Sociologists like Auguste Comte (1798) admire science's ability to describe the natural world.

Positivism
is the term used to describe these sociologists. Positivists think that by applying natural science principles
to the study of society, we can get accurate and objective information of the same type as that found in
natural sciences. This serves as a foundation for progress and the resolution of societal issues. Positivists
believe that reality exists outside of and separate from the human mind. Nature, they believe, is made up
of objective, observable physical realities that exist outside of our heads. Similarly, society is an objective
reality — something that exists outside of individuals and is made up of social realities.

Positivists argue that reality is patterned, not random, and that it can be viewed objectively. The
sociologist's job is to watch, detect, measure, and record patterns, as well as to explain them. Laws,
according to Durkheim, can be discovered and will explain patterns. Induction, or inductive reasoning, is a
method used by sociologists to identify laws that govern how society functions. This entails observing and
measuring the world in order to gather data about it. We begin to notice patterns as our knowledge
expands.We can use this information to create a theory that explains the data. We can claim to have
uncovered the truth in the form of a general law once more observations confirm the idea. Verificationism
is the name for this method. Positivists say that the patterns we see in nature and society can both be
explained by identifying the facts that generated them. As a result, positivist sociologists try to figure out
what causes the patterns they perceive. They try to establish broad assertions or scientific principles
about how society operates, similar to natural scientists, that may be used to predict the future and advise
social policy. Positivists favour structural explanations such as functionalism and Marxism as they see
society and its structures as social facts existing outside us and shape our behaviour patterns.
Positivists think that the experimental approach employed in natural sociology should be adopted as the
research model in sociology since it allows the investigator to test the hypothesis in a controlled manner.
Positivists employ quantitative data to find behavioral patterns, allowing them to make mathematically
accurate claims about the relationships between the facts they're looking into. Positivism seeks to
discover principles of cause and effect that govern our behavior by analyzing quantitative facts.
Researchers for positivists should be detached and impartial, and they should no longer allow subjective
feelings to influence how they conduct experiments.

In natural sciences, it is argued that the values of scientists have no bearing on the outcome of
study. In sociology, however, there is a risk that the researcher will contaminate the experiment.
Positivists, on the other hand, adopt quantitative approaches in order to achieve maximum objectivity.
These procedures also yield trustworthy data that can be double-checked by other researchers who
repeat the experiment.Durkheim selected suicide to demonstrate that sociology was a science with its
own independent subject matter. He believed that if he could show that this very personalized behavior
had social consequences, sociology's legitimacy as a scientific study would be established. Durkheim
identified trends in suicide rates using quantitative data from government statistics. Because Protestants
had greater rates than Catholics, he reasoned these patterns could not be the result of individual motives,
but rather were social facts. As a result, they must be caused by other social facts — forces operating on
society's members to shape their behavior.According to Durkheim, the social factors that determined
suicide rates were levels of integration and control. Catholics were less likely to commit suicide because
they were more successful at integrating people. As a result, Durkheim claims to have established a true
law: different levels of integration result in varying suicide rates. He claimed to have proven that sociology
had its own distinct subject matter, social facts, which can be scientifically explained. As a result,
positivists disagree with the assertion that sociology can't or shouldn't be considered a science. However,
interpretivist sociologists do not believe that sociology should be modeled after the natural sciences.
Interpreitvists argue the subject matter of sociology is meaningful social action, and we can only
understand it by interpreting meanings and motives of actors involved. They argue sociology is about
internal meanings and not external causes. Sociology isn’t a science because science only deals with
laws of cause and effect and not human meanings. Thus they reject the use of natural science methods
and explanations as a model for sociology. They argue there’s a fundamental difference between subject
matter of the sciences and sociology. Natural science studies matter which has no consciousness. Thus
behaviour can be explained as a straightforward reaction to external stimuli. Sociology studies people
who have consciousness. People construct the world by attaching meanings to it. Actions can only be
understood by these meanings and meanings are internal to people’s consciousness, they are ideas or
constructs, not things. Unlike matter people have free will and have choice. Mead argues responding
automatically to external stimuli humans interpret the meaning of stimulus and then choose how to
respond to it. For example at a red light the driver interprets it as stop, though they don’t have to stop, and
external forces don’t determine their behaviour. Thus Interpretivist argues individuals are not puppets
manipulated by social facts but they are autonomous and construct their social world by meanings they
give to it. The job of the sociologist is to uncover those meanings.

