Ideology and Science

Question 1

Popper - why sociology isn’t a science

Answer 1

• Science can be falsified, religion cant.

Question 2

Popper - open belief system, cumulative and sacred

Answer 2

• Science is an open belief system because it is open to new ideas.
• Scientific knowledge is cumulative as it grows.
• Scientific knowledge is not sacred as you can criticise it.

Question 3

Falsificationism

Answer 3

Scientists should try to disprove theories. Other belief systems do not do this.

Question 4

Cognitive power of science

Answer 4

• It has a greater cognitive power, science allows us to explain, predict and control the world in a way other beliefs do not.

Question 5

Merton - why did science begin to develop when it did?

Answer 5

He argued that science can only thrive when it receives support from other social institutions, e.g.
- William the Conqueror = gave lots of money to the church to save his soul.
- 500 years later, Henry VIII takes loads of money from the church to create a scientific navy.

Question 6

Merton - CUDOS

Answer 6

He identified four norms of ways that scientists behave:
- Communism means all knowledge is shared.
- Universalism means everything gets judged by the same objective criteria.
- Disinterestedness means science should be done for sciences sake.
- Organised Scepticism means you should question everything.

Question 7

Evans-Pritchard’s study of the Azande people - why are the beliefs of the Azande a closed belief system?

Answer 7

• No matter what, you still believe you have been cursed by a witch.

Question 8

Polanyi

Answer 8

Identified three devices that all belief systems have that make them resistant to contradictory knowledge claims:
- Circularity means each idea in a system is explained by another idea within a system.
- Subsidiary explanations mean if something doesn’t work, come up with another explanation (doomsday culture)
- Denial of legitimacy to rivals means won’t listen to critics, because those critics shouldn’t be listened to.

Question 9

Rupert Sheldrake

Answer 9

• A crazy scientist, he had beliefs in telepathy, psychic dogs, the sun is alive, etc…
• The Journal Nature (a scientific journal) believed his book should be burned, was not allowed to publish a ted talk.
• This suggests science is maybe a closed system.

Question 10

Kuhn (paradigms)

Answer 10

• Science has a paradigm just like religion.
• Anything outside the paradigm gets rejected.
• Science is not scientific as it doesn’t like ideas outside the paradigm (use Rupert Sheldrake’s case study as an example)

Question 11

Karin Knorr-Cetina
Woolgar (little green men)

Answer 11

• Knorr-Cetina (interpretivist sociologist) says that scientific knowledge is socially constructed. Use Woolgar’s study to support.
• Says that scientists make sense of the world just as much as everyone else does.
• They have to persuade others though.
• So they adopt a dispassionate, scientific role, e.g. LGM.

Question 12

What examples are there of how science has been used in the interests of the ruling class?

Answer 12

Marxists
- Military industrial complex spend loads on weapons.
- Scientific racism science has been used to justify imperialism and slavery.

Question 13

What examples are there of how science has been used in the interests of male domination?

Answer 13

Feminists
- Women are seen as ‘too emotional’ to make decisions.

Question 14

Why do Postmodernists reject scientific knowledge-claims?

Answer 14

• Science claims the truth, but who knows the truth?
• E.g. the photo of the pipe.

Question 15

Technoscience

Answer 15

• Making things to make money rather than benefitting the human race.
• Science has become subordinated to capitalism.

Question 16

Ideology & what it is used to describe.

Answer 16

Usually used by people to describe a belief system that is wrong. People rarely use it to describe their own belief systems.

Question 17

Ha-Joon-Chang

Answer 17

The L’oreal principle, “because you’re worth it”
- Legitimises ruling class ideology.

Question 18

Gramsci - ideology

Answer 18

• The ruling class prevent a revolution as they spread ideas through education, the media, religion, etc…
• They maintain control through coercion.

Question 19

What is nationalism?

Answer 19

• The belief that nations are real.
• The belief that every nation should be self-governing.
• National loyalty & identity.

Question 20

Marxist and functionalist views on nationalism

Answer 20

• Marxists don’t like it, it provides false consciousness and turns the W/C against itself.
• Functionalists think it is a good thing as it binds people together. Education should involve history and citizenship to bind us together with British values.

Question 21

Gellner’s thoughts on nationalism

Answer 21

• Gets invented with modernity.
• With a complex, modern society we needed one idea which binds us together.
• Nationalism does this.

Question 22

Mannheim

Answer 22

• Believed that all belief systems are one-sided.
• They’re always the viewpoint of one group or class.
• e.g. Capitalism and Communism, which one is true??

Question 23

Two types of belief systems that Mannheim distinguished:

Answer 23

• Ideological thought means conservative, right-wing ideas, keeping things the same, e.g. capitalism.
• Utopian thought means revolutionary, e.g. communism.

Question 24

How has science been used to justify the male domination of women? - Pauline Marks

Answer 24

• In the past, educating women would make them ‘too manly’.
• Ideas from science have been used to justify excluding women from education.
• 19th century male doctors expressed the view that educating females would lead to ‘a new race of puny and unfeminine females’ and disqualify women from their true ‘vocation’.
• Many other religious beliefs involved ideas that women are inferior e.g. impure and unclean due to menstruation.

Question 25

How has religion been used to justify the male domination of women?

Answer 25

• Virgin-whore dichotomy
• Original sin - women will have pain in childbirth and experience menstruation because of Eve.

Question 26

How has the family been used to justify the male domination of women?

Answer 26

• Women are the best at homemaking, e.g. Parson’s.
• Domestic violence.