Sociology Quotes
More Sociology Quotes
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— Anatol Rapoport, "Outline of a probabilistic approach to animal sociology: I." The Bulletin of mathematical biophysics 11.3 (1949): p 183
Conventions of generality and mathematical elegance may be just as much barriers to the attainment and diffusion of knowledge as may contentment with particularity and literary vagueness... It may well be that the slovenly and literary borderland between economics and sociology will be the most fruitful building ground during the years to come and that mathematical economics will remain too flawless in its perfection to be very fruitful.
kenneth boulding— Boulding (1948) "Samuelson's Foundations: The Role of Mathematics in Economics," In: Journal of Political Economy, Vol 56 (June). as cited in: Peter J. Boettke (1998) "James M. Buchanan and the Rebirth of Political Economy". Boettke further explains "Boulding's words are even more telling today than they were then as we have seen the fruits of the formalist revolution in economic theory and how it has cut economics off from the social theoretic discourse on the human condition."
Good sociology is sociological work that produces meaningful descriptions of organizations and events, valid explanations of how they come about and persist, and realistic proposals for their improvement or removal.
— Howard S. Becker (1972) "'Radical politics and sociological research"
I often say that sociology is a martial art, a means of self-defense. Basically, you use it to defend yourself, without having the right to use it for unfair attacks.
pierre bourdieu— La Sociologie est un sport de combat (2000); Cited in: John Horne, Wolfram Manzenreiter (2004) Football Goes East. p. xii
Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the Darwinism theory search for results that will be in agreement with their theories and consequently orient their research in a given direction, whether it be in the field of ecology, ethology, sociology, demography (dynamics of populations), genetics (so-called evolutionary genetics), or paleontology. This intrusion of theories has unfortunate results: it deprives observations and experiments of their objectivity, makes them biased, and, moreover, creates false problems.
— Pierre-Paul Grassé, Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation (Academic Press, 1977) p. 7
— (Note that in this book Grassé supports evolution, attributing it to Lamarckian rather than Darwinian mechanisms.)
For insight into human affairs I turn to stories and poems rather than to sociology. This is the result of my upbringing and background.Iamnot abletomakeuse of the wisdom of the sociologists because I do not speak their language.
— 1979 Disturbing the Universe, ch.1.
With all allowance made for Marx's erudition and his historic impact upon the social sciences, especially sociology, it is as an art united with prophecy, virtually religious prophecy, that Marxism survives.
Robert Nisbet— 1976 Sociology as an Art Form, ch.5.
I often say that sociology is a martial art, a means of self-defense. Basically, you use it to defend yourself, without having the right to use it for unfair attacks.
pierre bourdieu— Bourdieu (2000), La Sociologie est un sport de combat; cited in: John Horne, Wolfram Manzenreiter (2004), Football Goes East. p. xii
With sociology one can do anything and call it work.
malcolm bradbury— Ch. 7 (Eating People is Wrong (1959))
Myth does not set out to give lessons in natural science any more than in morals or sociology.
françois-bernard mâche— Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion
Economic problems have no sharp edges. They shade off imperceptibly into politics, sociology, and ethics. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the ultimate answer to every economic problem lies in some other field.
kenneth boulding— p. 252, quoted in Leonard Silk (1976) The Economists. New York: Basic Books. p. 208
I have been accused of being ignorant of economics (although I am the founder and Chairman of the Board of a company which publishes seven professional economic newsletters), of being ignorant of sociology (although I am trained in sociology and was C. Wright Mills' research assistant at Columbia), of being unable to use statistics (although I earned my living as a professional statistician for five years) and of ignoring political factors (although all my graduate training was in political science).
lloyd demause— Ch. 2, ibid.
