SOCY 275 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Paradigm Shift, Determinism, Schizophrenia

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Social Sci, Edu and Soc Work - Sociology
• Course: SOCY 275
• Professor: Stephen Baron

Document Summary

Positivism (scientism) is based on the belief that the methods of natural science should be adapted to the study of human beings. Positivist theory assumes that knowledge can be discovered only through sensory experience, observation, and experiment. Positivism and the positive school of criminology it gave rise to represents what kuhn terms a paradigm shift. It constituted a new king of lens through which human nature and human behaviour could be understood. Herbert spencer coined the phrase survival of the fittest to describe the implications of evolutionary theory of human society. He argued that every field reflected a pattern of development from lower to higher, from less complex to more complex, from inferior to superior. He took from darwin"s the origin of species (1859) and the descent of man (1871) the notion that the development is human societies followed the principles of natural selection through competition.