Is Sociology

a Science?

Let’s clear-up what’s meant by science.

* it’s a set of principles that tell us how to produce valid knowledge.

* it aims to base laws and theories on objective facts gained through observing

phenomena.

Hypothetico-deductive method Karl Popper (1935)

• Theories/laws about the world should come first and these should be used to generate expectations/hypotheses which can be falsified. Falsification is the only way to be certain

What is science?

In your groups write down the things that you think are necessary for a subject to be considered a science

• Empirical• Theoretical• Objective

• Testable • Cumulative

EVIDENCE THAT SUPPORTS SOCIOLOGY AS A SCIENCE.

1.It’s possible to discover the laws that control and shape the behaviour

of people in society.

2. Science isn’t there to tell us why something came into being.

3. Science is there to explain how things relate to each other, using laws. So, Asian lads and the Police don’t

relate well because of a social fact called racism.(Yes, I know that’s up for debate).

4. The main task of Sociology is to discover general laws of social development;

i) Laws of co-existence: looking at the relationship between parts of society;

ii) Laws of succession: what are the laws that govern social change?

Inductive Logic is a big part of Positivism

Inductive logic is a type of reasoning about something that involves moving from a set of specific facts to a general

conclusion.

It uses premises from objects that have been examined and experiments that have been conducted to establish a conclusion about an object that has not been examined.

All the apples I’ve ever eaten were SO tasty! This one will

be too…

Seven steps of Inductive Positivism:

1. Our knowledge about the social world starts with the collection of facts –

For example, the crime rate, the divorce rate and the number of men that are victims of

domestic violence.

2. The facts are classified & identified objectively – without using opinion, and

statistical relationships established. Eg. Children from low income households are

more likely to become criminal.

3. Once classification has been done, we can look for (study) correlations – where two or

more things happen at the same time between different social facts.

For example, a correlation between women being in care and becoming deviant.

4. If positive correlation is found, a cause and effect relationship can be established. For example, educational failure causes

greater likelihood of criminality.

5. Once we’ve sorted out positive correlations and cause and effect

relationships, we can develop theories that explain the relationship between different

facts. Eg. Having insufficient integration into society

explains why some commit suicide.

6. Once we have a theory – test it further. If nothing happens to disprove the theory, we have discovered a universal law of human

behaviour.

7. Once a law is identified in human behaviour, we can incorporate it into social

policy – we can organise people through laws & legislation that will engineer the best

results for society.

What did Comte believe?

Science and Sociology Factsheet

Durkheim thought Comte had failed to establish Sociology as a science.

Durkheim thought, instead, that Sociology should study social facts as things to observe and measure. So, things like the suicide rate.

Positivism and Suicide• Durkheim (1897) chose to study suicide to

demonstrate that Sociology was a science with its own subject matter.

• Used Official Statistics to find patterns in the suicide rate e.g. Protestants higher than Catholics. This was due to levels of integration and regulation.

• Durkheim claimed to have discovered a ‘real law’- different levels of regulation and integration produce different rates of suicide

• Claimed that it can be explained scientifically

Criticisms of Positivism Using the words listed below, complete the following list of criticisms made of

positivism by interpretive sociologists:1. Sociology never can nor should try to be a__________.2. Sociologists can rarely produce the kinds of__________conditions for study such

as those of the scientist’s laboratory.3. Research findings are not__________by other sociologists as the research

situation can never be precisely__________.4. It is impossible to quantify human behaviour in the same way

as__________phenomena.5. Human beings have__________and may react to the researcher in different ways.6. The__________that people attach to events and actions are internal and cannot

be directly measured.7. Human action depends on individual__________.8. The design of__________to test imposes the views of the researcher on what is

discovered.Missing words: interpretations verifiable consciousness science hypotheses

controlled meanings natural

Karl Popper thought that all academic subject areas that wanted to be called a ‘science’ should subject themselves to a process of falsification.

To test itself, therefore, Sociology must come up with testable hypotheses, such as; suicide is caused by insufficient regulation and integration.

