Sociology &Science- Popper, Kuhn, Realism

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  • Created by: elliepeck
  • Created on: 08-06-15 19:12
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  • Sociology and Science
    • Popper
      • Growth of science
        • Falsificationism
      • Believes that it is not possible to know the absolute truth because you cant prove things are entirely correct but you can prove that they're wrong.
    • Kuhn
      • he thought that scientists took a lot of assumptions about the world for granted-
        • this way of looking at the world is called a "paradigm"
        • he says scientists are constrained by the pardigm
          • for example, for 100s of years people thorught the sun rotated around the earth- for years many observations and interpretations were made acording to the paradigm "sun rotates the earth"
        • Scientific revolution
          • Kuhn says that leaps in scientific research occur when evidence appears which DOES NOT support the paradigm & it cannot be ignored
    • Realists
      • Closed Systems
        • Where the researcher can control & measure all variables! Laboratory experiments
      • Open Systems
        • where the researcher cannot control variables so they cannot make precise predictions. (meteorologists cannot 100% predict the weather)
      • Both sides! They say sociology could well be scientific.
        • BUT it must be accepted that it is not always possible to study things which can be directly observed. Instead both observable and unobservable interactions need to be studied.

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