Thoughts on...

Positivism.

The application of "scientific thought" to the analysis of behaviour has always been fraught with difficulty. Emerging from the Enlightenment period we have...

Positivism
... its three main goals can be seen as, observation, description and prediction...
... By following these goals action is seen as rational and non-problematic.
... Persons who differ from the course predicted by this approach are seen and labelled as "deviants".
... According to positivist definitions, "deviance" harms the common good.
... So, the positivist aims to protect the group by establishing and maintaining group norms.
... Therefore the positivist will always attempt to change the behaviour of the "deviant" by employing methods of social control in an attempt to restore perceived order.

However, in the early C20 we begin to see critiques of the Positivist approach emerge. Specifically they argue that Positivism...
...ignores the subjective experience of the person(s) it labels as deviant
...ignores the meaning certain behaviours have for that person / those persons
...categorises such "deviance" as wrong in an uncritical, unreflective way
...fails to take account of issues of relativity where these ideas openly challenge the findings of the positivist approach
...fails to explain behaviours labelled as "deviant"
...fails to question its own objectivity... the question never comes up because positivism assumes that it is objective

As a result we get Sociology - which has been defined as...
"... the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces...
...the meaning may be either a) the meaning actually intended..., or b) the meaning attributed...
...In neither case is the "meaning" thought of as somehow objectively "correct" or "true"..."
Max Weber, The Nature of Social Action, 1922.

In effect, anti-positivism argues that nothing is black and white. Even scientific thought is conditional. Meaning is always written in shades of grey. Therefore failure to think in shades of grey is also failure to understand.

This blip is for a friend.