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Assess sociological explanations of science and ideology as belief systems

Not asking you to write the essay, please help though.
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Freiheit
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Original post by Freak Out
Not asking you to write the essay, please help though.


Think is science a open or closed "belief system".
Contrast Popper of falsification and Kuhn's views of the paradigm shift.

Then maybe Merton and Mannheim for ideology and utopia.
Reply 2
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Talk about how Science is actually done and the pressures involved in getting published and such. Give examples of how different theories have constantly been refuted over and over again and how it is nearly impossible to give a final explanation of a certain phenomenon. You could also try to make the point that science isn't necessarily any more "rational" than any other belief system as there are other belief systems that are logical in themselves if you accept the causal explanations given for their world view. A good one for that is Witchcraft among the Azande. Those are some of the points you could make, but you'd have to situate them in the wider theories in the philosophy of science.
- How natural science has defined the norms of what is considered science

- The development of anti-clericalism? (How modernization has affected religous institutions)? The development of 'The religion of Humanity'

- August Comte and the development of 'Social Physics'
- The belief that Sociology is the most complex of the social sciences, and could be understood using the same methods of the natural sciences. (Experimentation and observations).

- Marxs' inevitable development of societies/thus the change and growth of ideology within the society

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