Sociology and Science Flashcards
Durkheim
(Positivism)
Sociology should study social facts to observe and measure
^ Claimed to have discovered a ‘real law’ in his study of suicide
Comte
(Positivism)
- Possible to discover laws that control/shape behaviour of people in society
- Science isn’t to tell us WHY but HOW
Comte
(Inductive Logic)
Big part of positivism - type of reasoning about something moving from a set of facts to general conclusion
. Uses results from experiments to make conclusions on something that is yet to be studied
Popper
Falsification
- scientific statement is capable of being falsified and has to be able to withstand it
^ cannot say all swans are white as a sighting of one black swan will destroy the theory
Kuhn
Paradigm:
. shared by members of given scientific community and defines what their science is
. Provides basic framework that informs scientists and set of norms to tell scientists how to think
^ Science can’t exist without a shared paradigm
Plank
(Paradigms)
Scientific revolution triumphs as its opponents eventually die
Keat and Urry
(Realisits)
Stress similarities between sociology and natural sciences in terms of how much control researcher has over variables
. Natural and social science attempt to explain causes of underlying structures and processes, often unobservable - work out existence by watching their effects
Mead
(Interpretivist)
Subject matter of sociology:
Human beings interpret meanings of a stimulus and then choose how to respond
Weber
(interpretivist)
Verstehen = put ourselves in other peoples POV to understand their meanings
Douglas
(Interpretisivst - suicide)
Humans have free will - to understand suicide must uncover meaning of those involved
Atkinson
(interpretivist - suicide)
Statistics are social constructs - can never know ‘real rate’ of suicide - can’t know meanings of the deceased
Glaser and Strauss
(Interactionisits)
reject positivist idea of having a definite hypothesis as risks imposing our own view
