sociology theory and methods - is sociology a science?

AQA

What are the four points of the debate?

1. It CAN be a science

2. It SHOULD be a science

3. It CAN’T be a science

4. It SHOULDN’T be a science

—> many early sociologists claimed it was a science, more recently there has a been a debate to this.

What are some these related to science?

• Objective

• Standardised

• Controlled

• Factual

• Patterns

Who believes sociology can be a science?

• Positivists - believe we can create a science of sociology.

• Solve social problems and achieve progress in society just like scientists.

What did Auguste Comte believe?

• Society works just like the natural world, it is an objective factual reality that can be measured.

• We can apply the same methods, logic and procedures to the study of society.

What did Durkheim aim to do?

• Aimed to discover scientific laws about society (tested & proven)

• He called these social facts

• His goal was to use science to find patterns of behaviour.

• Predicting future events would guide social polices to cure societal ills.

What was Durkheims positivist study?

• “Suicide”

• Wanted to show that suicide was linked to social factors, and then could prove the value of sociology.

• Saw suicide as a private and personal act that could be studied scientifically.

• Argued that there are objective, social facts about the world that can be discovered, observed and seen.

What are social facts?

• Scientific laws about society that explain social phenomena.

• They are external to the individual and shape or influence their behaviour.

• Not influenced by the researchers subjective opinion or values about right and wrong.

• Durkheim argued that if researchers use methods that avoid them becoming subjectively involved, they can remain objective.

• e.g using a questionnaire not participant observations.

What did Durkheim find from his suicide study?

• Argued that suicide can not be seen as a random act as it was too widespread and there were social patterns. It instead had social factors influencing it.

• One observed pattern was that suicide pattern rates varied between countries, for example they were higher in Protestant countries then Catholic countries, and they rose in times of economic distress and fell during war times.

• After he observed these patterns he was able to develop his theory that suicide was influenced by social factors such as how integrated they are in society and how bound they were by social factors in their own society.

How does Durkheims study show sociology can be scientific?

1. It is inductive, meaning it starts by collecting data and evidence and after being analysed the researcher can form theories. The researcher can then test their theories against further evidence.

2. It is based on verification - collecting evidence to try and prove that the theory is true.

How are positivist therefore scientific?

• Once quantitative data has been collected you can then begin to look for patterns or correlations.

• Durkheim believed by following this approach in sociology it is possible to find laws about human behaviour that are true for all societies.

• To be scientific you should only study what you can observe therefore making poitivists scientific.

• The work of interitivists is therefore unscietific because they study meaning, emotions and motivations which are invisible to the outside researcher so therefore can not be studied objectively.

What are some evaluations of the view that sociology can be scientific?

• Scientific settings are artificial - not applicable to real life.

• Hawthorne effect of knowing you’re being studied.

• People can lie - validity, less likely to lie if relationship with the researcher (interpritiivists)

• People have conscience choice.

Why does it matter if sociology is a science (SHOULD)?

Being a science may ensure

• Prestige

• Authority

• Status

• Protection

• Find the answers like scientists.

—> “if we borrow the methods of science success will follow"

Why might feminist sociologists see sociology being a science as undesirable?

• Anne Oakley - Science is patriarchal by nature. Research creates a research hierarchy where participants are used and discarded.

What did Karl Popper believe?

• He was a philosopher of science who was interested in what makes scientific knowledge different from other types of knowledge e.g religious knowledge, political or intuition.

• His criteria of what a science is, is used by sociologists to show that sociology can not be science.

What did Karl Popper believe science was based on?

• Rejects the positvist idea that science = using inductive reasoning and gathering evidence to prove a theory right. (verificationism)

• He used the example of swans, saying that observing a large number of swans may make you think all swans are white and it would be easy to find more white swans to prove this theory right,

• However no matter how many white swans we observe we can not prove that all swans are white because one single observation of a black swan will destroy the whole theory.

According to Popper how should we aim to prove our theories?

• We can not prove a theory is true by producing more evidence to support it - we should seek to prove it wrong and if we can not then it is more likely to be correct.

• This is the idea of falsification.

• Popper believes that much of sociology can not be falsified or put to the test this way meaning it is not scientific.

What is a paradigm?

Thomas Kuhn.

• A shared set of beliefs among a scientific community, a culture that decides what is worth studying and what methods should be used.

• They become a norm that all scientists accept and adhere to.

• Sometimes they can change during a scientific revolution is enough evidence is gathered to prove the old world view wrong.

How do paradigms prove sociology can not be a science?

• Can not be science as we have too many competing perspectives (marxism, functionalism, feminism, etc)

• Disagree on basic questions such as what is society based on conflict or consensus.

• Disagree in terms of what methodology should be used quantitative or qualitative.

• Therefore sociology is not a science.

What is some evaluation of the belief sociology can not be a science?

Could sociology become a science?

• Popper - sociology could become a science if there is a change in the methodology. Abolish verification and replace with falsification.

• Kuhn - could become a science if we resolve disagreements and overcome differences creating a shared paradigm.

Why do postmodernists believe sociology shouldn’t become a science?

• Because of all the harm science causes.

• Anderson - 1. Military and political harm (the use of napalm, the nazi experiments on humans, the invention of nuclear weapons)

• 2. Medical harm (Thalidomide, a morning sickness drug that led to birth defects).

• Claim this is dangerous because it creates a monopoly of truth, as it dominates (like how science replaced a lot of religion) so we often believe it without question).

• Simply another metanarrative that claims to know the truth and argue there’s too many types of truth and knowledge meaning there’s no reason to base sociology on scientific methods.