CRIM 210 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Y Chromosome, Twin, Somatotype And Constitutional Psychology
30 Sep 2017
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Document Summary
Taken-for-granted understandings differ from scientific beliefs accepted as true b/c beliefs have been subjected to empirical testing. Research - systematic process of information gathering, analysis, reporting of findings. Postmodernists - those rejecting/challenging all that has been considered to be modern. Theory - integrated set of propositions offering explanations for some phenomenon. Comte, founding father of sociology, was among first to argue society could best be understood by applying scientific method to study. Practitioners of new scientific method shared w/ mathematicians & physical scientists the belief that science would allow them to discover laws of society & behaviour. In other words, assumed that human behaviour determined by natural laws & believed that task, as scientists, was to discover laws. Positivist - 18-th century philosophical, theoretical, methodological perspective positing that only that which is observable through scientific method is knowable. Positivist criminologists, past & present, seek to discover causes of crime by applying scientific method.
