What are some of the reasons why ‘Objectively’ is more complicated in the social sciences particulary disciplines like sociology ?
(a) Meaning of Objectivity : In everyday language, the word objective means unbiased, natural or based on facts alone.
(b) Essential condition for objectvity : In order to be objective about something, we must ignore our own feelings or attitudes about that thing. On the other hand the word subjective means something that is based on individual values and preferences. Objectivity demands that everybody should ignore individual his or her personal values and preference if he/she desires to be objective. Without being objective it is not possibel to produce unbiased knowledge. It is a must to be objective if anybody wants to produce knowledge totally based on facts.
II. Complication of objectivity in discipline like Sociology : Science is expected to be knowledge based solely on facts. But this much harder to do in the social sciences than in the natural sciences.
Example : When a geologist studies rocks or a botanist studies plants, they must be careful not to let their personal biases or preferences affect their work. They must report the facts as they are, they must (for example) let their liking for a particular scientific theory or theorist influence the results of their research. However, the geologist and the botanist are not themselves part of the world they study, i.e. the natural world of rocks or of plants. By contrast, social scientists study the world in which they themselves live-the social world of human relations. This creates special problems for objectivity in a social science like sociology.
III. Many versions of the truth and sociologists : Anothor problem with objectivity in sociology is the fact that, generally, there are many versions of the ‘truth’ in the social world. Things look different from different vantage points, and so the social world typically involves many competing versions or interpretations or reality.
Example : A shop-keeper and a customer may have very different ideas about what is a ‘good’ price, a young person and an aged person may have very differnt motives of ‘good food’, and so on. There is no simple way of judging which particular interpretation is true or more correct, and often it is unhelpful to think in these terms. Infact, sociology tries not to judge in this way because it is really interested in what people think, and why they think what they think.
IV. Multiple view of point : A further complication arises from the presence of multiple point of view in the social sciences themselves. Like its sister social science, sociology too is a multi-paradigmatic science.This means that competing and mutually incompatible schools of thought co exist within the discipline.
Conclusion : All this makes ojectivity a very difficult and complicated thing in sociology. In fact, the old notion of objectivity in widely considered to be an outdated perspective. Social scientists no longer believe that the traditional notion of an ‘objective, disinterested’ social science is attainable, infact such an ideal can actually be misleading. This does not mean that there is no useful knowledge to be obtained via sociology, or that objectivity is a useless concept. It means that objectivity has to be thought of as the goal of a continuous, on going process rather than as already achieved end result.