Karl Popper rejected Marxism as a pseudo-science, because its concepts, such as false class consciousness, were too abstract to be seen and measured.

How Sociology is absolutely NOT a science…

Interpretivism is THE alternative, THE total opposite of Positivism.

* People like Weber say Sociology should study society from the perspective of other people to understand how and why things happen.

* Using Weber’s perspective of verstehen requires subjective understanding which draws on people’s opinions.

* Science is strongly objective and does not allow opinion to influence research.

* For this reason, Interpretivists argue Sociology cannot ever be a science.

Sociology as a science

Karl popper

1. No theory can ever be said to be 100% true.

2. Science works by Falsification meaning a theory can only be scientific if it can be proved to be false or true.

3. If it can’t be proven or disproven it isn’t scientific!

4. A good theory isn’t necessarily true but one that has withstood attempts to falsify it so far.

5. Science is an open belief system, it can and should be constantly criticised and this will allow us to get closer to the truth.

Popper says sociology isn’t a science because theories like Marxism and false class consciousness are unfalsifiable. Sociology could be a science if it produced hypothesis that can be tested.

Kuhn says sociology isn’t a science because there is no shared assumptions and principles. Functionalism, Marxism and Feminism all have differing ideas. If these could be resolved to create one paradigm then sociology could be a science, but this is unlikely.

Thomas Kuhn

1. Science is a paradigm meaning a shared set of assumptions, principles and methods.

2. Science studies the world until it finds conclusions that it cannot explain (anomalies).

3. These anomalies cause us to consider other paradigms in order to find answers (flat earth vs. round).

4. Two paradigms cannot exist together, at some point one wins favour amongst the scientific community, this causes a scientific revolution, a shift from one to the other.

5. This process starts all over again as this new paradigm highlights new anomalies.

1. Pre-science: period of discovery where there was no central

paradigm.2. Normal science: where scientists used an established paradigm, like the theory of

evolution, to support theories.3. Revolutionary science: where

the paradigms are challenged.

Kuhn looked at the history of the natural sciences and argued that it’s not simply an accumulation of knowledge that ends up being the credible academic body we know as science, but that it went through a series of paradigm shifts or revolutions – a bit like a marriage.

Sociology, then, behaves like it’s in the pre-science stage:

there’s no dominant perspective and there are lots of competing theories

and perspectives. It’s totally valid to refer to

Sociology as a young science that still needs to find its

unifying theory.

Interpretivism and Suicide• Douglas (1967) rejects the positivist idea of external

social facts determining our behaviour. • Individuals have free will and they choose how to act on

the basis of meanings• Douglas rejects Durkheim’s use of quantitative data from

OS’s, they are constructions relating from a coroners labelling.

• Douglas suggests we use qualitative data from case studies, they can reveal the actors meanings

• Atkinson (1978) we need to study the way in which coroners classify suicides (taken for granted assumptions)

Realism, Science and Sociology

• Third view of Science

• They see similarities between Sociology and certain kinds of natural science in terms of the degree of control the researcher has over the variables being researched

• There are differences between open and closed systems in natural science

• Within closed systems, variables can be controlled and measured as with Chemistry or Physics. Therefore precise predictions can be made

• Open systems cannot control all variables or measure them and so prediction levels are uncertain. This happens in meteorology (weather cannot be predicted with 100% accuracy) and seismology where processes are too complex

• Realists argue that Sociologists study open systems where processes are too complex to make exact predictions e.g. Cannot predict crime rate precisely because there are too many variables involved, most of which cannot be controlled, measured or identified

• Realists see Science as an attempt to explain casual relationships in terms of underlying (unobservable) structure, mechanisms and processes.

• Therefore Marxism and Interpretivism may be seen as scientific

Why does it matter if Sociology is a Science?

• To ensure prestige so the subject can gain funding for teaching and research at Universities.

• To give weight to its findings so that they have the authority by being backed by scientific method.

• To give protection. Sociology has been threatened in different countries from the Prussian civil servants to Robert Mugabe and Margaret Thatcher as a source of subjective political criticism.