is sociology a science? - sociology a2
TRANSCRIPT
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IS SOCIOLOGY A SCIENCE?MILLIE PRICE – SOCIOLOGY REVISION
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IS SOCIOLOGY A SCIENCE? – DIFFERENT VIEWS
Marx, Durkheim and Comte are POSITIVISTS and believe that sociology IS A SCIENCE. They use quantitative data such as official statistics
Weber and Popper believe that sociology ISN’T A SCIENCE and doesn’t need to be. They are INTERPRETISITS.
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COMTE• Comte (1798-1857) was one of these founding fathers, coined
the term 'sociology' and described himself as a 'POSITIVIST'.
• Comte looked at SOCIAL FACTS and said we can change/shape peoples behavior through discovering the laws
• Comte said that science isn't there to tell us why something came into being
• But that the main task of sociology is to discover general laws of social development
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DURKHEIM• Although Durkheim believes sociology IS a science, he
thought that Comte had failed to establish sociology as a science
• Durkheim thought instead that sociology should study SOCIAL FACTS as things to observe and measure e.g. suicide rate
• He said that sociologists should use objective methods like experiments, questionnaires and statistics as these are mathematical precise and not based on thoughts and feelings
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POPPER• Karl Popper disagrees with Durkheim and believes sociology
ISN’T a science
• He says that no theory can ever be 100% true
• Science works by falsification meaning a theory can only be scientific if it can be proved to be FALSE OR TRUE.
• Popper thought that all academic subject areas that wanted to be called a ‘science’ should subject themselves to a process of FALSIFICATION
• If it cant be proven or disproven it isn’t scientific
• Popper says sociology isn’t a science because theories like Marxism and false class consciousness are falsifiable.
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WEBER• Weber agrees with Popper and says that sociology ISN’T a
science
• Weber says sociology should study society from the prospective of other people to understand HOW AND WHY things happen
• Using Webers perspective requires subjective understanding which draws on peoples opinions
• Science is strongly objective and does not allow opinion to influence research
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KUHN• Kuhn says sociology is and 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 is unlikely