Sociological Imagination and Investigation

LECTURE 2

The Science of Society

Overturning Speculative ThinkingAuguste Comte (1798-1857)

Social Reality was Ordered

As long as Social reality/life was arbitrary or random, there could be no science of society

Comte denied that social events were

‘always exposed to disturbance by accidental intervention of the legislator, human or divine, which meant no scientific previsions (predictions) of

them

would be possible’.

God God God G

Comte’s ideal – Newton’s Physics [“Social Physics”]

The Nature of Comte’s ‘Laws’

These are really empirical generalizations That do not specify the causal mechanism Are only about “invariable relations of

succession and resemblance” Established by “reasoning and observation,

duly combined” (David Hume) What Hume called ‘constant conjunctions’

and what we call CORRELATIONS This is what Durkheim built Sociology upon

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

Durkheim’s ‘Rules of Sociological Method’

Based upon holding that society has properties of its own, NOT reducible to those of aggregates of people

Sociology studies only SOCIAL FACTS

e.g. ‘social integration’; ‘suicide rates’

2) ‘TREAT SOCIAL FACTS AS THINGS’, like objects in natural science (hence statistics)

3) ‘ONLY EXPLAIN ONE SOCIAL FACT BY ANOTHER’ e.g. ‘religion’ is not explained by individuals’ dispositions to believe

Science of Society = Positivist Sociology = Strong Naturalism

Our subject matter, methods and explanations are about things:-

External to us – ‘hard facts’, which are

Observable – by sense data, directly or by an index accessible to the senses

Objective – being considered as ‘a mirror of nature’

Problems…

Positivist Sociology is confined to ‘observables’, but natural science is not (e.g. gravity, magnetism, conduction can’t be seen)

We are interested in many non-observables (e.g. ‘a criminal’s motives’, ‘beliefs’, ‘social integration’, ‘centralization’, ‘discrimination’)

Some of these are internal to us as subjects (e.g. ‘religious belief’ – cannot assume it from seeing people in Church or attendance stats.

Should Sociology try to be a Positivist Science???