Can Sociology Be Value Free
Can Sociology Be Value Free"Can Sociology Be Value Free?" Value neutrality is a term used by Weber to indicate the necessary objectivity researchers need when investigating problems in the social sciences. Weber also cautioned against the making of value judgements which coincide with the orientation or motives of the researcher. It is important to note that although Weber believed that value neutrality was the aim of research. his view was that no science is fundamentally' neutral and its observational language is never independent of the way individuals see phenomena and the questions they ask about them (Morrison 1995 pp.267, 347) It is this link between the researcher's theoretical stand and the methods adopted that raises the question as to whether sociology can be value free. What are the arguments for and against the possibility of value free sociology? Is the answer to be found in the design of research methods? Or is all knowledge a cultural product in that what a society defines as knowledge reflects the values of that society. therefore making value free science the aim but not the achievable goal of sociology? Indeed. is the concept of value free sociology' of value itself raising the notion of there being merit in a value plus sociology? This concept of value free sociology has its roots in the rise of positivism and the scientific method in the mid nineteenth century. Positivists believed that discovering laws of social development would create a better society. A key figure in the establishing of sociology as a respectable science was Comte (1798-1857). Comte looked at human progress and decided that there are three stages to the evolutionary growth of knowledge. "Each of our leading conceptions, each branch of our knowledge. passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological. or fictitious: the Metaphysical or abstract: and the Scientific or positive...In the final. the positive state the mind...applies itself to the study of their laws - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance." (Comte 1830 The Philosophy' of Sociology' in Thompson 1995 p. 39-40) Comte argued that the human mind develops through these three distinct phases that were inevitable and. therefore, a fact of historical development. From the final stage. the positive in which causes are explained by scientific laws, came the movement known as positivist. Positivist came to be associated with progress and social reform. All disciplines had a historical imperative to develop away from the speculative to the positive stage: thus marking their scientific statue. (Morrison 1995 pp.24-25) In two key areas positivist differed from idealism: first it put great emphasis on the reliability of observation as the basis for theory: and secondly emphasis was laid on the search for factual regularities. Comte argued that this 'would lead to the formation of general laws. Observation became the central criterion of verification. verification to the formulation of laws. and these laws to the subject of repeated test in order to establish their legitimacy. (Morrison 1995 pp.24-25) Observation requires an...
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