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Summary Theory and Methods Essay questions
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✔ Applying material from Item A and your knowledge, evaluate the view that sociology is notand cannot be, a science.
There are two different approaches when arguing the ability to view sociology as a science
and that fundamentally is argued by positivists and interpretivists. Positivists often take the
view that in fact sociology can be viewed as a science as they study sociology in its holistic
approach. whereas interpretivists will argue that sociology is too complex to break it down into
constituent parts in order to explain such as the natural sciences. - too much like Psychology
here.
It is argued by interpretivists that sociology is so different from the subject matter of the
natural sciences, as as humans we reflect and act on the basis of meaning when met with
different stimuli. Humans are not passive subjects of external forces, instead they are all
different in the way they adapt to situations. This is because different people placed in
identical circumstances will often react differently because they have different biographies.
Therefore sociologists argue that the role of sociology is to explore the meaning that people
construct rather than look for an external set of explanations. It is argued that if sociology is
studied in a scientific way it will limit the potential of the individual and therefore will lack
verstehen and validity . This can be seen in the hawthorne effect; this is where humans often
act differently when they are aware that they are being studied and observed, this will affect
the overall conclusions and data collected, in addition individuals may object to being studied in
lab conditions or treated like a scientific experiment therefore a proper “scientific’ method will
often not be possible to be carried out. This suggests that in fact sociology cannot be a science,
this is because the natural world is predictable whereas the human social world is not. -
Evaluation? It’s a little too AO1 focused at the minute and lacking evaluation.
Positivists reject this idea that sociology cannot be a science and argue that there are many
procedures carried out in sociological research that is similar to that in natural sciences. The
positivist approach models itself as closely as it can to the natural sciences, they argue that
philosophising about the world is not enough, and that statistics need to be gathered so that
cause and effect can be properly proven and that sociologists adopting this scientific approach
are able to uncover general laws and relationships that exist in the social world. We can justify
sociology as being a science as it is empirical; positivist sociologists gather data and quantify it.
It is theoretical; from the data positivists create theories which identify relationships between
phenomena. It is in fact objective; as positivist sociologists seek to put their personal beliefs to
one side when undertaking research. And finally it is testable and cumulative; other individuals
will be able to test their findings against it and it is regularly cited. Both parsons and marx
shared the belief that sociology is a science, their work combined theory with a search for the
evidence to support their ideas. However how can we explain why Marx predicted the
proletarian revolution but did not say when it would happen therefore it cannot be falsified. -
This evaluation point needs a little more expansion. Again, lots of AO1 but could do with a little
more AO3 and also a link back to the question.
Thomas Kuhn rejected the view of science as a continuous process of hypotheses testing and
theory forming. Most scientific inquiry, he claims, takes place within the confines of a paradigm;
this is a body of knowledge, methods and theories which scientists hold to be true. Enquiry does
not step outside the boundaries of the paradigm and therefore will not be challenged. Kuhn’s
ideas applied to sociology suggested that the existence of different perspectives, intra
, -perspectives and methodological differences indicate that sociology does not operate within a
paradigm. Therefore there is no such thing as ‘natural/ normal science’ for the sociologist. This
suggests that sociology cannot be considered a science as it has no one single paradigm, but in
fact a plurality of paradigms and will therefore never be a science. - Evaluation?
Karl popper proposed a way in which sociology can be considered a science and this is through
the concept of falsification. He believed that a valid science must aim to refute hypotheses, and
seek to disprove them, and if social scones were based on falsification, sociology could be
accepted as a science. According to Popper, sociology could be accepted as a science if it used
the concept of falsification, but to achieve this, it had to propose testable hypotheses. He
rejected marxism as he states it generates concepts such as ‘false consciousness’ which cannot
be falsified. Popper thought that a deductive method should be used. This means that you start
with a theory and then test it against evidence. However a criticism of this is the fact that
scientists defend their view through verification not refutation, so his theory has not been used
in science. - This is better.
In conclusion it can be seen that sociology cannot and will not be considered a science due to
its lack of ‘scientific credibility’. Sociology may fall in line with a few of the natural sciences
‘requirements’ but they are so fundamentally different that studying human behavior cannot
possibly be related to studying microorganisms for example.
This is very good and you clearly understand the topic - there are just a few technique issues
we need to iron out. You have a tendency to write everything you know about the topic down
without getting to the heart of the issue and answering the question. So try not to write so
much AO1 and focus more on deep analysis (linking of the concept/key term to others,
explanation of how/where/when the issue being discussed came about, the application to
class, gender, etc.) and evaluation (at least two sentences of detail).
It would get around 15/20 so I’m being picky but you can really improve your overall mark
with these minor adjustments.
Well done!!
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