Popper and falsification

• sociology is not a science but can be if we use the hypothetic deductive model and try to falsify
• falsification

  to attempt to prove an idea of a hypothesis wrong
• positivist sociologists tend to use inductive reasoning to try to prove something - they should be deductive instead and try to falsify

  research should attempt to falsify a fact to ensure its reliability, the more you fail to prove your theory wrong, the more likely it is to be a "scientific truth"

  science thrives in open society where it can be critiqued and improved

  Popper pointed out that laws and facts may not remain so over time

  the fallacy of induction - reject verificationism
• falsification - opposite of verificationism - what makes science a unique form of knowledge - a scientific statement is one that in principle is capable of being falsified (proved wrong) by the evidence - must be able to say what evidence would count as falsifying the statement when we come to put it to the test

  there can never be absolute proof that any knowledge is true, a good theory isn't necessarily a true theory, simply one that has withstood attempts to falsify it so far
• scientific method must include:

  • hypothesis formation
  • falsification
  • empirical evidence
  • replication
  • accumulation of evidence
  • possibility of precise prediction
  • theory formation
  • srutiny
• the fallacy of induction

  induction is the process of moving from the observation of particular instances of something to arrive at a general statement or law

  Popper uses examples of swans - observed a large number of swans, all which were white, can make the generalisation "all swans are white", will be relatively easy to make further observations that seem to verify this, but however many swans we observe, we cannot prove all swans are white, a single observation of a black swan will destroy the theory - can never prove a theory is true simply by producing more observations that 'verify' it
• criticism and the open society

  for a theory to be falsifiable, it must be open to criticism from other scientists

  science is essentially a public activity - scientific community is a hothouse environment where everything is open to criticism, flaws in theory can be readily exposed and better theories develop - why scientific knowledge grows so rapidly

  science thrives in 'open' or liberal societies, 'closed' societies dominated by official belief system that claim to have absolute truth (religion, marxism, nazism - stifle growth of science)
• implications for sociology

  much sociology is unscientific as it consists of theories that cannot be put to the test with the possibility that they might be falsified

  believes sociology can be scientific as it is capable of producing hypothesis that can in principle be falsified

  Popper rejects marxism as unscientific as it is untestable, he doesn't believe that untestable ideas are worthless, such ideas may be of value as it can become testable at a later date