Topic 3 - Sociology as a Science

• Idealised view of science


  Science has the following characteristics:

  • It seeks to establish social facts
  • It tries to discover cause and effect relationships
  • It aims to be objective
  • It claims to be able to verify or check results
• Empirical evidence


  Any findings which are directly observable
• Positivism


  Positivists believe it is possible and desirable to apply the logic and methods of the natural sciences to study society, solve social problems and achieve progress
• Positivists


  • Aim to produce scientific laws about how society works in order to predict future events and to guide social policies
  • Use quantitative methods to measure patterns of behaviour e.g. Suicide rates; allowing them to produce statements about the relationship between facts they are investigating and thereby discover laws of cause and effect
• Classic positivist sociologists like Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim were firm of the view that sociology could be a science
• Durkheim conducted his famous study Suicide in part to establish how the science of sociology could explain all human behaviour, even that which most would consider fundamentally individual and "antisocial"
• Durkheim tested his hypothesis against a range of "variables" (e.g. religious belief) to understand the impact these social features had on suicide rates
• Interpretivism


  Interpretivists argue that the study of human society must go beyond empirical and supposedly objective evidence to include subjective views, opinions, emotions, values: the things that can't be directly observed and counted
• Interpretivists argue that research cannot really establish social facts, that society is all about subjective values and interpretations and cannot be understood in a scientific way
• Verstehen


  Empathetic understanding, to grasp the meanings people hold
• Interactionists


  • Believe we can have causal explanations, but through a 'bottom-up' approach, or grounded theory
  • Rather than entering the research with a fixed hypothesis, as positivists do, ideas emerge gradually from the observations made
• Phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists


  • Completely reject the possibility of causal explanations of human behaviour
  • Their radically anti-structural view argues that society is not a real thing 'out there'
• Postmodernism


  Postmodernists are critical of science, claiming that large, overarching sets of answers are no longer appropriate or desirable within contemporary society
• Poststructuralist feminism


  Poststructuralist feminists, such as Oakley, are critical of the way science operates, arguing that it has a tendency to be malestream, in other words, that it was created by men, for men
• Poststructuralist feminists favour the development and use of a 'feminist methodology' in which female researchers seek to empower women and do not attempt to remain objective
• Beck argues that science has not always managed to resolve social problems and points to the risks that have actually been introduced through scientific advances, e.g. global warming
• Scientists may make assumptions or allow themselves to be influenced by external factors such as commercial companies employing them to prove that their product is effective
• Scientists may also want to further their own careers and this may involve pursuing or consciously avoiding particular areas
• Interpretivists reject the positivist view that sociology is a science, but they are in agreement with positivists' description of the natural sciences
• Deductive method


  When a scientist tests a hypothesis, it should be continued to be tested and re-tested. If the results are clear and confirmed, then a new law or social fact can be created.
• Falsification


  Research should attempt to prove an idea or hypothesis wrong, rather than trying to prove it right
• Popper rejects verificationism because of what he calls 'the fallacy (error) of induction'
• Swan example to explain the fallacy of induction


  • Having observed a large number of swans – all being white – we might make the generalisation that 'all swans are white'. But a single sighting of a black swan would destroy the theory!
• Falsificationism


  Opposite of verificationism - a statement is scientific if it can be proven wrong by evidence
• Good theory (according to Popper)


  • It is not necessarily a true theory, it is simply one that has withstood attempts to falsify it so far
• Open societies


  Allow for falsification as the theory must be open to criticism for it to be falsified. They explain the rapid growth of scientific knowledge.
• Closed societies


  Dominated by an official belief system that claims to have absolute truth – be it religion, or political ideology such as Marxism. They stifle the growth of science.
• Popper believes much of sociology is unscientific as it consists of theories that cannot be put to the test- no possibility of them being falsified e.g. Marxism – prediction of revolution cannot be falsified
• Popper believes sociology can be scientific, because it is capable of producing hypotheses that can in principle be falsified
• Paradigm


  A framework of concepts and theories within a particular subject, a world view which shaped the way sociologists do their research
• Kuhn argues that normal science (this is, real science that actually occurs, not the idealised form) exists within a particular framework or view of the world which is known as a paradigm
• When Newton discovered gravity and Einstein made his general theory of relativity, these major discoveries changed the way all scientists thought and worked – in other words, there was a paradigm shift
• Kuhn argues that sociology is 'pre-paradigmatic' as there are simply too many competing ideas
• Closed systems

  Settings such as laboratories where variables are controllable and therefore precise predictions can be made
• Open systems


  Where not all variables can be controlled, and precise predictions cannot be made
• Realists argue that sociologists use open systems (where the processes are too complex to make exact predictions) to explain underlying social causes of human behaviour