In other words...

In other words, there are various ways of looking at the sociological enterprise and each is debatable and open to negotiation. For example, we can look at sociology based on existing perspectives such as functionalism, structuralism, structurationism, conflict theory, and so on and so forth. All these different fashions in categorizing sociological imagination lead us to the problem of paradigm within sociological field.

The word paradigm has been employed in science to describe distinct concepts. In despite of the historical usage of the term, ‘’paradigm’’ has come to refer very often now to a thought pattern in any scientific discipline or other epistemological context. Thomas Kuhn gave paradigm its contemporary meaning when he adopted the term to refer to the set of practices that define a scientific discipline at any particular period of time.

Nevertheless in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn defines a scientific paradigm as: ‘’universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for a community of researchers.’’ (1996. p 12) Kuhn himself did not consider the concept of paradigm as appropriate for the social sciences.

He explained in his preface to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that he concocted the concept of paradigm precisely in order to distinguish the social from the natural sciences (1996. p x ). While writing his book Kuhn observed that social scientists were never in agreement on theories, methodologies, background assumptions or concepts. He explains that he wrote this book precisely to demonstrate that there are no, nor can there be any, paradigms in the social sciences.

Ritzer, on the contrary, applies the Kuhnian idea of scientific paradigms to sociology and demonstrates that sociology is a science consisting of multiple paradigms.

(Ritzer, 1974) In other words, we have, on one hand, many philosophers of science who argue stridently against the possibility of social science as a scientific paradigm, while, on the other hand, we can easily witness many social scientists who applaud the existing theoretical/methodological/conceptual diversities as indications of multi-paradigmaticality within the context of social sciences, in general, and sociology, in particular.