- Both natural and social sciences attempt to explain the causes of events in terms of hidden features by observing their effects
- Natural sciences
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