Sociology and science
- Created by: Jessica
- Created on: 30-05-12 20:56
Fullscreen
Popper's scientific method:
- Forming a hypothesis - ideas/informed guesses
- Falsification - trying to prove the hypothesis wrong
- Prediction - of what will happen in the same circumstances
- Forming a theory
- Scrutinizing the theory - a theory stands until something proves it is false
hypothesis
falsification
prediction
theory
scrutinizing
Science is objective. It requires:
- a researcher to be open minded
- researchers to be value free - keeping all personal opinions and motives out of the scientific process
- scientific findings should be open to other researchers for scrutiny, checking and criticism
Positivists:
- We can apply the same process to studying society that we use for the natural sciences - it enables us to have an objective and value free science of sociology
- Human behaviour is a response to observable social facts - cause and effect
- quantitative methodology should be used - they are easily observed & recorded. individuals feelings etc. can not be observed & are not valid evidence (social surveys, structured interviews, official stats)
- interested in recording social facts
…
Comments
No comments have yet been made