Pure Science and Sociology.

This paper has suggested the need to reexamine die value-stance of sociology. In adopting the ideology of science, it eschewed experimentation as a basic methodological device. Yet, this paper has also suggested that there is a tendency to confuse the extra-scientific values and norms of science with the scientific method. Thus, the greatest danger to scientific objectivity may not lie so much in sociological experimentation as the inability of the sociologist to separate scientific from value decision-making. Value decisions, undiscriminated and rooted in the ideology of pure science, can be as inhibiting to the effective use of the scientific method in expanding the boundaries of knowledge as any other institutionalized norms. The paper also sugegsted that experimentation had much to oiler sociology. But in failing to imitate the physical sciences in this regard, it may have sacrificed a tool important to its development. A possible means of reconciling ideological and methodological differences over this issue might lie in the development of systematic methods by which to examine the values as well as the methodology which underlie any research effort. The investigator could review the values implicit in his research in much the same way as he now reviews the steps involved in his application of the scientific method. Much could be learned. Human intellectual experience suggests that we proceed more efficiently when the grounds for our behavior are set down, cares fully reviewed, and criticized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]