The nature of science and the extent to which sociology can be regarded as scientific

Question 1

What did Popper suggest science involves?

Answer 1

Hypothetico-deductive method.

Question 2

What is the hypothetico-deductive method?

Answer 2

• Drawing up a hypothesis.
• Based on previous research or observations.
• To test through research.

Question 3

What are Popper’s features of the scientific method?

Answer 3

1. Hypothesis formation
2. Falsification
3. Use of empirical evidence
4. Replication
5. Accumulation of evidence
6. Prediction
7. Theory formation
8. Scrutiny

Question 4

How does Popper differ from positivists?

Answer 4

He rejects the view that the distinctive features of science lie in inductive reasoning and verifications.

Question 5

What is Popper’s fallacy of induction?

Answer 5

No hypothesis can ever finally be proven true as there is always a possibility of some future exception.

Question 6

What did Popper suggest about sociological theory?

Answer 6

It’s not scientific as it can’t actually be falsified by empirical research and will only become scientific when it produces testable and falsifiable hypothesis.

Question 7

What are the three main aspects to objectivity?

Answer 7

1. Open mindedness
2. Value freedom
3. Open to inspection and criticism by other researchers.

Question 8

Where does Popper say science thrives?

Answer 8

In open or liberal societies where people are free to express and challenge ideas.

Question 9

Why does Popper believe much of sociology is unscientific?

Answer 9

Because it consists of theories that can’t be put to the test with the possibility that they might be falsified.

Question 10

What is an example the shows that sociology can be scientific?

Answer 10

Ford hypothesised that comprehensive schooling would produce social mixing of pupils from different social classes.
She was able to test and falsify the hypothesis through her empirical evidence.

Question 11

What is positivism?

Answer 11

The view that the logic, methods and procedures of the natural sciences can be applied to the study of society with little modification.

Question 12

What did Comte argue about the application of natural science methodology to the study of society?

Answer 12

That it is based on empirical evidence and objectivity that would produce a ‘positive science of society’ which shows behaviour of the social world is governed by laws and cause and effect in the same way as the behaviour of objects in the natural world.

Question 13

What did Marx claim about his theories of class strugle, revolution and the transition to communism were based on?

Answer 13

Cause and effect theories established by the application of the scentific method to historical and contemporay empiciral data.

Question 14

What is Durkheim’s fundamental rule and what did he argue for using this fundamental rule?

Answer 14

Argues for a positivist approah to sociology using his rule:
Consider social facts as things

Question 15

What did Durkheim believe the aimof sociolgy should be?

Answer 15

The study of social facts which should be considreed as things and in most cases be observe and measured quantitatively.

Question 16

What do Positivists such as Durkheim believe about real laws?

Answer 16

That real laws are discoverable

Question 17

Do positivists think sociology should be a science?

Answer 17

Yes and that it is made possible by following the scientific approach using the hypothetico-deductive method.

Question 18

What do many sociologists argue about using experiments such as lab experiments to study society?

Answer 18

That this is innapropriate because there are fundamental differences between the social world and the natural or physical world.

Question 19

Do interpretivists think sociology can be a science?

Answer 19

No

Question 20

What is natural science?

Answer 20

The subject matter has no conscious so behaviour is a straightforward reaction to external stimulus.

Question 21

What does sociology study?

Answer 21

People who have consciousness - people don’t simpy respond to external forces they interpret and give meaning to a situation befoe responding.

Question 22

What does Mead say about responses?

Answer 22

People choose their responses.

Question 23

What does Weber argue about the process of ‘speak for themselves’?

Answer 23

This is a process of understanding - verstehen which recognises people give meanings to their actions.

Question 24

What do Glaser and Strauss favour?

Answer 24

A bottom-up or grounded theory which enters research with no fixed hypothesis and instead develops one through observation.

Question 25

Do interpretivists think that meanings exit independently?

Answer 25

No

Question 26

What does Atkinson think the only thing we can study about suicide is?

Answer 26

The ways the living make sense of the deaths - the interpretive procedures coroners use to classify deaths.

Question 27

Why is sociology often seen as inferior to natural sciences?

Answer 27

Sociology rarely produces results or makes predictions that have the same kind of precision as the natural sciences.

Question 28

What are the two raesons to doubt the view of natural science?

Answer 28

1. Based on mistaken assumptions about what natural scientific methods are really like - realists.
2. Ignores the way scientific knowledge is socially constructed.

Question 29

Bhaskar’s realist view of science

Answer 29

Argues underlying structures are a feature of natural and social worlds.

Question 30

What does Bhaskar ague the positivists view is based on?

Answer 30

An incorrec assumption that scientific nethods are based only on what can be observed.

Question 31

Example which shows that science isn’t simply limited to the observable as Popper suggests

Answer 31

Durkheim study of suicide used twin social forces of social intergration and moral regulation to explain suicide which is not observable or quantifiable.

Question 32

What do realists such as Sayer, Keat and Urry point out?

Answer 32

That predictions are not as precise a process in natural science as Popper claims.

Question 33

Sayer - closed systems

Answer 33

When all potentional casual factors are under the researchers control and precise measurments are possible as in the closed envronemnt of the labatory experiment.

Question 34

WHere does sociological reasearch often take place?

Answer 34

In open systems where factors can’t be controlled ad predictions are much more difficult and imprecise.