Interpretivists reject the methods of natural science. They argue to discover meanings people give to their
actions we need to see the world from their viewpoint. This involves abandoning objectivity of positivists.
We must put ourselves in the place of the actor using what Weber calls verstehen. Thus they favour the
use of qualitative methods and data such as participant observation. These methods produce in depth
and valid data and give the sociologist a subjective understanding of the actor’s meanings.

All interpretivists seek to understand actions meanings, however divided whether or not we can combine
this understanding with positivist style casual explanation of human behaviour. Interactionists argue we
can have casual explanations. However they reject the positivist view that we should have a definite
hypothesis before we start our research. Glaser and Strauss (1968) argue it risks imposing our own view
of what is important rather than the actors, so we end up distorting the reality we’re trying to capture.
Glaser and Strauss favour a bottom up approach, or grounded theory. Rather than entering research with
a fixed hypothesis at the start, our ideas should emerge from observations during the course of the
research. These ideas can later be used to produce a testable hypothesis.

Interactionist Jack Douglas (1967) rejects the positivist idea of external social facts determining our
behaviour. Individuals have free will and choose to act on basis of meanings. Thus to uncover suicide we
must uncover meanings for those involved instead of imposing our own meanings. Douglas rejects
Durkheim’s use of quantitative data from official statistics. They’re not objective facts but social
constructions resulting from the way coroners label certain deaths as suicide Douglas argues we should
use qualitative data from case studies of suicides since they can reveal actors meanings and give us a
better idea of the real rate of suicide than the official statistics. Maxwell Atkinson (1978) rejects the idea
that external social facts determine behaviour and agrees statistics are socially constructed. However
unlike Douglas, Atkinson argues we can never know the real rate of suicide by even using qualitative
methods since we can never know for sure what meanings the deceased held. Atkinson argues the only
thing we can study is the ways the living make sense of deaths – the interpretive procedures coroners
use to classify deaths. Ethno methodologists argue members of society have a stock of taken for granted
assumptions with which they make sense of situations, including deaths. The sociologist’s role is to
uncover what this knowledge is and how coroners use it to arrive at a verdict.

Postmodernists argue against the idea of a scientific sociology. They regard natural science as a
meta-narrative. Despite the claim to have special action to the truth, science is another big story; its
account of the world is no more valid than any other. Thus there’s no particular reason why we should
adopt science as a model for sociology. Given the postmodernist view that there are as many different
truths as there are points of view, a scientific approach is dangerous as it can claim a monopoly of truth
and exclude other points of view. Thus scientific sociology not only makes false claims about the truth it’s
also a form of domination. Feminists, such as post structural feminists share this view of scientific
sociology. They argue the quest for a single scientific feminist theory is a form of domination as it
excludes groups of women. Other feminists argue the quantitative scientific methods favoured by
positivists are oppressive and cannot capture the reality of women’s experiences. Some writers argue that
science is an undesirable model for sociology to follow as in practice science has not led to the progress
that positivists believe it would. For example the emergence of risk society, with scientifically created
dangers such as nuclear weapons and global warming, has undermined the idea that science inevitably
brings benefits to human kind. If science produces such negative consequences it’s argued it would be
inappropriate for sociology to adopt it as a model.
Although the interpretivists reject the positivist view that sociology is a science they tend to agree with
positivists that natural sciences are actually as the positivists describe them. Positivists see natural
science as inductive reasoning or verificationism applied to the study of observable patterns. However not
everyone accepts the positivists portrayal of the natural sciences. A number of sociologists, philosophers
and historians put forward a different picture of science.

Sir Karl Popper (1994) argues many systems of thought claim to have true knowledge about the world
such as religion, political and scientific ideology Popper asks what distinguishes scientific knowledge and
why has science grown so quickly in the last few centuries. Popper differs from positivists in that he
rejects their view that the distinctive feature of science lies in inductive reasoning and verificationism. The
main reason why we should reject verificationism is because of the “fallacy of induction”. Induction is the
process of moving from the observation of particular instances of something to arrive at a general
statement. Popper uses swans to demonstrate this. By observing a large number of white swans, he
generalised that all swans are white. It’s easy to make further observations to verify this. However despite
how many swans we observe we cannot prove all swans are white as a single observation of a black
swan will destroy the theory. Thus we can never prove a theory true simply by producing more
observations that verify this.

