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Evaluation of the difference between Positivist and Interpretivist methodologies
Member rating: No Rating | Words: 1200 | Submitted: Wed Nov 21 2007
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In what ways and to what extent are the positivist and interpretive approaches to sociological research different? The sociological ideals followed by the positivist are the antithesis of those chosen by the interpretivist. The positivist expects to always find that, as Condorcet described, "everywhere one must reach the same results with the same methods for the truth is one for everybody, because nature is everywhere subject to the same laws" [1]. Whereas for the interpretivist "reality really is in the eye of the beholder".[2] The Positivist standpoint is really that of the early sociologists who tried to attach social laws to humanity in the same way Newton's experiments gave us the theory of gravity. As Auguste Comte claimed in 1842, "instead of systems of belief in which the destiny of an individual was in the unintelligible hands of God or rulers, scientific knowledge would make it possible for an individual to understand...
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