Science Debate

• Science is based in objectivity and empirical evidence
• We use the scientific method by coming up with a hypothesis, testing it, coming to a conclusion and having the study peer reviewed
• Durkheim's suicide study followed the scientific method, using a hypothesis and testing it
• Some positivists critique Durkheim's study by saying it is hard to operationalise concepts like social cohesion
• Popper says science is based in falsification
• To falsify something, there must be a statement that can be proven false. The more it is proven correct, the more credible it is, but at any point it could still be proven false
• You could say 'all swans are white', and this would be proven true unless you find a black swan
• Inductive reasoning searches for evidence to prove a hypothesis correct, but Popper says positivists should use deductive reasoning - to try and prove it wrong
• This is difficult because some concepts cannot be falsified and thus cannot be scientific
• Keat and Urry, as well as Sayer, say sociology has some similarities with science depending on the control the sociologist has
• Closed system - all variables can be controlled. Open system - not everything can be controlled
• Meteorology is an example of a science operating in an open system as weather is too complex to predict with 100% accuracy. In this way, sociology is a science - society is just too complex to ever create a closed system
• Kuhn thinks sociology could be a science if it followed a single paradigm
• A paradigm establishes the fundamentals of a science and what it should be about; even if there are rival schools of thought they should be able to agree on a single paradigm
• Sociology has no one paradigm as there is nothing all sociological theories agree on.
• Postmodernists say there shouldn't be a single paradigm because you cannot create a meta narrative to explain postmodern society
• Interpretivists think sociology shouldn't be a science
• Humans have agency and can choose to react in different ways, so there can never be anything objective
• Sociology looks at unobservable meanings, as opposed to observable cause and effect
• Natural sciences study areas that do not have a consciousness, so behaviour can always be explained. Sociology cannot guarantee something is due to a specific stimulus
• Postmodernists question if science is a science