SOCIOLOGY AS A SCIENCE - THE PROBLEM REVISITED: 'WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT SCIENCE'

Nowadays, science is generally regarded as domain treated with respect, approval and trust. Scientists and researchers try to confirm their results by showing the criteria considered as 'scientia'.This article aims to present briefly how sociologists manage with their discipline which obviously is somewhere in-between science and humanities. The authoress quotes the famous statement of Paul Feyerabend, who discussed the methodological issues with Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and Imre Lakatos. She confines herself to the minimum detail of metatheory in order to present one theoretical paradigm, focusing on presentation of Jeffrey Alexander's work, who combines different ideas about sociology. Her aim is to revive the idea of 'classical' positivism to check, in what way it still exists in sociological ideas. The changes in case of theory and empirical studies are taken into account. She presents sociological debates and lack of consensus as far as 'sociology as science' is concerned. The idealistic view, that these debates sometimes become conclusive, is presented. The authoress takes postpositivistic ideology of Alexander, since it occurs to have been the only way to link two kinds of doing science. It shows the consensus between the so called humanistic tradition and 'neopositivistic view' in sociology.