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Model answer plan for... Outline and explain two arguments against the view that sociology is a science. (10 marks)
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elicit responses from students who may or may not understand the real reason theyhave been put into these sets and streams.
Outline and explain two arguments against the view that sociology is a science. (10 marks)
Paragraph 1:
- Interpretivism is the view that sociology is not a science.
- Interpretivists argue that, because humans think and reflect, scientific methods are
inappropriate -> do not allow us to truly understand and dig beneath the surface of
behaviours and actions.
- Unlike objects, human beings can change their behaviour if they know they are
being observed, called the Hawthorne Effect -> if we want to understand social
action, we have to delve into meaning using qualitative, unscientific methods ->
science is not appropriate for sociology in their opinion as it gives objective results
and data.
- Interpretivists argue that the purpose of sociology is to understand human
behaviour -> not to quantify it using scientific methods -> it cannot possibly be a
science.
Paragraph 2:
- Kuhn stated that science is paradigmatic -> there is a fixed set of rules and
principles which science uses -> like a set of norms and values and is accepted by
all scientists.
- According to Kuhn -> sociology is pre-paradigmatic and hasn’t reached the stage
where there is a general paradigm shared by most social scientists.
- This is seen by the fact that sociology has a range of views and theoretical
perspectives and there is no agreed set of norms and values -> e.g. feminists will
always disagree with functionalists -> sociological perspectives may also have
internal disagreements such as Merton’s criticism of other functionalists
- HOWEVER -> those who criticise Kuhn would question whether science itself had a
paradigm -> many sciences exist with different sets of paradigms such as
psychology.
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