Science comes from the Latin word meaning ‘knowledge’. Science is a way of looking at the natural world in a systematic and objective way therefore is able to universal laws. An ideology is a system of ideas and ideals and often acts as a foundation for economic or political theories and policies. A belief system is a framework of ideas that people use to explain the world around them.
Science is often seen as truer than other belief systems as it can be tested empirically meaning information comes from experience or from experiments. However not all sociologist agree with the assumption that science is more valid, for example, post-modernists would argue that science is just the dominant meta-narrative of this time, however this could easily change in the future. Another reason science can be seen as a belief system is due to the idea that science works in paradigms, this idea was developed by Thomas Kuhn, paradigms are a framework containing basic assumptions and ways of thinking that develops a new way of looking at the world. Kuhn argues that the paradigms come before theories are developed therefore science can be moulded to fit the paradigms which makes its slightly subjective to the beliefs of the people developing the ideas and so can be seen as a belief system. As science is open to being proved wrong and to other ideas some sociologist would say that science is an open belief system. However other sociologists would argue against this as science has always dismissed and undermined any other belief systems that don’t correlate with science, for example, the idea of creationism.
On the other hand scientists would argue that science is not a belief system but purely fact, for example, Merton, a functionalist, sees science as superior due to his idea of CUDOS. The U stands for Universal; this is the idea that science is the same on a global scale, unlike