THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF SOCIETY

INTRODUCTION
Although questions have been raised whether social sciences are in the real sense scientific, the doubt is cleared by the fact that social sciences employ the method and obtain the same result as other sciences. It is obvious that the natural realities differ from the social realities, but the adoptions of systematic methods are common to both. The social sciences have their own laws, generalizations that are based on observation, control and prediction that have become established. The genuineness of social explanations coupled with laws that are not accidental which have gained acceptance among practitioners made the science of society the natural science of life, interaction and product of living.
The Study Of Society As A Science
A very important question that has been answered from various standpoints is whether Social science disciplines are sciences. Answers to this question have been built upon a comparison between our understanding of the natural world and our understanding of the social world. On the final analysis if social sciences are science at all, it was because they employ the same methods and reach the same sort of results as other sciences.
There are three major orthodox view of the goals and tactics of the natural sciences:
i. The aim of science is to produce general laws which are universal, i.e. which apply to all events or things of a certain kind, which are precisely stated i.e. it says exactly what will happen and which have a wide scope of possibility;
ii. Such laws should enable us to predict and control events i.e. they should form the basis for a reliable social technology;
iii. The search for such laws should be carried on systematically and incrementally i.e. each generation should be able to inherit the knowledge gained by the previous generation, and should be able to build on it in turn.
Laws in Social Sciences
It is no gainsaying that social sciences have few generalizations of their own which can stand compassion in the natural sciences, for examples, The Economics law of demand and supply has its limitations and exemptions. There may be no relationship between socio-economic status and choice of political parties etc.
However, there are six types of generalizations in social science in general and sociology in particular. They are:
i. Empirical correction (relationship) between concrete social phenomenon (e.g. urban life and divorce rate, socio-economic status and area or type of residence or propensity to consume and save).
ii. Generalization formulating the conditions under which institutions or other social formations arise (e.g. various accounts of the origin of capitalism).
iii. Generalization asserting that changes in given institutions are regularly associated with changes in other institutions (e.g. association between changes in class structure and other social changes in Marxist theory).
iv. Generalizations assorting rhythmical re-occurrence of phase – sequences of various kinds (attempt to distinguish the ‘stages’ or economic development).
v. Generalizations describing the main trends in the evolution of humanity as a whole (e.g. Comte’s law of three stages, the Marxist theory of development from slavery though feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism).
vi. Laws stating the implication of assumptions regarding human behaviours.
These generalizations can be classified according to their range, level, and the extent to which they can be validated (or proved) viz:
(a) Those generalization of type (i) are empirical generalizations that are well established.
(b) Those generalizations of type (ii) and (iii) are formulations of universal laws relating to trends.
(c) Those generalizations of types (iv) and (v) are not real historical statements and interpretations.
(d) The generalization of type (vi) sometimes occur only economics. In sociology, it is this very assumption about human behaviour which is investigated.
Social Sciences as Natural Sciences
There are four important reasons why some writers think that social sciences must in the end come to resemble some branch or other of the natural sciences. They are:
i. There is no ground for general skepticism about the description and up to a point the explanation of individual items of behaviour. For example, even if it is not always true that man will do more work if they are paid their wages, there is no real difficulty about knowing in particular case whether they will or not.
ii. We constantly make assumptions abut the causes of social events which turn out to be correct and some which we do not test, but we certainly believe to be true. For example, calling you a thief will make you angry except you don’t know the meaning.
iii. There are a great many cases where we make things happen in a predictable and regular fashion. For example, increasing the number of police in a given area will reduce the number of crime committed. Also, we encourage people to go on by smiling approvingly at their actions. Offers are made to induce people to take one action or the other. A vast amount of social life would simply not occur if people were unable to get things to happen as they desire.
iv. There are some striking regularities in social life, even if they are hard to explain and hard to make any practical use of. For example, stable accident rate over years, are not caused by any natural law, but it is reliable enough to plan next year’s casualty services. All these things have made many writers simply to assume that social science was or soon would be the natural sciences of life.
The Nature of Scientific Explanation
The following are six views offered by scientific explanation.
i. All genuine explanation is casual, law-governed and deduction, and operates by bringing event to be explained under appropriate law of nature. If we want to assert that this event caused that event, we have to rule out the possibility that the first event could have occurred, without the second following, i.e. whenever an event of first sort occurs, an event of the second as follows:
ii. Generalizations or general laws must not be ‘accidental’ generalizations. For example: “all the people in this room are called smith” – this is accidental generalization – what happens if a Jones is in the room? “all the people who ate two grams of cyanide died of it” is of a law-like status because it provides a connection between event cited, i.e. eating cyanide and death that instantly follow consumption. It has the capacity to support counterfactual judgement.
iii. It is entirely descriptive i.e. it neither presupposes nor supports any particular views about the goodness or badness of the status of affairs described. All scientific explanation can do is to show things work; it does not justify its workings. What science has to say about the world is flatly final in the sense that once everything that can be explained within a given theory has been explained, explanations have run out.
iv. There is a distinction between the origin of a theory and a law and its truth or acceptability which must be absolutely respected. It does not matter who thought up the theory or what prompted him/her to do so; That matters is whether the theory or the hypothesis stands up to testing against. (Since explanations are governed by laws because the connection between the statements of the law(s) and initial conditions on the one hand and the description of the event to be explained on the other is a deductive one, it cannot happen that a true law and a true statement of initial conditions will yield a false statement as a conclusion).
v. The science are value from all sorts of moral or other values may impel us to engage in research (or scientific enquiry) they make no difference to sciences own standards for success and failure. Successful science produces and test hypotheses about the working of the natural world. It explains its failures in favour of more reliable hypotheses.
vi. Scientists can agree among themselves about the meaning of the events with which they are presented. Unless they agree on what they are seeing, they cannot agree whether they have or have not got a proper test of whenever they have or have not got a proper test of whether hypothesis is at issue.
CONCLUSION
         The Economics law of demand and supply, relationships between social status and choice of political parties, occupational status and educational attainments among others are few examples of generalization in the social sciences which can favourably be compared with those in the natural sciences. The emphasis in this unit is that social science’ laws reflect the nature of social realities. They are consistent and reliable enough to form the basis for prediction and control of social forces.
SUMMARY
          In this unit, the social sciences were presented as a science because of the scientific method adopted in studying social realities. It was demonstrated that although the social realities are different from the natural realities, laws, generalizations and assumptions are generated which can effectively be compared with those in the natural sciences. The basic assumptions of science were considered as a premise forassessing the scientific explanations of social realities. The unit thus,effectively answered the age-long questions regarding the scientificstatus of social sciences.