Debates: Is Sociology A Science

Question 1

[🧪] what are the sources of knowledge

Answer 1

• WALLACE
  1. Authoritarian: knowledge comes from a person who is wise and who provides information
  2. Mystical: insight gained from religious experience or drug taking
  3. Logics-rational: knowledge comes from ‘seeking the truth’ which comes from the rules of logic
  4. Scientific: knowledge comes from putting forward ideas and hypotheses and testing them in rigorous ways

Question 2

[🧪] what did ‘enlightenment thinkers’ believe science could do?

Answer 2

• natural science produced true, objective knowledge of the world around us
• this would be useful for progress and human betterment. Eg: eradicating diseases and hunger

Question 3

[🧪] what is meant by science ?

Answer 3

• Set of principles that tell us how to produce valid knowledge
• Laws and theories on objective facts gained by observing phenomena
• Uses empiricism: knowledge gained from experience or observation
• Uses objectivity: researcher doesn’t involve their opinions, biases and prejudices
• Empirical knowledge is gained through experiments ( testing different relationships between variables)
• Theories and laws tested over and over by replication become accepted as scientific knowledge

Question 4

[🧪] what are the 5 features of science

Answer 4

1. Empirical
2. Testable: empirical knowledge should be repeatedly tested, revisited, open to verification and refutation
3. Theoretical: explain casual relationships ( explains why something happens)
4. Cumulative: scientific theory builds on previous knowledge
5. Objective

Question 5

[📗] which sociologists believed that sociology is a science ?

Answer 5

• Comte, Durkheim and Marx
• Positivists

Question 6

[📗] what are positivists view on sociology ?

Answer 6

• Sociology can ad should use methods of natural sciences
• Sociologists should use Quantitative methods that aim to identify and measure social structures
• Durkheim: real laws are discoverable that will explain patterns of behaviour

Question 7

[📗] what is induction/inductive reason and inductive logic ?

Answer 7

• Induction/inductive reasoning: accumulating data about the world through careful observation and measurement
• Inductive logic: type of reasoning that involves moving from a set of specific facts to a general conclusion

Question 8

[📗] what do positivist think about social facts and what are the features of social facts ?

Answer 8

• Our behaviour is a result of social facts
  1. They are external to individuals
  2. They constrain individuals, shaping their behaviour
  3. Greater than individuals ( exist on a higher level )

Question 9

[📗] How does social facts influence sociology

Answer 9

• In sociology we might explain the social fact of educational failure with another social fact of material deprivation
• Therefore sociologists seek to discover the causes and patterns they observe, aiming to produce general statements and scientific laws on how society works
• Resulting in the ability to predict future events and guide social policies

Question 10

[📗] what is verification ?

Answer 10

• ## Inductive reasoning claims to verify a theory - which is proving it is true

Question 11

[📗] what type of explanations do positivists prefer?

Answer 11

• Macro or structural explanations. Eg: functionalism or Marxism
• because macro theories see society and it’s structures as social facts that exist outside us and shape our behaviour

Question 12

[📗] why do positivists use quantitative data ?

Answer 12

• Uncovers and measures patterns of behaviour
• Produces mathematically precise statements about the relationship between facts
• Analysing quantitative data discovers the laws of cause

Question 13

[📗] why do positivists prefer objective research ?

Answer 13

• Researchers should be detached and objective
• They should not let their subjective feelings, values or prejudice influence how they conduct their research or analyse their findings
• HOWEVER: sociology deals with people, therefore there is danger that the researcher may contaminate the research. Eg: influencing interviewees to answer in ways that reflect the researchers opinion
• Therefore us the most objective quantitative methods like: questionnaires, structured interviews and statistics. These methods are reliable

Question 14

[📗] Explain positivism and suicide?

Answer 14

• Durkheim: used the comparative method
• Used official statistics to observe the patterns of suicide rates
• Findings: rates for protestants were higher than catholics
• This was a result of social facts of integration and regulation
• Eg: catholics were less likely to commit suicide due to being more successful in integrating individuals
• Real law: different levels of integration and regulation produce different rates of suicide

Question 15

[📘] what Sociologists say sociology is not a science

Answer 15

• Interpretivists
• Weber, Mead, Douglas, Atkinson

Question 16

[📘] what is the subject matter of sociology

Answer 16

• Subject matter us meaningful social action, we can understand sociology by successfully interpreting the meaning and motives of the actors involved
• sociology is about unobservable internal meanings, not external causes and effects like science

Question 17

[📘] what is the difference between natural science and sociology ?

