Topic 3 Sociology and science

Comte

coined the word sociology

Durkheim

laws explain how society works in the same way scientific laws explain nature 

Durkheim- suicide

He believed if he proved that even such a highly individual act had social causes it would establish sociology status as science

induction

involved collecting large amounts of data, identifying patterns and then forming theories/laws based on those patterns

Verificationism

theory is only valid if it can be tested and proven true using empirical evidence 

Positivist

society should be studied in the same way science

Interpretivism

we can only understand social action through meanings and motives of the actors involved

M.G Mead

 human beings interpret the meaning of a stimulus and then choose how to respond it 

what type of interpretivism are Glaser and Strauss

Interactionists

Glaser and Strauss

reject starting with a hypothesis but we should start from observation then collect data and then create a hypothesis

what type of interpretivist is Garfinkel

Phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists 

Garfinkel

we should study how individuals create order in everyday life as society isn’t something we created through interaction

Douglas

rejects the idea that social facts determine our behaviour, he argues we have free will and choose how to act on the basis of its meanings

Atkinson

suicide aren’t objective facts but social construct by coroners as they made assumptions

what do postmodern believe about science

argue that a science is a meta-narrative, it’s one big story but different versions and views

Popper

falsificationism- can only be proven if we can prove it wrong

Kuhn

in science there’s paradigm shifts and in soc there’s different theories so not one truth so not a science

who are Keat and Urry

realist

Keat and Urry

argue there’s a closed and an open system

Taylor

argues that suicide statistics reflect social meanings rather than absolute

truths