sociology and science

Question 1

what do positivists believe ?

Answer 1

• Positivists such as Comte and Durkheim believe sociology should use the same methods as natural sciences
• They believe sociology can discover objective laws about how society works, just like science discovers laws of nature for example gravity

Question 2

What should sociologists do with patterns?

Answer 2

• They should observe, measure and explain patterns in society ideally using experiments
• This approach is called inductive reasoning and it involves building laws based on observing lots of specific cases

Question 3

What is Verificationism ?

Answer 3

• proving a theory by confirming it with evidence
• This is done when a theory explains patterns we have seen and then we can test it using more evidence

Question 4

What do Positivists believe ?

Answer 4

• They believe that sociology should work like a science by using controlled experiments to test ideas
• Positivists collect quantitative data to measure behavior patterns and find cause and effect relationships, and make accurate predictions
• They also believe sociologists must stay objective and neutral and no personal or feelings should affect the research
• This is because in sociology we are studying people and there are risks of bias for example a researcher could accidently influence how someone answers a question
• to avoid this, positivists prefer methods such as questionnaires and official statistics

Question 5

What was Durkheims study of suicide ?

Answer 5

• Durkheim studied suicide in 1897 to prove if sociology could be a science
• he used official statistics and found patterns that protestants had higher suicide rates than catholics
• he argued that this could not be just due to individual choice but it must be due to social forces
• he called these social forces social facts like levels of integration and regulation
• So essentially Catholics had stronger bonds and thus had lower suicide rates
• Durkheim claimed he discovered a a real law, showing that even deeply personal actions like suicide can be explained by scientific causes

Question 6

what do interpretivists believe ?

Answer 6

• They believe that sociology should no try to be natural science
• believe that people are not objects and they have consciousness, free will and meanings behind their actions
• To understand human behavior we must understand people’s internal thoughts and motives and not just look for external causes

Question 7

why are people not like objects?

Answer 7

• natural sciences study things like rocks or chemicals, which are things without consciousness
• However humans are different because we think about what things mean and we can choose how to respond
• for example when a driver sees a red light they do not automatically stop like a machine, they interpret the red light as stop and then choose whether or not to obey it

Question 8

What do interpretivists say about social facts?

Answer 8

• they say people are not controlled by social facts
• instead people create their own reality through the meanings they give to things
• so sociologists should study how people see and understand their own world

Question 9

according to interpretivists what needs to be done in order to understand people’s actions?

Answer 9

• sociologists need verstehen ( which means empathetic understanding )
• this means seeing the world through the eyes of the people being studied
• they prefer qualitiative methods such as participant observations and personal documents because they give an insight into people’s lives

Question 10

what are the different types of interpretivists ?

Answer 10

• interactionists, who believe we can explain causes in human behavior, but they prefer a grounded theory, one that starts with observations then builds on ideas based on what we see
• phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists, believe we cannot explain behavior with causes at all, and they say society does not exist as a real structure it is just the meanings people share

Question 11

what is douglas’s view ?

Answer 11

• rejects the idea that external social facts explain suicide
• believes that people act based on meanings they give to situations
• Says to understand suicide, we must look at what it meant to the person who did it and not just rely on statistics.
• Criticizes official suicide statistics: they’re just coroners’ interpretations, not objective facts.

Question 12

what does Atkinson argue ?

Answer 12

• Agrees that suicide stats are social constructions, not facts.
• But he goes further: says we can never truly know what someone who died was thinking
• So instead of trying to find the “real” suicide rate, we should study how coroners decide if a death is suicide.

Question 13

what do PM argue about science?

Answer 13

• argue science is just one story about the world—not the ultimate truth
• Criticize science for claiming to be the only way to understand reality.
• Believe this mindset is dangerous, as it excludes other perspectives
• for example In the Soviet Union, science-like Marxist ideas were used to justify oppression.

Question 14

what do feminists argue about science?

Answer 14

• criticize scientific methods in sociology.
• argue scientific feminism tries to create one “truth”, which ignores diverse women’s experiences
• and that quantitative methods used by positivists miss the real, lived experiences of women.

Question 15

what is Poppers view on science?

Answer 15

• disagrees with positivists and argues that induction is flawed. This is known as the “fallacy of induction.”
  -uses examples of swans, that If you see only white swans, you might think “all swans are white.” But one black swan disproves the whole theory. So no matter how many times a theory seems to work, we can never prove it’s true — we can only try to disprove it.
• says real science works by falsification, not verification. A scientific theory must be able to be tested and proven wrong
• Can be falsified (we can test it and see if it fails). And if it is bold – makes big claims that are at risk of being proven wrong
• says no knowledge is ever absolutely true — it is always temporary and open to refutation. Just because a theory hasn’t been disproven yet, doesn’t mean it’s permanently true.

Question 16

What does Popper argue about science and criticism ?

Answer 16

• grows through open criticism.
  Popper says science works best in open societies where people can freely challenge ideas.
• Closed societies (e.g. Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, or the Church during Galileo’s time) block progress by insisting on one “truth.”

Question 17

What is Poppers view on sociology being a science ?

Answer 17

• some sociology isn’t scientific, because many theories can’t be tested or falsified.
• But sociology can be scientific if it produces testable hypotheses.

Question 18

what is a paradigm ?

Answer 18

• A paradigm is a shared framework used by scientists within a particular field
• It’s like a worldview or scientific culture that all scientists in that field follow.
• It includes, basic assumptions about the world and expected answers

Question 19

What is normal science ?

Answer 19

• scientists work within the existing paradigm.
• Kuhn calls this normal science — where scientists do “puzzle-solving” rather than trying to create new ideas
• They don’t question the paradigm they just solve smaller problems within it.

Question 20

what happens if puzzle solving is not successful ?

Answer 20

• Sometimes, scientists find anomalies results that the paradigm can’t explain
• If enough anomalies build up, scientists start losing confidence in the existing paradigm
• This leads to a crisis in the scientific community
• During a crisis, a new paradigm may emerge that explains the anomalies better.

Question 21

what does kuhn say about science?

Answer 21

• says science can’t exist without a shared paradigm
• But in sociology, there are multiple competing perspectives (e.g. functionalism, Marxism, feminism, interpretivism)
• Because there’s no agreed single paradigm, Kuhn would say sociology is not yet a science.

Question 22

What do Realists argue?

Answer 22

• Realists such as Russell Keat and John Urry (1982) argue that sociology can be scientific, but not in the same way as the natural sciences under laboratory conditions
• They challenge the positivist idea that science is only about studying directly observable phenomena and making precise predictions

Question 23

What are the 2 types of system according to Realists ?

Answer 23

• Closed systems are those where researchers can control and measure all variables for example, a physics experiment in a lab. In such cases, precise predictions are possible
• Open systems, on the other hand, involve so many interacting variables that researchers cannot control or fully measure them.

Question 24

What system is sociology in?

Answer 24

• Sociology operates in an open system, where events like crime or inequality cannot be predicted with complete accuracy due to their complexity.
• However, the inability to make exact predictions does not mean sociology is unscientific

Question 25

What do realists challenge about interpretivists ?

Answer 25

- Realists argue that just as physicists infer unobservable phenomena through their effects, sociologists can infer people’s meanings from their actions and contexts. Therefore, studying meanings doesn’t disqualify sociology from being scientific