Sociology as a Science

Question 1

positivism

Answer 1

The founding fathers of sociology in the 19th century were very impressed by the success of science in explaining the natural world and providing the knowledge with which humans could extend their control over nature. Many of these sociologists, such as Auguste Comte (1798-1857) who coined the term ‘sociology’, described themselves as ‘positivists’.
Positivists believe that it is possible and desirable to apply the logic and methods of the natural sciences to the study of society. Doing so will bring us true, objective knowledge of the same type as that found in the natural sciences.
This will provide the basis for solving social problems and achieving progress.

Question 2

A key feature of the positivist approach is the belief that reality exists outside and independently of the human mind:

Answer 2

• Nature is made up of objective, observable, physical facts, such as rocks, cells, stars etc, which are external to our minds and which exist whether we like it or not.
• Similarly, society is an objective factual reality - it is a real
  ‘thing’ made up of social facts that exists ‘out there’, independently of individuals, just like the physical world.

Question 3

Patterns, laws and inductive reasoning

Answer 3

For positivists, reality is not random or chaotic but patterned, and we can observe these empirical (factual) patterns or regularities - for example, that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. It is the job of science to observe, identify, measure and record these patterns systematically - preferably through laboratory experiments - and then to explain them.
Positivists believe, in Durkheim’s words, that ‘real laws are discoverable’ that will explain these patterns. Just as physicists have discovered laws that govern the workings of nature, such as the law of gravity, sociologists can discover laws that determine how society works. The method for doing so is known as induction, or inductive reasoning.
Induction involves accumulating data about the world through careful observation and measurement. As our knowledge grows, we begin to see general patterns. For example, we may observe that objects, when dropped, always fall towards the earth at the same rate of acceleration.

Question 4

Positivists believe, in Durkheim’s words, that ‘real laws are discoverable’ that will explain these patterns. Just as physicists have discovered laws that govern the workings of nature, such as the law of gravity, sociologists can discover laws that determine how society works. The method for doing so is known as induction, or inductive reasoning.

Answer 4

Induction involves accumulating data about the world through careful observation and measurement. As our knowledge grows, we begin to see general patterns. For example, we may observe that objects, when dropped, always fall towards the earth at the same rate of acceleration

Question 5

Verificationism

Answer 5

From this, we can develop a theory that explains all our observations so far. After many more observations have confirmed or verified the theory, we can claim to have discovered the truth in the form of a general law. In our example above, we can confirm the existence of a universal law of gravity. Because inductive reasoning claims to verify a theory - that is, prove it true - this approach is also known as verificationism.

Question 6

For positivists, the patterns we observe, whether in nature or in society, can all be explained in the same way - by finding the facts that cause them. Example

Answer 6

For example, physics explains an apple falling to the ground (one fact) in terms of gravity (another fact). Similarly, in sociology we might explain the social fact of educational failure in terms of another social fact such as material deprivation.

Question 7

What do positivist seek to discover

Answer 7

Positivist sociologists thus seek to discover the causes of the patterns they observe. Like natural scientists, they aim to produce general statements or scientific laws about how society works. These can then be used to predict future events and to guide social policies. For example, if we know that material deprivation causes educational failure, we can use this knowledge to develop policies to tackle it.
Positivists favour ‘macro’ or structural explanations of social phenomena, such as functionalism and Marxism.
This is because macro theories see society and its structures as social facts that exist outside of us and shape our behaviour patterns.

Question 8

Objective quantitative research

Answer 8

Positivists believe that as far as possible sociology should take the experimental method used in the natural sciences as the model for research, since this allows the investigator to test a hypothesis in the most systematic and controlled way. (A hypothesis is a statement such as ‘A causes B’.) Basically, experiments involve examining each possible causal factor to observe its effect, while simultaneously excluding all other factors.
Like natural scientists, positivists use quantitative data to uncover and measure patterns of behaviour. This allows them to produce mathematically precise statements about the relationship between the facts they are investigating. By analysing quantitative data, positivists seek to discover the laws of cause and effect that determine behaviour.

