Sociological Positivism vs. Social Constructionism Social phenomena exist and deserve explanation. Sociological Positivism and Social Constructionism are two differing social theories that seek to explain the cause of social phenomena. Although these theories are often in direct discourse, they are both highly accepted and are used frequently. Sociological Positivism was first theorized my Auguste Comte. It is described by Structural Anthropologist Edmund Leach as follows: "Positivism is the view that serious scientific inquiry should not search for ultimate causes deriving from some outside source but must confine itself to the study of relations existing between facts which are directly accessible to observation.
Marx believed that societies grew and changed due to struggles of different social classes. Durkheim believed in studying the “social facts,” which would help determine if a society was healthy or pathological. Weber’s focus on the structure of society included the elements of class, status and power. Each sociologist had a great influence in the field of sociology, but took different approaches to studying societies. Sociology enables us to understand how society functions and under which circumstances.
Last but not least, I would like to give examples and give my point of view on the word sociology, such as what does it mean to me! First, I would like to define and explain what sociology means to me! Sociology explores people and society. It examines our social institutions; our families, the state and social relationships like gender and ethnicity, to help make sense of how we both see and interpret our rapidly changing world. Sociology examines how our behavior individually and in groups is influenced by social processes and what that means.
In reading Invitation to Sociology, I found that Berger is consistently explaining the difference of the terms society, social, and social problems. Berger is saying that there are different levels to each of these three terms to which one can see behind and through our social structures. For me to have a better understanding of sociology, I found it necessary to define sociology in my own mind. To me, sociology is the study of society and the human behavior within it, without allowing my biases to overly influence what I see. Berger gives an example that helps me understand it better.
Social policy is government principles and legislation designed to deal with social problems like crime and poverty. However opinions from sociologists all vary on this matter because some believe that their research should feed into policy; whereas others are in the opinion that sociologists must find out what is happening, why it is happening and what can be done to solve the problem. There are many things that influence sociology on policy for example globalisation and policy preferences of the government at the time. This essay is going to examine the relationship between sociology and social policy. Positivists and functionalists such as Durkheim and Comte view sociology as a science and they argue that sociology can discover all the social problems.
“In what ways may disagreement aid the pursuit of knowledge in the natural and human sciences?” Humans have a constant thirst of gaining knowledge to discover new ideas or concepts. The pursuit of knowledge has generally led to a more civilized and developed world. But sometimes, when people acquire knowledge, it clashes with their personal beliefs which lead to disagreement. Disagreement can be defined as having contradicting ideas in the society, which consists of scientists, researchers, students and many more. But, to what extent are logic and reasoning used to explain beliefs?
Another difference with the two is that sociology uses survey and correlational research mostly but social psychology understands the importance of experimental research as well (Myers, 2010). However, clinical psychology relies heavily on experimental research just like social psychology in order to verify hypotheses. Than general psychology or known as personality psychology is different than social psychology because they focus on the individual instead of the impact that people have on each other. In order to sum everything up sociology would be on the left for social psychology because of the focus on social interactions, clinical psychology would be to the right of social psychology because of their use of experimental research, and personality psychology would be in the main of social psychology because both want an understanding of people as
But it has also caused problems such as pollution and global warming. Science has cognitive power, it can allow us to explain, predict and control the world. Popper believes science is an open belief system where every scientist’s theories are open to scrutiny and criticism from others. He says that science is governed by falsification. This is where scientists try to falsify existing theories, trying to find evidence that would disprove them.
Sociology is defined as the scientific study of society and human behavior. Sociology looks for reasons for things, and answers social questions within our society. Sociology is a science, due to the blatant fact that people need to come up with theories, which may be tested and proven or disprove. The first people to realize this fact, and prove their theories were the Europeans in the nineteenth century. On another note, common sense is the ideas that people know, just because it is common knowledge.
It enables us to explain, predict and control the world in a way that non scientific or pre scientific belief systems cannot do. Sir Karl Popper (1959) argues science is an open belief system where every scientist’s theories are open to criticism and testing by others. Scientists set out to try and falsify existing theories, if the evidence from an experiment or observation contradicts a theory and shows it to be false, the theory can be discarded and the search for a better explanation can begin. Popper argues discarding falsified knowledge claims is what enables scientific understanding of the world to grow. Popper argues the key thing about scientific knowledge is that it’s not a sacred or absolute truth; it can be always questioned, tested and perhaps shown to be false.