Why is sociology so unscientific? Why is it so full of ideology, teleology, and untestable ideas, so lacking in general, simple, and original theory applicable across societies and history? Why is it less scientific than the classical sociology of a century ago? Why is it less theoretical? The answer lies in the social structure of sociology itself. One important variable is the social location of the sociological subject (see generally Black 2000a): For example, how close is the subject? The scienticity of an idea-its testability, generality, simplicity, validity, and originality-- increases with social distance from the subject until it becomes unobservable. In other words: Scienticity is a curvilinear function of social distance from the subject (Black 2000a). The most scientific sciences (such as physics and astronomy) have the most distant subjects-subjects relationally, culturally, and functionally remote and unlike the scientists who study them, while still close enough to be observable. The least scientific sciences (such as sociology and psychology) have the closest subjects-very near and similar to those who study them.
Sociology is so unscientific because so many of its subjects are located in the sociologist's own society and time. Rarely is the subject social life in general or even social life in a number of times and places. Typically the subject is domestic. The vast majority of American sociologists study only a narrow range of human behavior in modern America, for example, and their field might better be called Americology than sociology. Sociologists in other countries do likewise-Canadology, Mexicology, Francology, Japanology, or whatever. Many sociologists choose domestic subjects especially close to their own lives, such as members of their own race, ethnicity, or gender. Some get still closer to their subjects with intimate research methods such as participant observation and informal interviewing. But a close subject is scientific poison. It encourages value judgments, speculations about subjectivity, teleological interpretations, and attributions of free will (Black 1995: 856, n. 137; 2000a; see also Cooney 1988; Fuchs and Marshall 1998: 18-22). Classical sociologists were different: They almost always chose more distant subjects beyond their own society and time (such as Weber's work on the early religion of India, China, and Israel, and Durkheim's work on the traditional religion of Australian Aborigines). They further increased their distance by moving nomadically from one subject to another-religion, law, ethics, suicide, stratification, bureaucracy, authority, and so on. Classical sociologists were therefore more scientific than modem sociologists. They also were more theoretical.
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