Sociology as a science

Sociology as a science

1. Positivism

   • 'Founding fathers' of sociology in the 19th century were impressed by the success of science in explaining the natural world. Many of these sociologists such as Comte who coined the term 'sociology' considered themselves as positivists. They believe it is possible and desirable to apply the methods of natural science to the study of society. This will bring true, objective knowledge and will provide a basis for solving social problems
     • They argue that reality exists outside and independently to the human mind. Nature is made up of objective, physically observable things such as rocks, cells which are external to our minds. Similarly, society is an objective factual reality - it is a real 'thing' made up of social facts that exists independently in the physical world
   • Patterns, laws and inductive reasoning
     • reality isn't random or chaotic but patterned, we can observe these empirical patterns or regularities e.g water boils at 100 degrees. Science is used to observe these patterns systematically and explain them. In Durkheim's view, 'real laws are discoverable' that will explain patterns. sociologists can discover laws that determine how society works through inductive reasoning, just how physics observes how gravity works.
       • Induction involves accumulating data through observations and measurement. As our knowledge grows, we begin to see general patterns for example, we will observed that when objects are dropped they fall to the ground at the same rate of acceleration
     • Verificationism
       • After many observations have verified a theory, we can claim to have discovered the truth in the form of a general law. For example, the existence of a universal law of gravity. Through inductive reasoning we can use verificationism to prove a theory true
       • For positivists, the patterns we observe can all be explained in the same way - by finding the facts that cause them. For example, in sociology, we might explain the social fact of educational failure in terms of another social factor such as material deprivation. Therefore positivists seek to discover the cause of the patterns they observe and aim to produce general statements or scientific laws about how society works, just like natural sciences do. These can be used to guide social policies
       • Positivists favour 'macro' or structural explanations of social phenomena, such as functionalism and Marxism. This is because macro theories see society and its structures as social facts that exist outside of us and shape our behaviour
   • Objective and quanitative data
     • Positivists believe that sociolgy should takr the experimental method used in natural science as far as possible as this allows for testing hypothesis in the most systematic and controlled way. They use quantitative data to uncover and measure patterns of behaviour allowing them to produce mathmatically precise statements about the relationship between things, this allows for cause and effect of behaviour to be established
     • They believe that researcher should remain objective to their research and not allow personal opinions influence it. Natural sciences do not make differences depending on scientists values or opinions. For example water boils at 100 degrees whether the scientist likes it or not. However, in sociology when dealing with people it is easy for researchers to 'contaminate results'. Researchers can influence interviewee's answers through their body language or the way they phrase a question. Through the use of structured methods such as questionnaires, OCS and structured interviews, objectivity and reliability can be maintained
   • Positivism and suicide
     • Durkheim studied suicide to show how sociology is a science. He believed that is he could prove that even such a highly individual case had a social cause, this would establish sociology's status as a genuinely scientific discipline
     • Using quan data from official stats, Durkheim observed that there were patterns in suicide rates. For example, rates for Protesants were higher than for Catholics. He concluded that these patterns could not be the product of the motives of the individual but social factors
       • He argued that regulation and integration were responsible for determining the suicide rate. For example, Catholic were less likely to commit suicide because Catholicism was more successful in integrating individuals. Thus Durkheim claimed to have discovered a 'real law': that different levels of integration and regulation produce different levels of suicide. He claimed that social factors could be explained scientifically for the cause of something

