Sociology is NOT a science
- Created by: ecotts
- Created on: 21-03-18 20:10
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- Sociology is NOT a Science
- Interpetivism
- People don't respond to external factors
- They interpret and give a meaning to the situation before they respond
- Meanings do not exist independently of people
- Meanings are social constructs which have no meaning outside of what people give to them
- 'A death only becomes murder or suicide because people define it as such'
- Meanings are social constructs which have no meaning outside of what people give to them
- Human behaviour is unpredictable
- They believe that sociologist need to discover and understand behaviour
- This is by putting themselves in the others persons position, which will then allow them to understand society more.
- Involvement, closeness and empathetic understanding (verstehn) are needed to understand human behaviour
- Rather than quantitve, empirical data
- They believe that sociologist need to discover and understand behaviour
- People don't respond to external factors
- Post-modernism
- They believe that there is no such thing a meta-narrative that can explain only one thing
- People have lost faith in science and experts
- They say that there are too many groups of people with different experiences
- Trying to explain how gender or class impacts people is a waste of time as it differs from person to person
- Kuhn
- Science is unique as it shares universal truths
- It is based on a set of paradigms (general view accepted by the majority)
- They provide scientist with a basic framework from which to work from
- A set of norms
- It is based on a set of paradigms (general view accepted by the majority)
- 'Normal' scientists are socialised into the paradigms and made to accept them
- Making it rare for them to question it, which means they do not go to find evidence or experiments that challenges it
- However, sociology is not a science as it is based on competing opinions and theories
- e.g positivism and interpetivisim
- It can only become a science once basic disagreements are resolved (conflict/ consensus)
- however, this is not possible as even with =in perspectives there are disagreements.
- Science is unique as it shares universal truths
- Scientist Cheat
- Because only 25% of scientist are willing to give their data to other people to check, it suggest they may be hiding something
- Social aspects also influence scientific research
- The values and beliefs of researcher
- Objectivity may be limited due to the source of funding
- Publishing deadlines may mean the experiments are rushed and results misrepresented.
- Evaluation
- Billing
- Sociology limits itself by trying to be scientific
- If knowledge develops then it's important ti embrace new paradigms instead of trying to be purely scientific
- Sociology limits itself by trying to be scientific
- Wright-Mills
- He says it is important to have a creative and open mind towards research and not limit oneself to only one source of knowledge
- Bauman
- Old restricted structure of the past have broken down knowledge and made it become free, we are not tied down to science
- Billing
- Interpetivism
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