Is Sociology a science?

Question 1

Positivists

Answer 1

• Think that sociology should be a science.
• As you need to pose a question, do your research, create a hypothesis and spot trends.
• E.g. Durkheim’s study on suicide
• Found that people committed suicide due to social control such as religion.
• Used quantitative data and considered variables.

Question 2

Popper

Answer 2

• The scientific method relies on falsifiability.
• Positivist sociologists use ‘inductive reasoning’ (trying to prove themselves right) but if they want to be scientists, should use ‘deductive reasoning’ (try to prove themselves wrong)

Question 3

Popper - black swan analogy

Answer 3

• If given the statement, “All swans are white”
• Using inductive reasoning, used by sociologists, you would prove this to be true as you could prove the majority of swans are white,
• However, if you use deductive reasoning, used by scientists, you could prove this wrong by finding a black swan.

Question 4

Interpretivists

Answer 4

• Sociology should not be a science.

Question 5

Andrew Sayer - realist explanation

Answer 5

• Sociology could be a science - an open science rather than a closed science.
• E.g. chemistry is a closed science, meteorological science is an open science - weather people do not know if it will rain or not. In sociology you also do not know what will happen.

Question 6

Kuhn

Answer 6

• Paradigms.
• Sociology could be a young science without a unifying paradigm.
• For it to be a unifying paradigm, everyone would need to be a functionalist, for example.

Question 7

Postmodernists

Answer 7

• Science is just another metanarrative.