Compare and Contrast Positivism and Interpretivism

contrast and Contrast positiveness and InterpretivismPositivism is a theoretical and methodological draw close in contemporary criminology. Positivists believe that human behavior is shaped by biological, psychological or brotherly factors and forces. These factors and forces atomic number 18 c all(prenominal)ed individual pathology which deter the decision-making and see ability of an individual and results in behavioral problems (White Haines, 2003). To extend to legal definition, ab aim is defined as individual pathology to obey law and to conform to moralistic consensus of the alliance. Positivism appeal in criminology examines the trait distinctions between offenders, rather than on the criminal acts as the focus of analysis. Also, logical logical incontrovertibility de bourneines how these leavings predispose a mortal towards criminality (White Haines, 2003). Positivists believed that these traits give a f arwelld substructure be diagnosed and treated by tra nsaction with and removing the factors and forces that cause the offending behavior to occur.In a confident(p) popular opinion of the piece, light was seen as the way to get at truth, to understand the orb fountainhead abounding so that we might point and control it. The creative activity and the cosmos were deterministic they op durationted by laws of cause and effect that we could discern if we utilise the fantastic near of the scientific method. Science was largely a automatonlike or mechanical affair. We use deductive argument to postulate theories that we hindquarters test. base on the results of our studies, we whitethorn learn that our possibleness doesnt fit the facts puff up and so we want to revise our theory to give away predict realness. The positive(p) believed in sensualism the judgement that note and touchstone was the core of the scientific endeavor. The identify approach of the scientific method is the experiment, the attempt to discer n cancel laws with plow manipulation and observation.Paradigm of social research stage paradigm by constituteing the idea of Thomas Kuhn who is the first judgement of paradigm that was showed in the book named structure of scientific revolutionsin 1962. In social intelligence has two important paradigm that used for research society and unconstipatedt which happen in social that atomic number 18 positivism and interpretivism life-sustaining Positivism Post-PositivismLets start our very brief discussion of philosophy of attainment with a simple distinction between epistemology and methodology. The term epistemology beats from the Greek record book epistm, their term for screwledge. In simple terms, epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge or of how we come to know. Methodology is also concerned with how we come to know, unless is a good deal to a greater extent(prenominal) practical in nature. Methodology is focused on the circumstantial slipway the methods th at we can use to try to understand our ground better. Epistemology and methodology be intimately related the former involves the philosophy of how we come to know the world and the latter involves the practice.When to the highest degree mickle in our society rally around lore, they conjecture nigh rough guy in a egg white laboratory coat spirting at a lab judicatory mixing up chemicals. They commend of science as boring, cut-and-dry, and they think of the scientist as narrow-minded and esoteric (the ultimate nerd think of the witty but nonetheless mad scientist in the Back to the Future movies, for instance). A broadcast of our stereotypes about science come from a period where science was dominated by a particular philosophy positivism that tended to tide over some of these views. Here, I want to suggest (no matter what the movie diligence may think) that science has moved on in its thinking into an era of post-positivism where legion(predicate) of those ste reotypes of the scientist no longer tie down up.Lets begin by considering what positivism is. In its broadest sense, positivism is a rejection of metaphysics (I leave it you to look up that term if youre not familiar with it). It is a position that holds that the goal of knowledge is precisely to spot the phenomena that we experience. The purpose of science is simply to stick to what we can observe and measure. familiarity of anything beyond that, a positivist would hold, is impossible. When I think of positivism (and the related philosophy of logical positivism) I think of the behaviorists in mid-20th nose candy psychology. These were the mythic rat runners who believed that psychology could exclusively study what could be at a time discovered and measured. Since we formalism directly observe emotions, thoughts, etc. (although we may be adequate to measure some of the physical and physiological accompaniments), these were not legitimize topics for a scientific psycholog y. B.F. Skinner argued that psychology pauperizationed to concentrate only on the positive and negative reinforcers of behavior in set up to predict how people will be keep everything else in between (like what the person is thinking) is unconnected because it vend be measured.In a positivist view of the world, science was seen as the way to get at truth, to understand the world well enough so that we might predict and control it. The world and the universe were deterministic they operated by laws of cause and effect that we could discern if we applied the unique approach of the scientific method. Science was largely a mechanistic or mechanical affair. We use deductive reasoning to postulate theories that we can test. Based on the results of our studies, we may learn that our theory doesnt fit the facts well and so we need to revise our theory to better predict universe. The positivist believed in empiricism the idea that observation and measurement was the core of the scien tific endeavor. The key approach of the scientific method is the experiment, the attempt to discern natural laws through and through direct manipulation