Sociology is not a science Flashcards
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One of the great debates in sociology is whether it can, or should try to, be described as a science. One argument against it being so is that, according to Karl Popper, even positivist sociology uses inductive reasoning rather than deductive reasoning. Popper argues that the scientific method is not to put forward a hypothesis and then search for evidence to support it, but instead to find evidence to disprove it: to falsify it. If the hypothesis cannot be falsified then it is the best current theory.
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He uses the example of swans. If a positivist sociologist was testing the hypothesis “all swans are white” they would find plenty of evidence to support it (by finding lots of white swans), but they should be looking for swans that are not white. Popper does not say that only positivist sociology fails to be scientific because of this approach, but that many sociological concepts cannot be tested in this way and therefore could not be studied scientifically.
He particularly criticises Marxism, calling it a “faux science”. He gives the example of false class consciousness, saying that there is no way to disprove it. If someone were to suggest that false class consciousness did not exist, well they would think that, wouldn’t they? Because of bourgeois ideology and false class consciousness!
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Another argument against the idea that sociology is a science is that it misunderstands the nature of society and human behaviour. Interpretivists argue that humans are social actors with agency.
There can be no universal laws to predict their behaviour, no matter how scientific a method is used to research it. In the natural sciences processes can be observed, laws established and the results of experiments predicted. Humans will (within certain constraints) do as they please. As such, the attempt to make sociology a science, to make it all measurable and countable, disguises the truth of society rather than reveals it
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Interpretivist sociologists are, instead, interested in people’s opinions, their subjective interpretations of society and how they understand their relationships, none of which (they would argue) can be scientifically tested.
Postmodernists would go further to suggest that the idea that sociology is scientific is just another metanarrative (a big story) and one that can lead to rigid dogma and oppression because it claims that its version of the truth is proven and cannot be questioned.