Question 9

positivist beilive that the resercher should be

Answer 9

Positivists believe that researchers should be detached and objective. They should not let their own subjective feelings, values or prejudices influence how they conduct their research or analyse their findings. In the natural sciences, it is claimed that the scientist’s values and opinions make no difference to the outcome of their research. For example, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius whether the scientist likes that tact or not.
However, in sociology we are dealing with people, and there is a danger that the researcher may ‘contaminate’ the research - for example, by influencing interviewees to answer in ways that reflect the researcher’s opinions rather than their own. Positivists therefore employ methods that allow for maximum objectivity and detachment, and so they use quantitative methods such as questionnaires, structured interviews and official statistics. These methods also produce reliable data that can be checked by others.

Question 10

Positivism and suicide
Emile Durkheim (1897) chose to study suicide to show that sociology was a science with its own distinct subject matter. He believed that if he could prove that even such a highly individual act had social causes, this would establish sociology’s status as a genuinely scientific discipline.

Answer 10

Using quantitative data from official statistics, Durkheim observed that there were patterns in the suicide rate.
For example, rates for Protestants were higher than for Catholics. He concluded that these patterns could not be the product of the motives of individuals, but were social facts. As such, they must be caused by other social facts - forces acting upon members of society to determine their behaviour.
According to Durkheim, the social facts responsible for determining the suicide rate were the levels of integration and regulation. Thus, for example, Catholics were less likely than Protestants to commit suicide because Catholicism was more successful in integrating individuals.
Thus Durkheim claimed to have discovered a real law: that different levels of integration and regulation produce different rates of suicide. He claimed to have demonstrateo that sociology had its own unique subject matter - social facts - and that these could be explained scientificaly.

Question 11

Interpretivists say sociology is about unobservable internal meanings, not external causes. In their view, sociology is not a science, because science only deals with laws of cause and effect, and not human meanings.
Because of this, many interpretivists completely reject the use of natural science methods and explanations as a model for sociology. They argue that there is a fundamental difference between the subject matter of the natural sciences and that of sociology.

Answer 11

• Natural science studies matter, which has no consciousness. As such, its behaviour can be explained as a straightforward reaction to an external stimulus. For example, an apple falls to the ground because of the force of gravity. It has no consciousness, and no choice about its behaviour.
• Sociology studies people, who do have consciousness.
  People make sense of and construct their world by attaching meanings to it. Their actions can only be understood in terms of these meanings, and meanings are internal to people’s consciousness, not external stimuli - they are ideas or constructs, not things.

Question 12

Unlike matter, people have free will and can exercise choice.
As G.H. Mead argued,

Answer 12

rather than responding automatically to external stimuli, human beings interpret the meaning of a stimulus and then choose how to respond to it.
For interpretivists, then, individuals are not puppets on. a sting, manipulated by supposed external social facts, as Positivists believe, but autonomous (independent) beings who construct their social world through the meanings they these meanings.
give to it.

Question 13

Verstehen and qualitative research

Answer 13

Interpretivists therefore reject the logic and methods of the natural sciences. They argue that to discover the meanings people give to their actions, we need to see the world from their viewpoint. For interpretivists, this involves abandoning the detachment and objectivity favoured by positivists. Instead, we must put ourselves in the place of the actor, using what Weber calls verstehen or empathetic understanding to grasp their meanings.
For this reason, interpretivists favour the use of qualitative methods and data such as participant observation, unstructured interviews and personal documents. These methods produce richer, more personal data high in validity and give the sociologist a subjective understanding of the actor’s meanings and life-world.

Question 14

Types of interpretivism

Answer 14

Interactionists believe that we can have causal explanations. However, they reject the positivist view that we should have a definite hypothesis before we start our research. For example, Glaser and Strauss (1968) argue that this risks imposing our own view of what is important, rather than taking the actors’ viewpoint, so we end up distorting the reality we are seeking to capture.
Instead, Glaser and Strauss favour a ‘bottom-up’ approach, or grounded theory. Rather than entering the research with a fixed hypothesis from the start (when we know little about the topic we are researching), our ideas emerge gradually from the observations we make during the course of the research itself. These ideas can then be used later to produce testable hypotheses of the sort favoured by positivists.

Phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists such as Garfinkel completely reject the possibility of causal explanations of human behaviour. They take a radically anti-structuralist view, arguing that society is not a real thing ‘out there determining our actions. In this view, social reality is simply the shared meanings or knowledge of its members.
As such, society is not an external force - it exists only in people’s consciousness.
Therefore, in this view, the subject matter of sociology can only consist of the interpretive procedures that people use to make sense of the world. Because people’s actions are not governed by external causes, there is no possibility of cause-and-effect explanations of the kind sought by positivists.

Question 15

The interactionist Jack Douglas (1967) rejects the positivist idea of external social facts determining our behaviour.
he says

Answer 15

Individuals have free will and they choose how to act on the basis of meanings. To understand suicide, therefore, we must uncover its meanings for those involved, instead of imposing our own meanings onto the situation.

Question 16

Douglas quantitive versus qualilitive

Answer 16

Douglas also rejects Durkheim’s use of quantitative data from official statistics. These are not objective facts, but simply social constructions resulting from the way coroners label certain deaths as suicides. Instead, Douglas proposes we use qualitative data from case studies of suicides, to reveal the actors’ meanings and give us a better idea of the real rate of suicide than the official statistics.

Question 17

Like Douglas, the ethnomethodologist J. Maxwell Atkinson
(1978) rejects the idea that external social facts determine behaviour, and agrees that statistics are socially constructed.
he argues

Answer 17

Atkinson argues that we can never know the ‘real rate’ of suicide, even using qualitative methods, since we can never know for sure what meanings the deceased held.
For Atkinson, the only thing we can study about suicide is the way that the living make sense of deaths - the interpretive procedures coroners use to classify deaths. For ethnomethodologists, members of society have a stock of taken-for-granted assumptions with which they make sense of situations - including deaths. The sociologist’s role is to uncover what this knowledge is and how coroners use it to arrive at a verdict.

Question 18

Postmodernists also argue against the idea of a scientific sociology. This is because

Answer 18

Postmodernists also argue against the idea of a scientific sociology. This is because they regard natural science as simply a meta-narrative. Despite its claim to have special acces to the truth, science is just one more ‘big story’ its account of the word is no more valid than any other, if this is so there is no particular reason why we should adopt science as a model for sociology.

Question 19

In fact, given the postmodernist view that there are as many different truths as there are claims to a view, a scientific approach is dangerous because it points to the monopoly of the truth and therefore excludes other points of view. Hence a scientific sociology not only makes fatse aims about hang the truth; it is also a form of domination. for example

Answer 19

For example, in the former Soviet Union, Marxism - a theory claiming to have discovered scientifically the truth about the ideal society - was used to justify coercion and oppression.

Question 20

Poststructuralist feminists argue

Answer 20

They argue that the quest for a single, scientifie feminist theory is a form of domination, since it covertly excludes many groups of women. Some other feminists argue that the quantitative scientific methods favoured by positivists are also oppressive and cannot capture the realty of women’s experiences.

Question 21

Some writers also argue that science is an undesirable model for sociology to follow because, in practice, science has not always led to the progress that positivists believed it would. For example,

Answer 21

the emergence of risk society’, with scientifically created dangers such as nuclear weapons and global warming, has undermined the idea that science inevitably brings benefits to humankind. If science produces such negative consequences, it is argued, it would be inappropriate for sociology to adopt it as a model.

Question 22

What is science?

Answer 22

Although interpretivists reject the positivist view that sociology is a science, they tend to agree with the positivsts description of the natural sciences. As we have seen above, positivists see natural science as inductive reasoning or verificationism applied to the study of observable patterns.
However, not everyone accepts the positivists’ portrayal of the natural sciences. A number of sociologists, philosophers and historians have put forward quite different pictures of science.

