positivism

• argue sociology can be a science
• reality exists outside of the mind - society is an objective factual reality made up of social 'facts' that can be studies

  people's behaviour is shaped by social forces and is observable and measurable

  society can be studied in the same way as the natural world, patterns can be observed and analysed to create social facts

  cause and effect relationships can be established, making it possible to establish correlations between variables - determine how society works
• Durkheim - comparative study of suicide - possible + desirable for sociology to be a science as "real laws are discoverable" - used inductive reasoning

  inductive reasoning - accumulating data about the world through careful observation and measurement

  believe it is possible and desirable to apply the logic and methods of the natural sciences to the study of society

  reality is not random or chaotic but patterned and we can observe these empirical (factual) patterns or regularities

  verificationism
• verificationism

  after many observations have confirmed or verified the theory, we can claim to have discovered the truth in the form of a general law - inductive reasoning

  claims to verify a theory

  for positivists, the patterns we observe can all be explained in the same way - by finding the facts that cause them
• induction/inductive reasoning

  accumulating data about the world through careful observation and measurement

  as knowledge grows, we begin to see general patterns