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Theory and Epistemology
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various definitions regarding concepts in research
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January 20th, 2021SOCI2151H Week 2: Theory and Epistemology
Reading: Chapter 2 and The Logic of Science in Sociology
Lecture
Part One: Key Principles and Definitions
Logic: Theoretical sense that has no contradiction with actual observation
Objectivity: ability to see the world as it really is (without bias)
Positivism: early school of thought in science that relies upon cause and effect
empirical evidence (studies society the same as natural sciences)
● Used in the 1800s
● Durkheim used positivist logic to study suicide
Ontological Assumptions: answer questions “what exists? What is real?”
● Theory
Epistemological Assumptions: answer the question “how do I know that something is
true?”
● Method
Empiricism: a way of knowing the world by relying on what we experience through our
senses
● Empirical evidence
● Observations must be replicable (reliable)
● Peer reviewed journals based off of empirical evidence
Paradigm: a category of ontological and epistemological knowledge
● The fundamental models/frames of reference we use to organize our
observations and reasoning
● A single building block of what is known → each block contributes to a
greater wall of understanding
○ Eg. conflict theory, functionalist theory, symbolic interactionalist theory,
feminist theory
Aggregate: statistics produced for broad groups or categories (a sum total of the
individual experience
● Collectivity! People act as groups with some degree of common purpose
, 2
○ Eg. households, companies, institutions
Variable: The attributes (characteristics) which are fixed for each person in a way which
renders it amenable to numerical analysis
● Reflecting variation within a population
○ Eg. SES, age, housing type, etc
Cyclical: the ongoing relationship between theory and research
● Look at theory, apply method, go back to theory, etc
● Quantitative
Walter L. Wallace’s The Logic of Science in Sociology (1971)
● Theory → hypothesis → observations → empirical generalizations
● Deductive reasoning inductive reasoning
● Cycle continues
Part Two: Theory and Research: Logical Systems of Deduction and Induction in
Social Research
1. Ideographic (qualitative) and Nomothetic (quantitative) Explanation
● Researchers attempt to make empirical generalizations about what they discover
in their research
○ Based on whatever patterns emerge from the data collected to explain
and predict observed social phenomena
Empirical Generalizations:
● To explain and predict observed social phenomena
○ If we systematically observe how a phenomenon works, then we may
apply those findings to other, similar situations in order to build and
contribute evidence to that particular paradigm of scientific knowledge
Ideographic Explanation
● These explanations from respondents offers the researcher very rich depth of
meaning in the words/language people use to express themselves
○ Describe single cases exhaustively
■ Unique records to fully understand the causes of what happened in
a particular instance
Nomothetic Explanation
● The study of scientific laws
● Seeks to explain a class of situations or events rather than a single one
○ Settles for a practical rather than a full explanation
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