Theories

• Sociology as a science

  • Comte - main task of sociology is to discover general laws of social development through:
  • Laws of co-existence - relationships between parts of society
  • Laws of succession - laws that govern social change
  • Durkheim - sociology is a science because we can study social facts as things to observe and measure, like suicide rates
• Sociology is not a science

  • Popper - cannot be a science as it doesn't undergo falsification, due to how many sociological ideas are too abstract to be tested
  • Weber - Interpretivism requires a subjective understanding which relates to opinions
  • Kuhn - sociology does not have a dominant perspective and will therefore never have a central paradigm
• Sociologists can keep their values out of research

  • Positivists - it can because it's objective
  • Myrdal and Gouldber - sociologists should only identify their values, but opening 'take sides', espousing the interests of actual groups
  • It is undesirable to be value-neutral