Popper argues what makes science unique form of knowledge is the opposite of verificationism, a
principle called falsificationism. A scientific statement is one that in principle is capable of being falsified
by the evidence. We must be able to say what evidence would count as falsifying the statement when we
come to put it to the test. Popper argues a good theory has two features. It’s in principle falsifiable but
when tested it stands up to attempts to disprove it. It is also bold; it claims to explain a great deal. It
makes generalisations that predict a large number of cases, thus is at greater risk of being falsified then a
more timid theory that explains a small number of events.
For a theory to be falsifiable it must be open to criticism from other scientists. Popper argues science is a
public activity. Everything is open to criticism thus flaws in a theory can be readily exposed and better
theories developed. Popper explains this is why science has grown so rapidly. Popper argues science
thrives in open or liberal societies, societies where ideas are open and open to challenge. Contrastingly
closed societies are dominated by an official belief system that claims to have absolute truth. Such belief
systems stifle growth of science as they conflict with the nature of science.

Popper argues much of sociology is unscientific because it consists of theories that can’t be put to the test
with the possibility they can’t be falsified. For example Marxists predict there will be a revolution leading to
a classless society however it hasn’t happened because of false consciousness. Thus the theory can’t be
falsified as in all cases, Marx is always right. However popper believes sociology can be scientific as it
can produce theories that in principle can be falsified. Julienne Ford (1969) hypothesised the
comprehensive schooling would produce social mixing of pupils from different social classes. She was
able to test and falsify this hypothesis through her empirical research. Although popper rejects Marxism
as unscientific because it’s untestable, he doesn’t believe untestable ideas are worthless. Such ideas are
valued as they become testable at a later date and we can still examine them for logistical consistency.
For example debates between different sociological perspectives can clarify woolly thinking and help
formulate a testable hypothesis. While sociology may have a larger quantity of untestable ideas then the
natural sciences, this may be because it’s not been in existence as long as natural science has.
Thomas Kuhn (1970) idea is the paradigm. A paradigm is shared by members of a given scientific
community and defines what their science is. It provides a basic framework of assumptions, principles,
methods and techniques within which members of that community work. It is a world view that tells
scientists what nature is like, which aspects are worth studying, what methods should be used, what kind
of questions they should ask and even the sorts of answers they should find. The paradigm is thus a set
of norms as it tells the scientist how they ought to think. Scientists come to accept the paradigm
uncritically as a result of their socialisation. Kuhn argues a science cannot exist without a shared
paradigm. Until there’s consensus on a single paradigm, there will only be rival schools of thought, not a
science as such. For the most of the time the paradigm goes unquestioned and scientists do what Kuhn
calls normal science which is like puzzle solving. The paradigm defines the questions and the answers.
Scientists are left to fill in detail or work out the neatest solution. Kuhn argues the advantage of the
paradigm is that it allows scientists to agree on the basics of their field and helps production. This
contrasts with poppers view of science. John Watkins (1970) argues while popper sees falsification as a
unique feature of science, Kuhn argues its puzzle solving within a paradigm that makes science so
special.

However not all puzzle solving is successful. Sometimes scientists obtain findings contrary to those the
paradigm led them to expect. As these anomalies mount up confidence in the paradigm begins to decline
and this leads to the argument about basic assumptions and to efforts to reformulate the paradigm so as
to account for the anomalies. The science has now entered a period of crisis. Previously taken for granted
foundations are questioned. Scientists begin to formulate rival paradigms and this marks the start of the
scientific revolution. Kuhn argues rival paradigms are incommensurable; two competing paradigms
cannot be judged or measured by the same set of standards to decide which ones best. What supporters
of one paradigm regard as a decisive refutation of the other, supporters of the rival paradigm will not
recognise as a valid test, as each paradigm is a different way of seeing the world. To move from one to
the other requires a massive shift of mindset. Eventually one paradigm wins and becomes accepted by
the scientific community, allowing normal science to resume, however with a new set of basic
assumptions. However the process is not rational. Kuhn compares it with religious conversion. Generally
the new paradigm gets support from younger scientists as they have less to lose then older superiors.
Kuhn’s view of scientific community contrasts with popper. Popper argues the scientific community is
open and rational, constantly seeking to falsify exiting theories by producing evidence against them.
Progress occurs by challenging accepted ideas. Kuhn argues by contrast the scientific community is not
normally characterised by openness. Most of the time during normal science scientists is conformists.
Only during scientific revolution does this change. Even then scientists have no rational means of
choosing one paradigm rather than another.