and observation.OK, I am exaggerating the positivist position (although you may be amazed at how close to this some of them actually came) in order to make a point. Things adjudge changed in our views of science since the core part of the 20th century. Probably the most important has been our shift away from positivism into what we term post-positivism. By post-positivism, I dont incriminate a tenuous fitting to or revision of the positivist position post-positivism is a wholesale rejection of the exchange tenets of positivism. A post-positivist might begin by recognizing that the way scientists think and work and the way we think in our everyday life atomic number 18 not distinctly different. Scientific reasoning and uncouth sense reasoning atomic number 18 essentially the same process. There is no difference in benigna nt between the two, only a difference in degree. Scientists, for example, follow specific procedures to assure that observations be verifiable, accurate and consistent. In everyday reasoning, we dont perpetually cover so c befully (although, if you think about it, when the stakes are high, hitherto in everyday life we become much more conservative about measurement. Think of the way most responsible parents restrict unvarying watch over their infants, noticing details that non-parents would never detect).One of the most common forms of post-positivism is a philosophy called slender realism. A critical realist believes that in that respect is a reality independent of our thinking about it that science can study. (This is in contrast with a subjectivist who would hold that there is no impertinent reality were from for from distributively one one one making this all up). Positivists were also realists. The difference is that the post-positivist critical realist recogniz es that all observation is fallible and has error and that all theory is revisable. In other words, the critical realist is critical of our ability to know reality with certainty. Where the positivist believed that the goal of science was to uncover the truth, the post-positivist critical realist believes that the goal of science is to hold steadfastly to the goal of getting it right about reality, even though we can never achieve that goal Because all measurement is fallible, the post-positivist emphasizes the grandness of multiple measures and observations, each of which may possess different types of error, and the need to use triangulation crossways these multiple errorful sources to try to get a better free fall on whats happening in reality. The post-positivist also believes that all observations are theory-laden and that scientists (and everyone else, for that matter) are inherently biased by their cultural experiences, world views, and so on. This is not cause to give up i n despair, however. Just because I have my world view based on my experiences and you have yours doesnt mean that we cant hope to translate from each others experiences or understand each other. That is, post-positivism rejects the relativist idea of the incommensurability of different perspectives, the idea that we can never understand each other because we come from different experiences and cultures. Most post-positivists are constructivists who believe that we each construct our view of the world based on our perceptions of it. Because perception and observation is fallible, our constructions must be imperfect. So what is meant by objectivity in a post-positivist world? Positivists believed that objectivity was a characteristic that resided in the individual scientist. Scientists are responsible for putting aside their biases and beliefs and seeing the world as it genuinely is. Post-positivists reject the idea that any individual can see the world perfectly as it really is. We are all biased and all of our observations are affected (theory-laden). Our beat out hope for achieving objectivity is to triangulate across multiple fallible perspectives Thus, objectivity is not the characteristic of an individual, it is inherently a social phenomenon. It is what multiple individuals are trying to achieve when they criticize each others work. We never achieve objectivity perfectly, but we can approach it. The best way for us to improve the objectivity of what we do is to do it at heart the context of a broader contentious community of truth-seekers (including other scientists) who criticize each others work. The theories that survive such intense scrutiny are a spotlight like the species that survive in the evolutionary struggle. (This is sometimes called the natural option theory of knowledge and holds that ideas have survival value and that knowledge evolves through a process of variation, selection and retention). They have adaptive value and are probably a s close as our species can come to being objective and understanding reality.Clearly, all of this stuff is not for the faint-of-heart. Ive seen many a graduate student get lost in the maze of philosophical assumptions that contemporary philosophers of science argue about. And dont think that I believe this is not important stuff. But, in the end, I tend to turn pragmatist on these matters. Philosophers have been debating these issues for thousands of years and there is every reason to believe that they will slip by to debate them for thousands of years more. Those of us who are practicing scientists should check in on this debate from time to time (perhaps every hundred years or so would be about right). We should think about the assumptions we make about the world when we conduct research. But in the meantime, we cant wait for the philosophers to get even the matter. After all, we do have our own work to doPositivism Post-PositivismLets start our very brief discussion of philoso phy of science with a simple distinction between epistemology and methodology. The term epistemology comes from the Greek word epistm, their term for knowledge. In simple terms, epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge or of how we come to know. Methodology is also concerned