Science Debate - Sociology

Assess the claim that methods and procedures of the natural sciences are inappropriate for studying human behaviour.

• Natural sceince methods is based on the hypothetico-deductive method, in order for something to be scientific it must be objective and must be able to falsify.

For:

Interpretivists

• They believe that objective observation and measurement of the social world is not possible. Humans are unpredictable, complex and relfect on their behaviour. In these circumstances it is not possible to observe and measure objectively; statistics are just the product of the categorization procedures used.
• Humans tend to categorize the world in order to make sense of it. This categorization is subjective and therefore cannot be measured objectively.

Weber

• believes that in order to conduct a sociological experiment, one must study the subjective minds of individuals rather than the cause and effect of relationship of the actions as argued by the positivists.
• Thus by not being able to study the cause and effect of relationship shows that the methods of natural sciences are inappropraite for studying human behaviour.

Kuhn

• Believes that each sociologist has his or her own paradigm, which they try to prove by their research. Thus if any evidence does not support their own paradigm then it will be disregarded or destroyed. Thus showing bianess
• Sociology cannot be a science => sociological community cannot accept on paradigm or one perspective e.g functionalist, marsixt, interactionist.
  

Kaplan

• believed that…