In this discussion I am drawing from a monograph by Thomas Kuhn called "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."
Many introductory texts books in physics, chemistry, psychology or sociology display the development of knowledge in the respective fields as a linear progression. Each new advance in the discipline or field builds upon what has gone before, incrementing the knowledge already in place. Linearity in time can be seen if one were to plot the knowledge increases on one scale (the vertical axis) and time on the other scale (the horizontal axis). The resultant graph would show a straight line rising as we move from left to right (knowledge increasing as time passes). However, Thomas Kuhn proposes that science does not develop in this linear fashion, with each advance in theory building upon previous theoretical work.
However, most introductory text books often do exactly this, show the central idea of the discipline to have developed in a neat, orderly, linearly progressive fashion. The pattern is true of physics, chemistry, biology, sociology or anthropology among others.
What is more likely the case is something like the following:
Different schools of thought develop, each explaining some part of the reality we are interested in. (In physics this began with the heliocentric (sun-centered solar system) ideas of Copernicus. But note that before this theorists felt that the earth was considered to be the center of the universe (the stars, planets and sun revolved around the earth). In Sociology, the discipline developed from the philosophic schools represented by August Comte and Condorcet in France, Spencer in England. In the latter half of the 19th Century these schools are represented by Karl Marx (conflict), Max Weber ( a mixture of conflict and functional) and Emile Durkheim (functional).
Each paradigm competes to explain the body of events of interest, attempting to explain the oddities and anomalies that are pointed to by one or the other of the paradigms or schools of thought. Finally a single school or paradigm gains ascendancy, explaining more and more of the phenomena, (in the case of physics, this was initially the Copernican school). The paradigm becomes dominant in the field. This ascendancy of a single paradigm has not yet occurred in Sociology.
As we develop the dominant paradigm, we find that there are things it cannot explain. An example is found in the laws of mechanics that Newton set forth. As Newton and others examined the solar system with the ideas developed by Copernicus, it became clear that there were things that could not be explained, new laws and theories came into being, most notable is that of Einstein. His theories seem to simply extend the laws of Newton, but they are indeed qualitatively different. Newton believed in a fixed immutable universe, the laws of Einstein are anything but fixed and immutable. He has introduced the idea of relativity into the "laws of physics."
These ideas are the new paradigm.
The new paradigm replaces the old, and the process continues with testing at the edges of the theory. More anomalies appear, things that can not be explained. The old paradigm (theory) is replaced with the new.
Sociology is in the early, school of thought stage of development, thus there are many ways of examining and explaining social phenomenon. We are still in the process of establishing the central theoretical perspective of the discipline.
When we present the approaches to sociology as "micro" and "macro" and then within one or the other we speak of "choice" or "exchange" theory or "functional" or "conflict," we are in effect discussing schools or paradigms that elegantly explain some part of human social behavior. In my sociological lifetime, these paradigms have become more focused, and fewer in number. Choice and exchange theories focus upon much the same phenomena, but from slightly different ways of seeing them. Even though they are different these two paradigms now commonly explain much group behavior. I would guess that in another 15 to 20 years, they will be replaced with a single common paradigm and there will be a great deal of overlap with the structural, macro theories. Similarly there is some commonality between the conflict and functional views of social systems and structure. Ralph Dahrendorf in fact combines the two in his attempts to explain social structure.
It should be quite clear that we do not have a singular theory or "truth" of the universe. Absolute truth in that sense is the province of religion and religious belief. Science is very tentative and the "laws" are not really laws, but only relationships that have been shown to hold for the time being or under given circumstances. This idea will be developed further in the next topic.
Copyright © 1996, 1997,1998, 1999,2000 by Richard H. Anderson, the Department of Sociology and the University of Colorado at Denver.
This page last revised: November 15, 1999. Please contact Richard H. Anderson (randerso@carbon.cudenver.edu) if you experience any problems or have comments about these pages.