Question 23

Karl Popper: how science grows

Answer 23

His ideas about science have important implications for sociology.Popper notes that many systems of thought claim to have true knowledge about the world, such as religions, political ideologies, tradition, intuition and common sense, as well as science. Given this Popper sets out to answer two related questions about science:
1 What is it that distinguishes scientific knowledge from other forms of knowledge - what makes it unique?

2 Why has scientific knowledge been able to grow so spectacularly in just a few centuries?

Question 24

The fallacy of induction

Answer 24

Popper differs from the positivists in that he rejects their view that the distinctive feature of science lies in inductive reasoning and verificationism. In Popper’s view, the main
reason why We Should reject verificationism is what he
calls the fallacy of induction. As we have seen, induction is the process of moving from the observation of particular instances of something to arrive at a general statement or law.

Question 25

To illustrate the fallacy of induction, Popper uses the example of swans.

Answer 25

Having observed a large number of swans, all of which were white, we might make the generalisation, ‘All swans are white’. It will be relatively easy for us to make further observations that seem to verify this
- there are plenty more white swans out there. But however many swans we observe, we cannot prove that all swans are white - a single observation of a black swan will destroy the theory. Thus, we can never prove a theory is true simply by producing more observations that support or ‘verify it.

Question 26

Falsificationism
In Popper’s view, what makes science a unique form of knowledge is the very opposite of verificationism - a principle he calls falsificationism.

Answer 26

A scientific statement is one that in principle is capable of being falsified - proved wrong - by the evidence. That is, we must be able to say what evidence would count as falsifying the statement when we come to put it to the test. For example, a test would disprove the law of gravity if, when we let go of an object, it did not fall.
For Popper, a good theory has two features:
* It is in principle falsifiable but when tested, stands up to all attempts to disprove it.
* It is bold - that is, it claims to explain a great deal. It makes big generalisations that precisely predict a large number of cases or events, and so is at greater risk of being falsified than a more timid theory that only tries to explain a small number of events.

Question 27

Truth

Answer 27

For Popper (1965), ‘all knowledge is provisional, temporary, capable of refutation at any moment’ - there can never be absolute proof that any knowledge is true. This is because, as the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking (1988) puts it:
‘No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory.’ A good theory isn’t necessarily a true theory, therefore - it is Simply one that has withstood attempts to falsify it so far.

Question 28

Criticism and the open society
For a theory to be falsifiable, it must be open to criticism from other scientists. In Popper’s view, therefore, science is essentially a public activity. He sees the scientific community as a hothouse environment in which everything is open to criticism, so that the flaws in a theory can be readily exposed and better theories developed. Popper believes that this explains why scientific knowledge grows so rapidly.

Answer 28

Popper argues that science thrives in ‘open’ or liberal societies - ones that believe in free expression and the right to challenge accepted ideas. By contrast, ‘closed’ societies are dominated by an official belief system that claims to have the absolute truth - whether a religion, or a political ideology such as Marxism or Nazism. Such belief systems stifle the growth of science because they conflict with the provisional, falsifiable nature of scientific knowledge. For example, the 17th century astronomer Galileo was punished as a heretic by the church authorities in Rome for claiming that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa, as the church taught. We can see Rome at this time as a closed society, dominated by the church’s doctrines.

Question 29

Implications for sociology

Answer 29

Popper believes that much sociology is unscientific because it consists of theories that cannot be put to the test with the possibility that they might be falsified. For example, Marxism predicts that there will be a revolution leading to a classless society, but that it has not yet happened because of the false consciousness of the proletariat. Hence the prediction cannot be falsified. If there is a revolution, Marxism is correct - and if there isn’t a revolution, Marxism is still correct.
However, Popper believes that sociology can be scientific, because it is capable of producing hypotheses that can in principle be falsified. For example, Julienne Ford (1969) hypothesised that comprehensive schooling would produce social mixing of pupils from different social classes. She was able to test and falsify this hypothesis through her empirical research.
Although Popper rejects Marxism as unscientific because it is untestable, he does not believe that untestable ideas are necessarily worthless. Such ideas may be of value, firstly because they may become testable at some later date, and secondly because we can still examine them for clarity and logical consistency. For example, debates between different sociological perspectives can clarify woolly thinking, question taken-for-granted assumptions and help to formulate testable hypotheses. While sociology may have a larger quantity of untestable ideas than the natural sciences, this may simply be because it has not bean in existence as long as they have.

