Is Sociology a Science

There are many arguments for and against sociology being classed as a science. Using the views of Popper, Kuhn, Bhaskar and many others I am going to be examining if it is or is not a science.

Many researchers argue that the methods of the natural sciences are inappropriate for the study of society. This is because there are too many variables in society that can change and cannot be controlled. One of the Fathers of sociology Emile Durkheim published a book called the rules of sociological method. This was a book outlining the logic needed for sociology to become a science. His first and the most important rule was that social facts should be considered as things, if they are treated as things they can be seen like objects and therefore processes of the natural world. Meaning we can see society as a science through the objectification of institutions. Durkheim therefore argued from an inductive point of view, that theories come from evidence, the gathering of data and social facts. A researcher called Karl Popper argued from a deductive point of view, he said that it starts with theory and then uses evidence and data to test if it is valid or not, he says this is the only way that a science can proceed. He also came up with the term falsification. This is a term which means you try to prove something right by saying what it is not. He said that this term can be applied to natural sciences because they have behaviours and can be controlled where as this cannot be used in sociology because you can only falsify in closed systems. Although he argues that sociology is not a science he has no objection to the methodologies of natural sciences being applied to sociology, theories of human behaviour simply open to the possibility of falsification. But her argues that theories that survive falsification tests are not true they have just not been falsified, but there is a major criticism to his theory. It is that although in a closed system laboratory you can test and control temperature, matter and pressure. But you can not apply human societies to this system because you have no control over the society because it is an open system; therefore it is hard to see how a theory can be falsified in the first place.

But another researcher further critiques Popper's and Durkheim's theory by arguing that the way that science has developed holds little relationship to conventional means of scientific method. He developed something called paradigms which scientists work in. This is a set of values, beliefs, ideas and assumptions about their research and is not questioned until there is a massive amount of evidence against them. These paradigms identify appropriate methods of studying the world and specify what questions to ask and how to answer them. But these paradigms restrict what can be researched as normal science operates inside the confines of a paradigm. Thomas Kuhn also rejects the conventional view of that science is built up