2. Interpretivism

   • The subject matter of sociology
     • Interpretivists argue that the subject matter of sociology is meaningful social action, and that we can successfully interpret these through the meanings and motives of the actors involved. They argue sociology is about unobservable internal meanings
     • Interpretivists argue that sociology is not a science because natural sciences are just concerned about establishing cause and effect and arguing that something can be caused by an external stimuli. Whereas, sociology studies people with consciousness and the way people make sense and construct their world by attaching meanings to it and these are internal to people's consciousness
     • People have free will. Mead argued, rather than responding automatically to an external stimuli, humans interpret the meanings of a stimulus and then choose how to respond to it. E.g seeing a red light, people would interpret this as stopping however some may choose to disobey. For interpretivists, individuals are not puppets on a string manipulated by 'social facts' but autonomous individual beings
   • Verstehen and qualitative research
     • Interpretivists argue that to discover the meanings people give to their actions, we need to see the world from their point of view. This involves putting ourselves in the place of the actor using what Weber calls 'verstehen' or empathetic understanding to grasp their meanings
     • Favour qualitative methods e.g unstructured interviews and observations to produce detailed data with high validity
   • Types of interpretivism
     • Interactionists
       • Believe that we can have causal explanations. However, they reject the positivist view that we should have a definite hypohesis before we start our research. For example, Glasser and Strauss argue that this risks imposing our own view of what is important, rather than taking the actors point of view. Instead, they argue we should take a 'bottom up' approach. Instead of identifying a hypothesis, our ideas emerge gradually through observation. These ideas can then be used later to produce testable hypothesis of the sort favoured by positivists
     • Phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists
       • Garfinkel completely rejects the possibility of casual explanations of human behaviour. They take a radically anti structuralistic view, arguing that society is not a real thing 'out there' determining our actions. In this view, social reality is simply the shared meanings or knowledge of its members. Society exists in peoples conciousness
   • Interpretivism and suicide
     • Douglas argues that individuals have free will and they choose how to act based on their meanings. To understand suicide, we must uncover the meanings that come with it. Douglas argues that qualitative data is needed from case studies of suicide patients to reveal the actors of meanings, not the labels that coroners give deaths as suicides in official stats
     • The ethnomethodologist Atkinson rejects the idea that external social facts determine behaviour and agrees that official stats are socially constructed. However, he argues we can never know the 'real rate' of suicide as we can never know for sure what meanings the deceased had
       • For Atkinson, the only thing we can study about suicide is the way that living makes sense of deaths - the interpretive procedures coroners use to classify deaths. For ethnomethodologists, members of society have a stock of taken for granted assumptions with which they make sense of situations.
   • Postmodernism, feminism and scientific sociology
     • Postmodernists argue against the idea that sociology is a science. They regard natural science as a meta narrative. Despite it's claim to have special access to the truth, science is just one more big story; its account of the world is no more valid than any other. Given the postmodernist view of there being many different truths, adopting a scientific view for sociology would be dangerous as it would claim to have monopoly of the truth. Hence not only does a scientific sociology make false claims about having the truth,it is also a form of domination
     • Poststructuralist feminists share the view of postmodernists. They argue that the quest for a single, scientifically feminist theory is a form of domination, since it covertly excludes many groups of women. Some argue that positivists quantitative methods are oppressive and cannot capture the reality of womens experiences

3. Karl popper: how science grows

   • Popper was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century
   • The fallacy of induction
     • Popper rejects positivist views that the distinctive feature of science lies in inductive reasoning and verificationism. For popper, the main reason why we should reject verificationism is the what he called ' the fallacy (error) of induction'. Induction is the process of moving from the observation of particular instances of something to arrive at a general statement of law
     • Popper uses the example of swans to illustrate the fallacy of induction. Having observed a large number of swans, all of which were white, we might make the generalisation 'all swans are white', It may be relatively easy for us to make further observations that seem to verify this. However, a single observation of a black swan will destroy this theory. Thus we can never simply prove a theory true by verifying it through more observations
   • Falsificationism
     • In poppers view, falsification is what makes science a unique form of knowledge. A scientific statement is one that in principle is capable of being falsified - proved wrong by evidence. For popper, a good theory has two features: it is in principle falsifiable but when tested, stands up to all attempts to disprove it. It is bold - that is, it claims to explain a great deal. It makes generalisations that precisely predict a large number of cases or events, and so is at greater risk of being falsified than a more timid theory that only tries to explain a small number of events. A good theory isn't necessarily a true one but one that has withstood attempts to falsify it so far
   • Criticisms and the open society
     • For a theory to be falisifiable, it must be open to criticisms. In poppers view, science is essentially a public activity. He sees the scientific community as a hothouse environment in which everything is open to criticism, so that the flaws in a theory can be readily exposed and better theories developed. Hence scientific knowledge is rapidly growing
     • Popper argues that science thrives in 'open' or liberal societies - ones that believe in free expression and the right to challenge accepted ideas. Whereas 'closed' societies are dominated by official belief systems that claims to have the absolute truth. Such belief systems stifle the growth of science because they confluct with the falsifiable nature of science.
   • Implications for society
     • Popper believes that much sociology is unscientific because it consists of theories that cannot be put to the test of falsification. For example, Marxism predicts that there will be a revolution leading to a classless society, but that it has not yet happened because of the false consciousness of the proletariat. Hence the prediction cannot be falsified. If there is a revolution then Marxism is correct and if there isn't marxism is still correct
       • Although Popper argue's that Marxism is unscientific because it is untestable, he doesn't believe that untestable ideas are necessarily worthless. They can be used are they may become testable at a later date or because we can still examine them for clarity and logical consistency
     • Popper believes that in a way sociology can still be scientific however, because it is capable of producing hypothesis that can in principle be falsified. Ford hypothesised that comprehensive school would produce social mixing of pupils from different social classes. She was able to test and falsify her hypothesis through empirical evidence