Question 30

The paradigm

Answer 30

Kuhn’s central idea is the paradigm. A paradigm is shared by members of a given scientific community (such as physicists) and defines what their science is. It provides a basic framework of assumptions, principles, methods and techniques within which members of that community work. It is a worldview that tells scientists what nature is like, which aspects of it are worth studying, what methods should be used, what kinds of questions they should ask and even the sort of answers they should expect to find.

Question 31

The paradigm is thus a set of norms, or a kind of culture, because it tells scientists how they ought to think and behave. Scientists come to accept the paradigm uncritically as a result of their socialisation. For example,

Answer 31

For example, unlike sociology students, those in the natural sciences are not invited to consider rival perspectives. Scientists’ conformity to the paradigm is rewarded with publication of their research and career success, while non-conformity may mean their work goes unpublished, or may even lead to dismissal

Question 32

In Kuhn’s view, a science cannot exist without a shared paradigm.

Answer 32

Until there is general consensus on a single paradigm, there will only be rival schools of thought, not a science as such.

Question 33

Normal science

Answer 33

For most of the time, the paradigm goes unquestioned and scientists do what Kuhn calls normal science. In normal science, scientists engage in puzzle solving. That is, the paradigm defines the questions and in broad terms, the answers. Scientists are left to fill in the detail or work out the ‘neatest’ solution.
This is rather like completing a jigsaw puzzle: we know from the picture on the box what the solution should be - our job is simply to figure owe are not dische pieces together to get the right result. We are not discovering or creating anything new. As Kuhn says:
*Everything but the detail is known in advance. The challenge is not to uncover the unknown, but to obtain the known.’
For Kuhn, the great advantage of the paradigm is that it allows scientists to agree on the basics of their subject and get on with productive ‘puzzle-solving’ work, steadily fleshing out the bare bones of the paradigm with more and more detail, thereby enlarging their picture of nature.
This contrasts sharply with Popper’s view of science. As John Watkins (1970) says, while Popper sees falsification as the unique feature of science, for Kuhn it is puzzle solving within a paradigm that makes science special.

Question 34

Scientific revolutions

Answer 34

However, not all puzzle solving is successful. From time to time, scientists obtain findings contrary to those the paradigm led them to expect - pieces that don’t fit the jigsaw puzzle. As these anomalies gradually mount up, confidence in the paradigm begins to decline, and this leads to arguments about basic assumptions and to efforts to reformulate the paradigm so as to account for the anomalies.

Question 35

The science has now entered a period of crisis.

Answer 35

Its previously taken-for-granted foundations are now in question; scientists become demoralised and begin to lose their sense of purpose.Scientists begin to formulate rival paradigms and this marks the start of a scientific revolution. For Kuhn, rival paradigms are incommensurable - two competing paradigms cannot be judged or measured by the same set of standards to decide which one is ‘best’. Although they are looking at the same universe, they seem to be looking at totally different ones.

Question 36

switching of paradigms

Answer 36

What supporters of one paradigm regard as a decisive refutation of the other, supporters of the rival paradigm will not even recognise as a valid test, because each paradigm is a totally different way of seeing the world. To move from one to the other requires a massive shift of mind-set. Many scientists find it impossible to switch from an old paradigm to a new one.

Question 37

Eventually, one paradigm does win out and becomes accepted by the scientific community, allowing normal science to resume, but with a new set of basic assumptions, puzzles and so on. However, the process is not a rational one - in fact, Kuhn compares it with a religious conversion.

