Is sociology a real science?

jimgoose wrote: »

Some say that mathematics isn't a science because it doesn't rely on empirical evidence. Others, like Gauss, would have it quite the contrary, that mathematics is queen, mother, grandmother and dotty Auntie Mildred who has way too many cats of the sciences. I suspect we won't solve it satisfactorily here. :pac:

I thought mathematics was considered a branch of logic because of those non emperical qualities. It underpins science instead of being a science itself.

Deleted User wrote: »

It's a social science, based on surveys and observations. Is it in the same league as astrophysics. No.

Social sciences are to science as the Women's Mini Marathon is to Marathon running. Some superficial similarities but essentially very different.

It's an 'ology'.
Which in some people's minds =science

KaneToad wrote: »

There is a league of sciences?
What is top of these rankings?

Bolloxology.

Look, it depends on what you mean by "science".

"Science" comes from the Latin scientia, which just means "knowledge" or "the things that are known". And this gives rise to a very wide concept of "science", in which the word can refer to any organised, systemised field of study. This was the orginal sense of the word in English. In this sense, almost anything could be (and frequently was) called a science - music, mathematics, logic, rhetoric, theology, philosophy, astronomy, geometry, ethics - anything. What made something a "science" was not its subject matter, but the degree of system and organisation you put into studying it.

In time there grew up a broad distinction between the sciences on the one hand and the arts on the other. A science was something you pursued by reflecting, observing, theorising, classifying, describing; an art was something you pursued by practice, engagement, activity. But this wasn't an entirely satisfactory division; there was a large overlap. Music theory was a science, but music performance an art; studying the grammar of a language was a science but studying the literature of the same language was an art; etc. And learning to do something, including something quite technological, was an art. So even an expert clockmaker, for example, was an artisan; the design of clockwork, no matter how much mathematics and measurement was involved, was an art, not a science. An apothecary making and administering drugs, or a surgeon dressing a wound, was not a scientist, however learned either of them might be. The application of knowledge to do something useful, whether or not the knowledge was scientifically-derived, was not a science; it was an art.

So, in time, thinking about science became further refined again; it wasn't just a matter of reflecting, theorising, describing, etc, but of using a particular formal method do do so; the "scientific method". The scientific method involves (a) making empirical observations; (b) forming hypotheses to explain those observations; (c) making predictions based on those hypotheses; and (d) designing and implementing experiments which will test those hypotheses, the outcome of which will either refute or tend to confirm the correctness of the hypothesis. In this scheme of things, technological fields of study (like pharmacy, medicine or engineering) can be sciences if pursued through the scientific method.

This gives rise to a sense of "science" in which the stereotypical sciences are things like physics, chemistry and biology.

Then you have the social sciences which deal with human behaviour - sociology, economics, pyschology, etc. These are seen as less "sciencey" because (a) it is usually not posssible to make empirical observations with the same degree of precision as is possible in physics or chemistry, and (b) it is difficult for a variety of reasons (some of them ethical) to design and implement experiments which will test the hypotheses you form. Obviously these are fields in which you can pursue your studies with more or less reliance on the scientific method, but the main point is that the scientific method is less useful in these fields than it is in physics, chemistry, etc; it delivers less certain results.

And then you have fields that study abstract or imaginary concepts - logic, mathematics, ethics - which (in this scheme of things) cannot be considered science at all, because it's simply impossible to make emperical observations of non-empirical entities, or to devise and implement experiments on them. Thus whatever mathematicians are doing, it's not science.

Depends if you are using qualitative or quantitative research.

Plus what about subjects like legal science, is that a science.

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's a social science, in that it studies how people behave in the real world, it hypothesises about why they behave like that, and then it tests the hypothesis by trying to alter real-world conditions (specifically, laws and the policies or actions of government) in a way that will lead them to behave differently.

And, at a higher level, it tries to devise and maintain a consistent and coherent mechanism for doing this regularly and effectively.

It's a practical application of the scientific method.

well then how to account for the likes of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Dworkin or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls

Both highly influence in ideas around using the law to achieve social justice.

Legal studies is open to multiple interpretations like all social science.

Plus how do you define fairness?

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's a social science, in that it studies how people behave in the real world, it hypothesises about why they behave like that, and then it tests the hypothesis by trying to alter real-world conditions (specifically, laws and the policies or actions of government) in a way that will lead them to behave differently.

It's a practical application of the scientific method.

The problem with the real world is that you can't isolate all the initial conditions. Or even most of them. You can try, but only at at the expense of overpowering tyranny.

Let's say that an initiative to combat violence at sports grounds was undertaken recently after numerous studies of historic data, focus groups, data analysis, complex modelling of various parameters using computationally intensive mathematics that would require a hefty computer to process, findings calculated, new hypotheses to test all set and ready to run in say May this year and then.......Covid lockdown!!!!

Who could have predicted that?

All of a sudden we have to prepare for other examples of antisocial behaviour/crowd control which is likely to emerge as the year inches on with lockdown restrictions still in place and young people getting highly frustrated.

All previous models highly suspect because initial conditions are utterly changed.

A social scientist will ALWAYS have to explain tomorrow why the predictions they made yesterday didn't come true today.