with how we come to know, but is much more practical in nature. Methodology is focused on the specific ways the methods that we can use to try to understand our world better. Epistemology and methodology are intimately related the former involves the philosophy of how we come to know the world and the latter involves the practice.When most people in our society think about science, they think about some guy in a white lab coat working at a lab bench mixing up chemicals. They think of science as boring, cut-and-dry, and they think of the scientist as narrow-minded and esoteric (the ultimate nerd think of the humorous but nonetheless mad scientist in the Back to the Future movies, for instance). A lot of our stereotypes about science come from a period where science was dominated by a particular philosophy positivism that tended to support some of these views. Here, I want to suggest (no matter what the movie industry may think) that science has moved on in its thinking into an era of post-positivism where many of those stereotypes of the scientist no longer hold up.Lets begin by considering what positivism is. In its broadest sense, positivism is a rejection of metaphysics (I leave it you to look up that term if youre not familiar with it). It is a position that holds that the goal of knowledge is simply to describe the phenomena that we experience. The purpose of science is simply to stick to what we can observe and measure. Knowledge of anything beyond that, a positivist would hold, is impossible. When I think of positivism (and the related philosophy of logical positivism) I think of the behaviorists in mid-20th Century psychology. These were the mythical rat runners who believed that psychology could only study what could be directly observed and measured. Since we cant directly observe emotions, thoughts, etc. (although we may be able to measure some of the physical and physiological accompaniments), these were not legitimate topics for a scientific psychology. B.F. Skinner argued that psychology needed to concentrate only on the positive and negative reinforcers of behavior in order to predict how people will behave everything else in between (like what the person is thinking) is irrelevant because it cant be measured.In a positivist view of the world, science was seen as the way to get at truth, to understand the world well enough so that we might predict and control it. The world and the universe were deterministic they operated by laws of cause and effect that we could discern if we applied the unique approach of the scientific method. Science was largely a mechanistic or mechanical affair. We use deductive reasoning to postulate theories that we ca n test. Based on the results of our studies, we may learn that our theory doesnt fit the facts well and so we need to revise our theory to better predict reality. The positivist believed in empiricism the idea that observation and measurement was the core of the scientific endeavor. The key approach of the scientific method is the experiment, the attempt to discern natural laws through direct manipulation and observation.OK, I am exaggerating the positivist position (although you may be amazed at how close to this some of them actually came) in order to make a point. Things have changed in our views of science since the middle part of the 20th century. Probably the most important has been our shift away from positivism into what we term post-positivism. By post-positivism, I dont mean a slight adjustment to or revision of the positivist position post-positivism is a wholesale rejection of the central tenets of positivism. A post-positivist might begin by recognizing that the way s cientists think and work and the way we think in our everyday life are not distinctly different. Scientific reasoning and common sense reasoning are essentially the same process. There is no difference in kind between the two, only a difference in degree. Scientists, for example, follow specific procedures to assure that observations are verifiable, accurate and consistent. In everyday reasoning, we dont always proceed so carefully (although, if you think about it, when the stakes are high, even in everyday life we become much more cautious about measurement. Think of the way most responsible parents keep continuous watch over their infants, noticing details that non-parents would never detect).One of the most common forms of post-positivism is a philosophy called critical realism. A critical realist believes that there is a reality independent of our thinking about it that science can study. (This is in contrast with a subjectivist who would hold that there is no external reality were each making this all up). Positivists were also realists. The difference is that the post-positivist critical realist recognizes that all observation is fallible and has error and that all theory is revisable. In other words, the critical realist is critical of our ability to know reality with certainty. Where the positivist believed that the goal of science was to uncover the truth, the post-positivist critical realist believes that the goal of science is to hold steadfastly to the goal of getting it right about reality, even though we can never achieve that goal Because all measurement is fallible, the post-positivist emphasizes the importance of multiple measures and observations, each of which may possess different types of error, and the need to use triangulation across these multiple errorful sources to try to get a better bead on whats happening in reality. The post-positivist also believes that all observations are theory-laden and that scientists (and everyone else, fo r that matter) are inherently biased by their cultural experiences, world views, and so on. This is not cause to give up in despair, however. Just because I have my world view based on my experiences and you have yours doesnt mean that we cant hope to translate from each others experiences or understand each other. That is, post-positivism rejects the relativist idea of the incommensurability of