Belfast, United Kingdom

Sociology

Bachelor's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: social
Qualification: BA
Kind of studies: full-time studies
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
University website: www.qub.ac.uk
Sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of society, including patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and culture. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, acceptance, and change or social evolution. Many sociologists aim to conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, while others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes. Subject matter ranges from the micro-sociology level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems and the social structure.
Sociology
Whether sociology can ever become a full-fledged "science" (a description of a class of events predictable on the basis of deductions from a constant ra~onale) depends on whether the terms which sociologists employ to describe events can be analyzed into quantifiable observables.
Anatol Rapoport, "Outline of a probabilistic approach to animal sociology: I." The Bulletin of mathematical biophysics 11.3 (1949): p 183
Sociology
The social sciences are granted eternal youth because findings must be revisited.
Leonard Beeghley paraphrasing Max Weber in: The Structure of Social Stratification in the United States. 2008. p. 12. ISBN 1317343786.
Sociology
The critique of Parsons exploded sociological theory into a thousand glittering but laughably parochial fragments of nano-theories. The contemporary culture of sociology is to treat social theory as set of personal expressions of literati and pseudo-philosophers. Surveying contemporary sociological theory is like going to the art museum. There we see lots of brilliant works, each the product of an artist's imagination. Certainly there is no attempt by artists to form a unified aesthetic vision. Nor should there be. But science is not art. A science becomes mature when the efforts of all researchers are coordinated by an underlying core model. This truth is denied in contemporary sociological culture.
Herbert Gintis, Review of An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (December 6, 2009)
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