IS SOCIOLOGY A SCIENCE?MILLIE PRICE – SOCIOLOGY REVISION

IS SOCIOLOGY A SCIENCE? – DIFFERENT VIEWS

Marx, Durkheim and Comte are POSITIVISTS and believe that sociology IS A SCIENCE. They use quantitative data such as official statistics

Weber and Popper believe that sociology ISN’T A SCIENCE and doesn’t need to be. They are INTERPRETISITS.

COMTE• Comte (1798-1857) was one of these founding fathers, coined

the term 'sociology' and described himself as a 'POSITIVIST'.

• Comte looked at SOCIAL FACTS and said we can change/shape peoples behavior through discovering the laws

• Comte said that science isn't there to tell us why something came into being

• But that the main task of sociology is to discover general laws of social development

DURKHEIM• Although Durkheim believes sociology IS a science, he

thought that Comte had failed to establish sociology as a science

• Durkheim thought instead that sociology should study SOCIAL FACTS as things to observe and measure e.g. suicide rate

• He said that sociologists should use objective methods like experiments, questionnaires and statistics as these are mathematical precise and not based on thoughts and feelings

POPPER• Karl Popper disagrees with Durkheim and believes sociology

ISN’T a science

• He says that no theory can ever be 100% true

• Science works by falsification meaning a theory can only be scientific if it can be proved to be FALSE OR TRUE.

• Popper thought that all academic subject areas that wanted to be called a ‘science’ should subject themselves to a process of FALSIFICATION

• If it cant be proven or disproven it isn’t scientific

• Popper says sociology isn’t a science because theories like Marxism and false class consciousness are falsifiable.

WEBER• Weber agrees with Popper and says that sociology ISN’T a

science

• Weber says sociology should study society from the prospective of other people to understand HOW AND WHY things happen

• Using Webers perspective requires subjective understanding which draws on peoples opinions

• Science is strongly objective and does not allow opinion to influence research

KUHN• Kuhn says sociology is and ISN'T a science

• Because there is no shared assumptions and principles.

• Functionalism, Marxism and feminism all have DIFFERING IDEAS

• If these could be resolved to create one PARADIGM then sociology could be a science but is unlikely