1. Is
Sociology
a
Science?

2. Let’s clear-up what’s meant by science.
* it’s a set of principles that tell us how to
produce valid knowledge.
* it aims to base laws and theories on
objective facts gained through observing
phenomena.

3. Hypothetico-deductive method Karl
Popper (1935)
• Theories/laws about the world should come
first and these should be used to generate
expectations/hypotheses which can be
falsified. Falsification is the only way to be
certain

4. What is science?
In your groups write down the things that you
think are necessary for a subject to be
considered a science
• Empirical
• Theoretical
• Objective
• Testable
• Cumulative

5. EVIDENCE THAT SUPPORTS
SOCIOLOGY AS A SCIENCE.

6. 1.It’s possible to discover the laws
that control and shape the behaviour
of people in society.
2. Science isn’t there to tell us why something came into
being.
3. Science is there to explain how things relate to each
other, using laws. So, Asian lads and the Police don’t
relate well because of a social fact called racism.
(Yes, I know that’s up for debate).

7. 4. The main task of Sociology is to discover general laws of
social development;
i) Laws of co-existence: looking at the relationship
between parts of society;
ii) Laws of succession: what are the laws that govern
social change?

8. Inductive Logic is a big part of Positivism
Inductive logic is a type of reasoning about something that
involves moving from a set of specific facts to a general
conclusion.
It uses premises from objects that have
been examined and experiments that
have been conducted to establish a
conclusion about an object that has not
been examined.
All the apples I’ve
ever eaten were SO
tasty! This one will
be too…

9. Seven steps of Inductive Positivism:
1. Our knowledge about the social world
starts with the collection of facts –
For example, the crime rate, the divorce rate
and the number of men that are victims of
domestic violence.
2. The facts are classified & identified
objectively – without using opinion, and
statistical relationships established.
Eg. Children from low income households are
more likely to become criminal.

10. 3. Once classification has been done, we can
look for (study) correlations – where two or
more things happen at the same time
between different social facts.
For example, a correlation between women
being in care and becoming deviant.
4. If positive correlation is found, a cause and
effect relationship can be established.
For example, educational failure causes
greater likelihood of criminality.

11. 5. Once we’ve sorted out positive
correlations and cause and effect
relationships, we can develop theories that
explain the relationship between different
facts.
Eg. Having insufficient integration into
society explains why some commit suicide.
6. Once we have a theory – test it further. If
nothing happens to disprove the theory, we
have discovered a universal law of human
behaviour.

12. 7. Once a law is identified in human
behaviour, we can incorporate it into social
policy – we can organise people through laws
& legislation that will engineer the best
results for society.
What did Comte believe?
Science and Sociology Factsheet

13. Durkheim thought Comte had failed to establish Sociology as
a science.
Durkheim thought, instead, that Sociology should study social
facts as things to observe and measure. So, things like the
suicide rate.

14. Positivism and Suicide
• Durkheim (1897) chose to study suicide to
demonstrate that Sociology was a science with its
own subject matter.
• Used Official Statistics to find patterns in the
suicide rate e.g. Protestants higher than
Catholics. This was due to levels of integration
and regulation.
• Durkheim claimed to have discovered a ‘real
law’- different levels of regulation and
integration produce different rates of suicide
• Claimed that it can be explained scientifically

15. Criticisms of Positivism
Using the words listed below, complete the following list of criticisms made of
positivism by interpretive sociologists:
1. Sociology never can nor should try to be a__________.
2. Sociologists can rarely produce the kinds of__________conditions for study such
as those of the scientist’s laboratory.
3. Research findings are not__________by other sociologists as the research
situation can never be precisely__________.
4. It is impossible to quantify human behaviour in the same way
as__________phenomena.
5. Human beings have__________and may react to the researcher in different ways.
6. The__________that people attach to events and actions are internal and cannot
be directly measured.
7. Human action depends on individual__________.
8. The design of__________to test imposes the views of the researcher on what is
discovered.
Missing words: interpretations verifiable consciousness science hypotheses
controlled meanings natural

16. Karl Popper thought that all
academic subject areas that
wanted to be called a ‘science’
should subject themselves to a
process of falsification.
To test itself, therefore,
Sociology must come up with
testable hypotheses, such as;
suicide is caused by insufficient
regulation and integration.
Karl Popper rejected Marxism as a pseudo-science,
because its concepts, such as false class
consciousness, were too abstract to be seen and
measured.