Answer 17

• natural science: studies matters which have no consciousness. Behaviour can be explained by a straightforward reaction to an external stimulus. Eg: apple falling to the ground - gravity
• Sociology: studies people who have a conscious, people make sense of and construct their own worlds by attaching meanings to it
• actions can only be understood by meaning, meanings are internal to peoples consciousness
• MEAD: rather than responding automatically to external stimulus, humans interpret tge meanings of stimulus and then choose how to respond

Question 18

[📘] Verstehen and quality research

Answer 18

• WEBER
• Verstehen: empathy ( to have an empathic understanding to grasp meanings)
• We need to put ourselves in the place of the actor seeing from their perspective therefore researchers must abandon objectivity
• Qualitative methods like: participant observation, unstructured interviews and personal documents are used
• These methods produce high validity and give the sociologists the subject understanding of the actor’s meaning

Question 19

[ 📘] Interpretivism and suicide

Answer 19

DOUGLAS
->Rejects positivist ideas on suicide, to understand suicide we must uncover its meanings for those involved
-> Quantitative data like stats are a social construction resulting from the way coroners label certain deaths as suicide
-> We should use qualitative data from suicide case studies to reveal the actors meaning and give us a better idea of the real rate of suicide
ATKINSON
-> Statistics are socially constructed
-> we can never know the real rate of suicide, even with using qualitative methods

Question 20

[📘] what is the postmodern view on sociology and science ?

Answer 20

• Science is just one more ‘ big story’ - meta narrative
• A scientific approach is a dangerous approach as it claims a monopoly of truth therefore excluding other points of view

Question 21

[📘] what is the late-modern view on sociology and science ?

Answer 21

• Science has not always led to the progress that positivists claimed it would
• Eg: it has led to the emergence of Beck’s ‘ risk society ‘ such as science created dangers like nuclear weapons and global warming undermines the idea that science brings benefits to humankind

Question 22

[📒] what is the fallacy of induction ?

Answer 22

• POPPER
• We should reject verifactionism
• Illustrated by his examples of Swans. We might make a generalisation that all swans are white , we can’t prove that all swans are white - an observation of a black swan will destroy the theory.
• We can never prove a theory is true simply by producing more observations that verify it.

Question 23

[📒] what is falsification ?

Answer 23

• POPPER
• a scientific statement is one that is capable of being falsified - proven wrong - by the evidence
• Eg: a test would disapprove the law of gravity if, when we let go of an object it would not fall

Question 24

[📒] According to Popper what are two features that make a good theory?

Answer 24

• If it is in principle falsifiable, when tested it stands up to all attempts to disprove it
• It is bold - it makes big generalisations that precisely predict a large number of cases or events, and so at greater risk of being falsified
• sociology could then be a science, but only when it produces testable, falsifiable hypotheses
• However this is difficult as much of sociology is unobservable therefore not falsifiable. Eg how can we falsify Marx’s false class conscious

Question 25

[📒] what is Kuhn’s view on sociology and science ?

Answer 25

• He sits on the fence

Question 26

[📒] what are the 3 paradigm shifts/revolutions that science went through ?

Answer 26

1. Pre- science: period of discovery when there was no central paradigm
2. Normal science: where scientists used an establish paradigm ( like theory of evolution) to support theories
3. Revolutionary science : where the paradigms are challenged

Question 27

[📒] what are paradigm shifts ?

Answer 27

• Take place when theories in normal science ( eg: idea that the MMR jab is totally safe) are challenged by revolutionary science ( Eg: Wakefield argued it caused autism).
• when one (old) way of thinking is shoved away by a newer way of thinking

Question 28

[📒] what kind of science is sociology ?

Answer 28

• Sociology it’s at its pre-science stage.
• There’s no dominant perspective and there are lots of competing theories and perspective. Therefore sociology is a young science still finding its unifying theory
• we will never get to the truth and that science isn’t as objective as we’d like it to be.
• HOWEVER: LAKATOS- Kuhn’s ideas are too simplistic and in the contemp world, ideas are not abandoned even if new discoveries are made

Question 29

[🟪] what are realists perspective on sociology ?

Answer 29

• KEAT and URRY
• There’s similarities between sociology and certain kinds of natural science
• They talk between the difference between open and closed systems.

Question 30

[🟪] what is a closed system ?

Answer 30

• Researcher can control and measure all the relevant variables and therefore can make precise predictions
• • Eg: lab experiments - similar to sciences like Physics and Chemistry

Question 31

[🟪] what is an open system ?

Answer 31

• Researcher can’t control and measure all the relevant variables and so can’t make precise predictions
• Eg: it’s difficult predicting crime rates - there are too many variables

Question 32

[🟪] what are the underlying structures?

Answer 32

• KEAT & URRY
• reject the positivists view: that science is only concerned with observing phenomena, physicists can’t directly see black holes but are still interested in them
• reject interpretivists: sociology can be scientific and study unobservable phenomena
• therefore both natural and social science can explain the causes of events. We can see structures exist by observing the effects of the structures
• Eg: you may not be able to see social class, but you can see the effects of social class