science

• 4 core principles of science

  1- pursuit of facts

  2- objectivity

  3- establish cause and effect

  4- reliable methods
• Positivism


  Reality is based on patterns which can be explained scientifically through inductive reasoning
• Inductive reasoning


  accumulating data about the world through careful observation and measurement
• Verificationism


  Theories must be confirmed through multiple experiments or observations in order to form a law
• Durkheim's study of suicide (positivism)


  Official statistics - rates of Protestant suicides higher than Catholics. Explained as a result of Catholics being more integrated into society. He believed that by explaining one social fact using another, he showed that sociology can be scientific and form laws.
• Interpretivism


  Do not believe sociology is a science because sociology is based on people's meanings based on internal consciousness rather than reactions to external stimuli which science focuses on
• Weber's 'verstehen' or 'empathetic understanding' (interpretivism)


  People are autonomous and sociologists aim to uncover meaning by viewing society through people's viewpoint
• Types of interpretivism


  -interactionists

  -phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists
• Interactionists (interpretivism)


  Believe we can have causal explanations but avoid making a hypothesis before research. Taking a 'bottom - up' approach.
• Phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists (interpretivism)

  Garfinkel rejects causal explanations and view social reality as only existing in people's consciousness so there is no causal relationship.
• Interpretivism view of suicide

  Douglas - people's meanings of suicide rather than statistics. However, Atkinson - we cannot know the real rate of suicide and can only study the way the living make sense of the deaths i.e. coroners
• Postmodernist interpretivism


  Regards science as a meta-narrative making false claims to the truth so sociology should avoid using science.

  Rejects science as having negative consequences e.g. war and global warming
• Poststructuralist feminists


  Argues that a structural theory risks excluding many groups of women and cannot show the reality of their experiences
• Interpretivists view of science

  Agrees with Positivist view of science as studying observable behaviour through inductive reasoning and verification
• Karl Popper


  sociology is not a science but may be because it has not been in existence for as long as natural sciences
• Popper's 'fallacy error of induction'


  Argues that a theory cannot be proven simply by producing ore observations aimed to support it.
• Falsification (Popper)


  Theories must be capable of being proven wrong and should stand up to attempts to disprove it to be law. A good theory should have bold claims to predict a large number of events so has greater risk of falsification
• Falsification and sociology (Popper)


  Falsification is not always possible in sociology because like religion, it often has individual cases that don't match the pattern but also cannot be objectively disproven
• Science as an open system (Popper)


  accepts challenges., however, sociology is closed by claiming to have the truth
• When sociology can be scientific (Popper)


  When it produces hypotheses that can be falsified
• Thomas Kuhn


  science is a closed system based on paradigms so sociology cannot be scientific unless it resolves its basic disagreements and gains a single paradigm
• Paradigms (Kuhn)


  Basic framework of assumptions, principles and methods within which scientists work. They puzzle solve within its outlines and confrom.
• Periods of crisis of sciences (Kuhns)


  If there are a building number of findings taht contrast the paradigm there is a crisis e.g. scientific revolution. One paradigm will eventually win and return to normal science.
• Sociology as pre-scientific (Kuhn)

  Sociology is pre-paradigmatic so can only be a science when disagreements are solved which is undesirable since paradigms are too similar to meta-narrative which they reject
• Realism


  There is little difference between sociology and science as they both attempt to explain causes of events through observing effects of unobservable structures or processes
• Keat and Urry (realism)

  similarity between science and sociology based on degree of control of variables in research and distinguishes between closed and open systems.
• Realist's closed systems


  researchers can control and measure all variables and make precise predictions, mostly using lab experiments.
• Realist's open systems


  researchers cannot control and measure all variables because processes are too complex or large scale. Sociology studies these systems.
• Keat and Urry's underlying structures

  Science assumes the existence of unobservable structures e.g. black holes. Although sociology cannot observe actors meanings, they can be scientific by observing their effect like science does.