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
Émile durkheim— Debate on Explanation in History and Sociology (1908)
A religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped at its own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To try to grasp the essence of such phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology , sociology , economics , linguistics , art or any other study is false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it the element of the sacred .
mircea eliade— Patterns in Comparative Religion (1963), as translated by Rosemary Sheed, p. xiii
The way forward does not lie in amateur and comically timeless linguistic sociology which takes ‘forms of life ’ for granted (and this is what philosophy has been recently), but in the systematic study of forms of life which does not take them for granted at all. It hardly matters whether such an inquiry is called philosophy or sociology.
ernest gellner— The crisis in the humanities and in the mainstream of philosophy (1964), reprinted in The Devil in Modern Philosophy (1974)
Many, and I think the determining, constitutive facts remain outside the reach of the operational concept. And by virtue of this limitation this methodological injunction against transitive concepts which might show the facts in their true light and call them by their true name the descriptive analysis of the facts blocks the apprehension of facts and becomes an element of the ideology that sustains the facts. Proclaiming the existing social reality as its own norm, this sociology fortifies in the individuals the “faithless faith” in the reality whose victims they are.
herbert marcuse— p. 119 (One-Dimensional Man (1964))
The fear that seeing naked people in some way harms children is not supported, however, by academic research. The small handful of studies on this topic in psychology and sociology have shown, instead, that children reared in an atmosphere containing family social nudity may benefit from the practice. If this is true, then proposed laws outlawing either social nudity in the home or children's participation at naturist (or nudist) settings are unjustified.
— Mark Storey in Children, Social Nudity and Scholarly Study
Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a distinguished biologist, occupies an important position in the intellectual history of the twentieth century. His contributions went beyond biology, and extended to psychology, psychiatry, sociology, cybernetics , history and philosophy. Some of his admirers even believe that von Bertalanffy's general systems theory could provide a conceptual framework for all these disciplines.
— Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1989). Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972): A Pioneer of General Systems Theory. Working paper Feb 1989. p.2
Up until the publication of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, the history, philosophy, and sociology of science maintained an internalist approach to scientific knowledge claims. Science was seen as somehow above any social, political, or cultural influences, and therefore, the examinations of scientific knowledge focused on areas such as 'discoveries,' 'famous men,' and 'the scientific revolution in the West.' When Kuhn opened the door to the possibility that external factors were involved in the development of scientific paradigms, science studies assumed a more critical tone.
— Diane M. Rodgers "Debugging the Link Between Social Theory and Social Insects" (2009)
The modern systems view, which flowered during World War II (though building on principles in the wind much earlier), has already borne its first fruits and is in danger of a superficial acceptance into the corpus of sociology by way of the incorporation of some of its now common vocabulary.
— Walter F. Buckley (1967) Sociology and modern systems theory p. vii
Since the citation and the reference have different referents and are actually each other's mirror image, it does not seem very wise to blur the distinction between them. This distinction has moreover the advantage that the quest for a citation theory in scientometrics and the sociology of science splits into two different, analytically independent research problems: the patterns in the citing behaviour of scientists, social scientists and scholars in the humanities on the one hand, and the theoretical foundation of citation analysis on the other.
— Paul Wouters (1999) "Beyond the holy grail: From citation theory to indicator theory." Scientometrics, 44, p. 195; as cited in Annual review of information science and technology. Vol 41. 2007 p. 630
Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.
— Ray Bradbury (1953) Fahrenheit 451 p. 61
Myth does not set out to give lessons in natural science any more than in morals or sociology.
— François-Bernard Mâche (1983, 1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion (Musique, mythe, nature, ou les Dauphins d'Arion, trans. Susan Delaney). Harwood Academic Publishers. ISBN 3718653214
Anyone who has studied psychology, sociology, anthropology, or any of the other wacko-and-wog disciplines knows the three great rules of the social sciences: Folks do lots of things. We don't know why. Test on Friday.
— P.J. O'Rourke (2007) Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut. p. 207
After Montesquieu, the next great addition to sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.
auguste comte— The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (1853), Book VI: Social Physics, Ch. II: Principle Philosophical Attempts to Constitute a Social System
sociology is the science which has the most methods and the least results.
— Henri Poincaré (1908) Science and Method Part I. Ch. 1 : The Selection of Facts, p. 19
