Science and Sociology

What is science?

• Write a brief definition.

Is Sociology a Science?

• Why, or why not?

In one sentence, describe some of the similarities between sociologyand the natural sciences.

In one sentence, describe some ofthe differences between sociologyand the natural sciences.

Science, as practiced by social and natural scientistshas many similarities.

The logic of data collection methods and analysis is onesimilarity.

Values are important to both natural and social scientists inhelping to form research questions and topics.

“Values also have the potential to bias or distort observations, and both the natural and social sciences must guard against distortion.” Use of the scientific method can help reduce this problem.

As Guppy (p. 513) states, however,:

There is … a profound difference between the subjectmatter of the natural and the social sciences:

Bacteria don’t blush.

Sociologists study meaningful action -- that is,activities that are meaningful to the people involved.

For example, bacteria may not blush when studied, butpeople often react self-consciously when they knowthey are being observed.

Because of this difference in subject matter, sociologistshave developed an array of methods to help them understandhuman activity.

The Enlightenment,

the Scientific Revolution

and Sociology

More than the thinkers of any preceding age, the men of the Enlightenment held firmly to the conviction that the mind could comprehend the universe and subordinate it to human needs.

… these philosophers … were enormously inspired by the scientific achievements of the preceding centuries. Those achievements led them to a new conception of the universe based on the universal applicability of natural laws. Utilizing the concepts and techniques of the physical sciences, they set about the task of creating a new world based on reason and truth. (Zeitlin, p. 1)

If science revealed the workings of naturallaws in the physical world, then perhapssimilar laws could be discovered in the socialand cultural world.

Thus the Philosophes investigated all aspectsof social life; they studied and analyzed political,religious, social, and moral institutions, subjectedthem to merciless criticism from the standpointof reason, and demanded to change theunreasonable ones.

This intellectual revolution provided the context for some of the founders of the disciplineof sociology.

Two of the earliest thinkers who self-consciouslyidentified them selves as doing sociologyare: August Comte and Herbert Spencer.

According to Coser (p. 3)

“Comte’s aim was to create a naturalistic science of society,which would both explain the past development of mankindand predict its future course.”

In addition to developing a theory of human progressthat involved stages of development, Comte felt that there wasa hierarchy of the sciences, and that different scienceswould progress at different rates.

In fact, Comte saw sociology (and related social sciences)as being at the top of the scientific hierarchy because theywere the most complex and the most dependent on the emergence of other sciences.

Spencer, was also interested in the development of societies,and developed his own theory to account for such processes.

Spencer was a contemporary of Charles Darwin.

When Darwin’s Origin of Species appeared in 1859, Spencerwelcomed it warmly.

Darwin, in his turn expressed his esteem of Spencer’s “developmenttheory” even before the Origin was published.

While Darwin and Spencer worked in the same mileu, it isincorrect -- as Coser (p. 110) notes -- to call Spencer a “socialDarwinist” because his main doctrine was developed beforeDarwin had published anything on evolution.

The point here, is that early sociologists developed sociology on the tails of the Enlightenment, and lived during a time period where exciting and controversialscientific ideas were hotly debated in intellectual circles.

Sociology was very much a product of this intellectual revolution.

Scientific Progress

and Scientific Revolutions

Drawing upon the ideas of Thomas Kuhn, Ritzer offers the following definition of paradigm:

A paradigm is a fundamental image of the subject matter withina science.

It serves to define:

• what should be studied

• what questions should be asked

• how they should be asked

• and what rules should be followed in interpreting the answers obtained.

The paradigm is the broadest unit of consensus within a scienceand it serves to differentiate one scientific community(or subcommunity) from another.

It subsumes, defines and interrelates:

• the exemplars,

• theories,

• methods and instruments

that exist within it.

Kuhn’s Model of Scientific “Progress”

Paradigm I: Normal Science

Anomalies

Crisis

RevolutionParadigm II: Normal Science

Microscopic Macroscopic

Interaction

Groups

Organizations

Societies

World Systems

The Microscopic - Macroscopic Continuum

Individualthought and action

The Objective - Subjective Continuum

Objective Subjective

Actors, action,interaction, bureaucraticstructures, law,and so forth.

Mixed types,combining in varyingdegrees objective and subjective elements; examples includethe state, family,work world, religion.

Social constructionof reality, norms,values, and soforth.

Major Levels of Social Analysis

OBJECTIVE SUBJECTIVE

MACROSCOPIC

MICROSCOPIC

I. Macro-objective

Examples: society, law,bureaucracy, architecture,technology, and language.

II. Macro-subjective

Examples: culture,norms, and values.

III. Micro-objective

Examples: patterns ofbehaviour, action,and interaction.

IV. Micro-subjective

Examples: the variousfacets of the social construction of reality.

Levels of Social Analysis and the Major Sociological Paradigms

LEVELS OF SOCIAL REALITY

Macro - SubjectiveMacro - Objective

Micro - SubjectiveMicro - Objective

Social Facts

Social Definition

Social Behaviour

SOCIOLOGICAL PARADIGMS

Ritzer identifies three basic sociological paradigms.

These are:

• Social Facts

• Social Definition

• Social Behaviour

THE SOCIAL FACTS PARADIGM

1. Exemplar: Emile Durkheim.

2. Image of the subject matter: social facts, or large-scale social structures and institutions. Those who adhere to this paradigm focus not only on these phenomena, but also on their effect on individual thought and action.

3. Methods: Interview-questionnaire and historical-comparative.

4. Theories: structural-functionalism, conflict theory, systems theory.

THE SOCIAL DEFINITION PARADIGM

1. Exemplar: Max Weber.

2. Image of the subject matter: the way in which actors define their social situations and the effect of these definitions on ensuing action and interaction.

3. Methods: interview-questionnaire method, observation. The distinctive method is observation.

4. Theories: action theory, symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, existentialism.

THE SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR PARADIGM

1. Exemplar: The work of B.F. Skinner.

2. Image of the subject matter: the unthinking behaviour of individuals. The rewards that elicit behaviours, and the punishments that inhibit undesirable behaviours.

3. Methods: The distinctive method is the experiment.

4. Theories: Behavioural Sociology, and exchange theory.

According to Brym (p. 21):

Sociology is concerned mainly with howpatterned relations among people affectbehaviour, not just with how individualschoose to act.

While religion and other endeavors involvethe pursuit of some form of truth,

only science requires that we carefullyobserve and count, that our theories besystematically and publicly testedagainst evidence.

(Brym (p. 21)

Scientists treat traditional and authoritative opinionwith skepticism.

They develop special techniques and instruments to facilitateaccurate observation.

They are careful to take samples that are representative of thepopulations about which they wish to generalize.

They purposely look for disconfirming evidence, and whensuch evidence accumulates, they discard or reformulate theories.

They construct theories that are logically consistent.

THE SCIENTIFIC RULE

THE VALUE RULE

Brym notes that sociological researchers are affectedby values in several ways.

1. Values help sociologists pick research problems.

2. Values can affect untested (and often unconscious) assumptions related to testing theoretical ideas. For example, the concepts and hypotheses developed may reflect the experiences of the researcher.

3. The values that are held by a sociologist can influence the ways in which her/his work is put to use.

Brym argues that valid and useful research needs to bebased on a balance between the two rules.

Sociological research should be socially relevant, and shouldhave a sufficient level of scientific rigor.

The extremes of ideologism and scientism should be avoided.