SOC 103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Biological Determinism, Fallibilism, Empiricism

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 103
• Professor: Chris Powell

Document Summary

Naturalism: view that science can only explain the world in terms of natural properties and causes, excluding all supernatural factors. Empiricism: all knowledge comes from sensory experience. Fallibilism: nothing can be proved with certainty, all explanations are open to further testing and questioning. Phenomenology: study of how beings experience the world. Materialist phenomenology: says that our minds (which are physical systems) work actively to turn sensory inputs into subjective experiences. Therefore, our perceptions are not a mirror of the world as it really is, they are a translation of a complex open system into meaningful experience. All human knowledge is the product of a very recent (in cosmic terms) process of historical development. Include social development a collective social labour in which knowledge is not so much discovered as it is made or built ((cid:498)constructed(cid:499)) Knowledge can only be value- natural relative to an established frame of reference. All such frames of are themselves products of historical social development.