17. How Sociology is absolutely
NOT a science…

18. Interpretivism is THE alternative, THE total opposite of Positivism.
* People like Weber say Sociology should study society from the
perspective of other people to understand how and why things
happen.
* Using Weber’s perspective of
verstehen requires subjective
understanding which draws on
people’s opinions.
* Science is strongly objective and
does not allow opinion to influence
research.
* For this reason, Interpretivists argue
Sociology cannot ever be a science.

19. Sociology as a science
Karl popper
1. No theory can ever be said to
be 100% true.
2. Science works by Falsification
meaning a theory can only be
scientific if it can be proved
to be false or true.
3. If it can’t be proven or
disproven it isn’t scientific!
4. A good theory isn’t
necessarily true but one that
has withstood attempts to
falsify it so far.
5. Science is an open belief
system, it can and should be
constantly criticised and this
will allow us to get closer to
the truth.
Popper says sociology
isn’t a science because
theories like Marxism
and false class
consciousness are
unfalsifiable. Sociology
could be a science if it
produced hypothesis
that can be tested.
Kuhn says sociology 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 this is
unlikely.
Thomas Kuhn
1. Science is a paradigm meaning
a shared set of assumptions,
principles and methods.
2. Science studies the world until
it finds conclusions that it
cannot explain (anomalies).
3. These anomalies cause us to
consider other paradigms in
order to find answers (flat earth
vs. round).
4. Two paradigms cannot exist
together, at some point one
wins favour amongst the
scientific community, this
causes a scientific revolution, a
shift from one to the other.
5. This process starts all over again
as this new paradigm highlights
new anomalies.

20. 1. Pre-science: period of discovery
where there was no central
paradigm.
2. Normal science: where
scientists used an established
paradigm, like the theory of
evolution, to support theories.
3. Revolutionary science: where
the paradigms are challenged.
Kuhn looked at the history of the natural sciences and argued that
it’s not simply an accumulation of knowledge that ends up being
the credible academic body we know as science, but that it went
through a series of paradigm shifts or revolutions – a bit like a
marriage.

21. Sociology, then, behaves like
it’s in the pre-science stage:
there’s no dominant
perspective and there are
lots of competing theories
and perspectives.
It’s totally valid to refer to
Sociology as a young science
that still needs to find its
unifying theory.

22. Interpretivism and Suicide
• Douglas (1967) rejects the positivist idea of external
social facts determining our behaviour.
• Individuals have free will and they choose how to act on
the basis of meanings
• Douglas rejects Durkheim’s use of quantitative data from
OS’s, they are constructions relating from a coroners
labelling.
• Douglas suggests we use qualitative data from case
studies, they can reveal the actors meanings
• Atkinson (1978) we need to study the way in which
coroners classify suicides (taken for granted
assumptions)

23. Realism, Science and Sociology
• Third view of Science
• They see similarities between Sociology
and certain kinds of natural science in
terms of the degree of control the
researcher has over the variables being
researched

24. • There are differences between open and closed
systems in natural science
• Within closed systems, variables can be
controlled and measured as with Chemistry or
Physics. Therefore precise predictions can be
made
• Open systems cannot control all variables or
measure them and so prediction levels are
uncertain. This happens in meteorology
(weather cannot be predicted with 100%
accuracy) and seismology where processes are
too complex

25. • Realists argue that Sociologists study open
systems where processes are too complex to
make exact predictions e.g. Cannot predict
crime rate precisely because there are too
many variables involved, most of which
cannot be controlled, measured or identified
• Realists see Science as an attempt to explain
casual relationships in terms of underlying
(unobservable) structure, mechanisms and
processes.
• Therefore Marxism and Interpretivism may be
seen as scientific

26. Why does it matter if Sociology is a
Science?
• To ensure prestige so the subject can gain
funding for teaching and research at Universities.
• To give weight to its findings so that they have
the authority by being backed by scientific
method.
• To give protection. Sociology has been
threatened in different countries from the
Prussian civil servants to Robert Mugabe and
Margaret Thatcher as a source of subjective
political criticism.