Sociology and Science Flashcards
What is Positivism in sociology?
Positivism is a perspective that argues that sociology is a science and values objective knowledge and seeks to establish cause and effect in social phenomena.
What type of explanations do positivists prefer?
Positivists prefer macro/structural explanations.
What is inductive reasoning in the context of positivism?
Inductive reasoning involves generating laws and facts about society through repeated measures and observed regularities.
What is verificationism?
Verificationism is the idea that after many observations confirm a theory, one can claim to have discovered the truth in the form of a general law.
What do positivist sociologists aim to produce?
Positivist sociologists aim to make scientific laws about the way the world works ; this can then be used to predict future events and guide social policies.
What are the similarities between positivists and scientists?
Both use experimental methods, prefer quantitative data, and believe in detached research free from values and opinions.
What is the critisicisms of the view that sociology is a science
- Not all sociolgists beleive that humans are passive subjects of external forces. Interpretivist take a very different view to human action than positivists.
- Sociologists argue that by attempting to study society in a scienitfic way it limits sociologists ability to study their chosen topic.
What did Durkheim’s study on suicide reveal?
Durkheim found that Protestants had a higher suicide rate than Catholics, attributing this to social facts related to integration and regulation thus establishing a cause and effect between the social facts such as intergation and regulations and the higher suicide rates among Protestants so he claimed to have discovered a ‘real law’ and that social facts can be explained scientifically.
What is Interpretivism?
Interpretivism is a perspective that argues science is unsuited to studying human beings because human beings aren’t just passive puppets responding to a stimuli and focuses on the meanings and motives of individuals.
Interpretivism
How do natural science and sociology differ?
Natural science studies matter without consciousness, while sociology studies conscious individuals who attach meaning to their experiences.
What is Mead’s action theory?
Mead argues that human beings interpret stimuli and choose how to respond based on the meanings they assign to situations.
What does Douglas propose regarding the study of suicide?
Douglas suggests studying suicide through social facts and uncovering its meanings for those involved, using quanlitative data from case studies.
What is Atkinson’s view on studying meanings of suicide?
Atkinson argues we can only study how the living make sense of deaths and how coroners use these assumptions to reach verdicts.
What do postmodernists argue about scientific sociology?
Postmodernists argue that scientific sociology is a metanarrative that claims monopoly of truth and excludes other perspectives so it is a form of domination.
Type of postmodernist
What do poststructuralist say?
- Poststructuralists share the same view of postmodernists as they argue that quantitative scientific methods favoured by positivists are oppressive and cannot capture the reality of women’s experiences.
- Science may not always lead to progress like positivists think and with the emergence of a risk society, the idea that science inevitably brings benefits to humankind is undermined.
What is Popper’s stance on scientific knowledge?
Popper notes that many systems of thought (eg religion, science, political) claim to hold true knowledge about the world so he distinguishes scientific knowledge from other forms such as religion and questions why it has grown significantly in recent centuries.
What does Popper say about inductive reasoning and falsification?
Popper rejects inductive reasoning and falsification, arguing that a good theory must be falsifiable but should withstand attempts to disprove it.
He also claims that science thrives in an open society as it challenges different ideas and that science is unable to progress in a closed society as it’s dominated by an official belief system
Can be scientific
What does Popper say about sociology as a science ?
He also argues that sociology CAN be scientific as it’s capable of producing hypotheses that can be tested, for e.g Ford believed comprehensive schooling would lead to social mixing, tested and then falsified this theory
What does Kuhn say about sociology as a science?
Kuhn rejected the view science as a continuous process of hypothesis testing and forming and instead argues that science works within a shared paradigm - a set of principles shared by members of a given scientific community and defines what their science is.
for example all scientists believe in gravity - if you challenge beliefs that are held within the paradigm you may be shunned, for e.g Velisovsky’s book “Worlds In Collision
What are Kuhn’s two types of science?
Kuhn identifies normal science, which involve concepts that goes unquestioned and defines questions and answers in broad terms.
However from time to time something occurs within ‘normal science’ that cannot be explained by the paradigm which leads to a ‘scientific revolutions’, where rival paradigms emerge and can’t be measured by the same set of standards to see which is the best.
What do realists Keat and Urry distinguish between?
Keat and Urry distinguish between open systems, where variables can’t be controlled, and closed systems, where variables can be controlled and precise predictions can be made e.g by using a laboratory experiment.
What do realists Keat and Urry say about open systems ?
realists argue that sociologists study open systems where the processes are too complex to make exact predictions, for e.g it’s hard to predict the crime rate precisely as there are too many variables involved
Bulletpoint
What is the realist perspective on sociology and science?
- Realists argue that sociology studies open systems and that unobservable structures can be scientifically studied through their observable effects.
- Realists see little difference between natural science and sociology, except that some natural scientists are able to study closed systems under lab conditions.
