AQA A2 Sociology- Theory- Sociology and Science
- Created by: EmK123
- Created on: 12-06-16 14:47
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- Sociology and Science
- Positivism
- Comte advocated scientific methods
- Reality exists outside the human mind
- Nature is made up of objective, observable physical facts (atoms) which are external to the human mind
- Society is an objective, and observabale reality made up of social facts which are independent to the individual like the outside world
- Durkheim: Real laws are discoverable- scientists discover the laws of physics and sociologists discover the laws of society.
- Believe reality isn't random but patterned and science must observe, identify, measure and record these patterns to explain them
- Durkheim's study of suicide: Argued that individual acts like suicide can have social causes. Found that suicide was partly caused by religion as Catholics had lower rates than protestants.
- Interpretivism
- Sociology isn't a science as we can only understand society by interpreting meanings and motives of individuals.
- Reject scientific methods
- Natural sciences study matter with no conscious.
- Sociology is the study of people who have a conscious so they can't be studied in the same way as something that hasn't got one.
- Suicide:
- Douglass: We must understand meanings not impose our own. Rejects the use of stats as they are socially constructed- Coroners use their interpretation
- Atkinson: rejects stats. Argues we can only study how the living make sense of death not the reasons of the deceased.
- Karl Popper
- Induction
- Collecting data from observation and measurements. As we start to understand society patterns emerge.
- Popper rejects this method as it's not a true reflection of how science discovers the truth
- Falsification
- Science uses this as a theory can only be scientific iif it can be falsified- which sociology can't = not a science.
- Induction
- Khun: Paradigms
- Paradigm: provides a dominant framework and methods for scientists to work through
- Features: What nature is like, which aspects are worth studying, which methods to use and what questions to ask and the answers to expect.
- Only one paradigm can be in operation at one time
- Sociology can't be a science as they are unscientific and explain society through multiple perspectives.
- Realism
- Sayer: science theorise about phenomena which are hard to observe or predict.
- Open science study things that are hard to see, sense of predict their behaviour.
- Sociology is the same as they can't predict when or where change will happen.
- Believe sociology to be a science as they are concerned with structures that are hard to see or sense directly (class)
- Positivism
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