Sociology cannot and should not be a science.’ To what extent do sociological arguments and evidence support this view? (33marks)

There are disagreements between sociologists as to whether sociology is considered to be a science. Some suggest that there is no way that sociology could be a science. For example, Popper believes that sociology is not a science, as inductive reasoning doesn’t create science. Therefore Popper he proposed that scientific research methods should be based on the principle of falsification, that is, instead of looking for evidence to prove a hypothesis right, scientists should look for evidence that proves it false. As sociology never makes claims that can be falsified, it’s not therefore a science.

However, Popper has been criticized by Kaplan, who argues that many scientific discoveries are made by accident, which inspires luck to play a crucial role in scientific research. Moreover, many scientists make false starts or collect data that takes them up blind alleys before they get back on track. Also, Feyerabend argues that in reality there is no logic to science as individualist scientists follow their own rules, which often do not resemble textbook models. Thus, Poppers views on sociology not being a science are inaccurate, due to his understanding of what science is.

Popper was only mainly concerned with the logic of science, whereas Kuhn argued that scientists work within conceptual paradigm that strongly influences the way in which they see data. He suggests that in scientific progress only occurs when times passes and more and more evidence doesn’t fit the paradigm causing a scientific revolution to occur which changes science. Using Kuhn’s definition of science, sociology is not scientific as it is doubtful that there has been one paradigm dominant at any one time within the discipline of sociology. Sociology has long been