Answer 37

Eventually, one paradigm does win out and becomes accepted by the scientific community, allowing normal science to resume, but with a new set of basic assumptions, puzzles and so on. However, the process is not a rational one - in fact, Kuhn compares it with a religious conversion.

Question 38

Kuhn’s view of the scientific community contrasts sharply with that of Popper. For Popper the scientific community is open, critical and rational, constantly seeking to falsify existing theories by producing evidence against them.

Answer 38

Progress occurs by challenging accepted ideas.
For Kuhn, by contrast, the scientific community is not normally characterised by its openness, originality or critical Spirit. For most of the time, during periods of normal science, scientists are conformists who unquestioningly accept the key ideas of the paradigm as a basis for making progress. Only during a scientific revolution does this change. Even then, scientists have no rational means of choosing one paradigm rather than another.

Question 39

implications for sociology: paradigm

Answer 39

Currently sociology is pre-paradigmatic and therefore pre-scientific, divided into competing perspectives or schools of thought. There is no shared paradigm - no agreement on the fundamentals of what to study, what method to use, what we should expect to find and so on. For example, functionalists disagree with Marxists about basic questions such as whether society is based on consensus or on conflict.
On Kuhn’s definition, sociology could only become a science if such basic disagreements were resolved. Whether this is even possible is open to doubt. For example, so long as there are political differences between conservative and radical sociologists, rival perspectives will probably continue to exist in sociology. Even within perspectives, there are often disagreements about key concepts, issues and methods. It is hard to imagine such differences being overcome to create a unified paradigm.
Postmodernists might argue that a paradigm would also not be desirable in sociology. The paradigm sounds suspiciously like a meta-narrative - a dominant and dominating view of what reality is like. Postmodernists object to this both on the grounds that it silences minority views, and that it falsely claims to have special access to the truth.

Question 40

Realism, science and sociology

Answer 40

A third view of science comes from the approach known as realism. Realists such as Russell Keat and John Urry (1982) stress the similarities between sociology and certain kinds of natural science in terms of the degree of control the researcher has over the variables being researched. They distinguish between open systems and closed systems.

Question 41

Closed systems are

Answer 41

those where the researcher can control and measure all the relevant variables, and therefore can make precise predictions of the sort Popper advocates. The typical research method is the laboratory experiment, as used in sciences such as physics or chemistry.

Question 42

Open systems are

Answer 42

those where the researcher cannot control and measure all the relevant variables and so cannot make precise predictions. For example, a meteorologist cannot normally predict the weather with 100% accuracy.
This is because the processes involved are too complex to measure or too large-scale to be studied in a laboratory.

Question 43

Realists argue that

Answer 43

sociologists study open systems where the processes are too complex to make exact predictions.
For example, we cannot predict the crime rate precisely, because there are too many variables involved, most of which cannot be controlled, measured or identified.

Question 44

Underlying structures

Answer 44

Realists reject the positivist view that science is only concerned with observable phenomena. Keat and Urry argue that science often assumes the existence of unobservable structures. For example, physicists cannot directly observe the interior of a black hole in space.
In the realist view, this also means that interpretivists are wrong in assuming that sociology cannot be scientific.
Interpretivists believe that because actors’ meanings are in their minds and not directly observable, they cannot be studied scientifically. However, if realists are correct and science can study unobservable phenomena, then this is no barrier to studying meanings scientifically.
For realists, then, both natural and social science attempt to explain the causes of events in terms of underlying structures and processes. Although these structures are often unobservable, we can work out that they exist by observing their effects. For example, we cannot directly see a thing called ‘social class’, but we can observe its effects on people’s life chances.
In this view, much sociology is scientific. For example, unlike Popper, realists regard Marxism as scientific because it sees underlying structures such as capitalism producing effects such as poverty. Similarly, sociologists can also be scientific when they interpret behaviour in terms of actors’ internal meanings - even though these are unobservable.
Unlike interpretivists, therefore, realists see little difference between natural science and sociology, except that some natural scientists are able to study closed systems under laboratory conditions.