4. Thomas Kuhn: scientific paradigms

   • Kuhn is a historian of science who presents a radically different view of what makes science unique
   • The paradigm
     • A paradigm is shared by members of a given scientific community and defines what their science is. It provides a basis framework of assumptions, principles, methods and technique within which members of that community work. It is a worldwide view that tells scientists what nature is like, which aspects are worth studying, what methods should be used
     • The paradigm is a set of norms, or kind of culture, because it tells scientists how they ought to think and behave. Scientists come to accept the paradigm uncritically as a result of their socialisation. For example, unlike sociology students natural science students are not invited to consider rival perspectives. Scientists conformity to the paradigm is rewarded with publication of their research and career sucess
     • In Kuhn's view a science cannot exist without a shared paradigm. Until there is a general consensus on a single paradigm, there will only be rival schools of thought
   • Normal science
     • For most of the time, the paradigm goes unquestioned and scientists do what Kuhn calls 'normal science' in which they engage in puzzle solving. The paradigm defines the question an in broad terms the answers. Scientists are left to fill in the detail or work out the nearest solution
     • For Kuhn, the great advantage of the paradigm is that it allows scientists to agree on the basics of their subject and get on with production puzzle solving work, steadily fleshing out the bare bones of the paradigm with more detail, thereby enlarging their picture of nature.
   • Scientific revolutions
     • Not all puzzle solving is successful. Scientists can obtain findings contrary to those the paradigm has led them to expect - pieces that don't fit the jigsaw. As these anaomolies mount up, faith in the paradigm declines and leads to arguments about basic assumptions and efforts to formulate the paradigm so as to account for anomalies. The science has now entered a period of crises. Scientists begin to lose their sense of purpose
       • Scientists begin to formulate rival paradigms and this mark the start of a scientific revolution. For Kuhn, rival paradigms are incommensurable - two competing paradigms cannot be judged or measure by the same set of standards to decide which one is best. What supporters of one paradigm regards as a decisive refutation of the other, supporters of the rival paradigm will not even recognise as a valid test
         • Eventually one paradigm wins and becomes accepted by the scientific community allowing normal science to resume but with a new set of assumptions. Kuhn's view of scienctific community contrasts with Poppers. For popper the scientific community is open and contantly seeking to falsify theories, whereas, for Kuhn the scientific community to not normally characterised by its openness. For most of the time, during normal science scientists are conformists who unquestioningly accept the key ideas of the paradigm as a basis for making progress. Only during revolution does this change
   • Implications for sociology
     • Currently, sociology is pre paradigmatic and therefore pre scientific, divided into competing perspectives. There is no shared paradigm and no agreement of what to study. For example, functionalists disagree with Marxists on basic questions such as whether society is based on conflict or consensus. On Kuhns definition, sociology can only be a science when basic disagreements are resolved. This is highly unlikely, which political differences between conservative and radical sociologists exist a unified paradigm cannot be created
     • Postmodernists might argue that a paradigm would also not be desirable in sociology. The paradigm sounds suspiciously like a meta narrative - a dominant and dominating view of what reality is like. Postmodernists object to this both on the grounds that it silences minority views, and that is falsely claims to have special access to the truth

5. Realism, science and sociology

   • Realists such as Keat and Urry stress the similarities between sociology and certain kinds of natural science in terms of the degree of control the researcher has over the variables being researched
   • Closed systems - are those where the researcher can control and measure all the relevant variables, and therefore can make precise predictions of the sort popper advocates. The typical research method is the lab experiment, as used in sciences such as physics.
   • Open systems - are those where the researcher cannot control and measure all the relevant variables and so cannot make precise predictions. For example, a meterologist cannot normally predict the weather with 100% accuracy. This is because the process involved are too complex to measure or too large scale to be studied in a lab. Realists argue that sociologists study open systems where the processes too complex to make predictions. For example, we cannot predict the crime rate precisely, because there are too many variables involved, most of which cannot be controlled, measured or identified
   • Underlying structures
     • Realists reject the positivist view that science is only concerned with observable pheomena. Keat and Urry argue that science often assumes the existence of inobservable structures. For example, physicists cannot directly observe the interior of a black hole in space. They also believe that interpretivists are wrong in assuming sociology cannot be scientific. Howeverm if realists are correct and science can study unobservable phenomena then interpretivists reasons are no long the barrier to studying meanings scientifically
     • For realists, both natural and social science attempt to explain the causes of events in terms of underlying structures and processes. Although these structures are often unobservable, we can work out that they exist by observing their effects
       • In this view, much sociology is scientific. For example, unlike Popper, realists regard Marxism as scientific because it sees underlying structures such as capitalism producing effects such as poverty. Similarly, sociologists can also be scientific when they interpret behaviour in terms of 'actors' internal meanings

6. Conclusion

   • While positivists and interpretivists disagree about whether sociology is a science, they both accept the positivist model of the natural sciences.
   • Since the positivist view was formulated in the 9th century, quite different pictures of science have emerged, and these have very different implications for whether sociology should be a science or not