Currently sociology is pre paradigmatic and thus pre scientific, divided into competing perspectives.
There’s now shared paradigm. On Kuhn’s definition sociology could only become a science if basic
disagreements were resolved. Whether this is possible is a doubt. Postmodernists argue a paradigm may
not be desirable in sociology. It sounds like a meta-narrative. Post modernists argue it silences minority
views and it falsely claims to have the truth.
A third view from science comes from the realist approach. Russell Keat and John Urry (1982) stress
similarities between sociology and natural science such as degree of control for the researcher. They
distinguish between open and closed systems. Closed systems are where the researcher can control and
measure all the relevant variables and can make precise predictions. The typical research method is a
laboratory. Open systems are those where the researcher can’t control and measure relevant variables
and thus cannot make precise predictions. Realists argue that sociologists study open systems where the
processes are too complex to make exact predictions. For example we cannot predict the crime rate
precisely as there are too many variables involved, most of which cannot be controlled, measured or
identified.

Realists reject the positivist view that science is only concerned with observable phenomena. Keat and
Urry argue science often assumes the existence of unobservable structures. Realists argue this also
means interpretivists are wrong in assuming sociology can’t be scientific. Interpretivists believe because
of actors meanings are in their minds and not directly observable they cannot be studied scientifically.
However if realists are correct and science can study observable phenomena then it’s no barrier to study
meaning scientifically. For realists both natural and social science attempt to explain the causes of events
in terms of underlying structures and processes. Although these structures are often unobservable we
can work out they exist by observing their effects. For example we cannot directly see social class but we
can observe effects. Thus much sociology is scientific. Thus unlike interpretivists realists see little
difference between natural sciences and sociology, except natural scientists can study in closed
laboratories.

In conclusion, sociologists are divided about whether sociology is a science. While positivists favour
adopting natural sciences as a model interpretivists reject the view that sociology can be scientific. This
division is based in the disagreement of the nature of sociology and subject matter. Positivists see
sociology as the study of causes. Social facts cause individuals to behave as they do. Positivists see this
as the same as the natural sciences approach, to discover the causes of patterns they observe.
Interpretivists see sociology the study of meaningful social action. Internal meanings are why actors
behave the way they do. Human actions are not governed by external causes thus cannot be studied the
same way as natural sciences. However while positivists and interpretivists disagree about whether
sociology can be a science they both accept the positivist view of natural sciences of verificationism.
Different pictures of science have emerged, having implications for sociology. Popper rejects
verificationism in favour of falsificationism, thus much sociology is unscientific but has the potential to b e
so. Kuhn argues sociology can only become a science if it develops its own paradigm. Realists argue
science doesn’t only deal with observable phenomena as positivists argue but underlying unobservable
structures. Thus Marxism and interpteivism can be seen as scientific.

Quick reminders:
-Interpretivism is the view that sociology is not a science. Interpretivists argue that, because humans think
and reflect, scientific methods are inappropriate as they do not allow us to truly understand and dig
beneath the surface of behaviours and actions. Unlike objects, which can be analysed using scientific
methods, Interpretivists argue that human beings change their behaviour if they know they are being
observed, called the Hawthorne Effect, therefore if we want to understand social action, we have to delve
into meanings using qualitative, unscientific methods. Interpretivists are subjective, meaning 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, no quantify it using scientific methods,
therefore it cannot possibly be a science.
-Kuhn stated that science is paradigmatic, meaning there is a fixed set of rules and principles which
science uses. It is like a set of norms and values and is accepted by all scientists. Therefore, 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. Feminists will always disagree
with functionalists. Sociological perspectives may also have internal disagreements such as Merton’s
criticism of other functionalists. Those who criticise Kuhn, however, would question whether science itself
has a paradigm. Many sciences exist with different sets of paradigms.