Toward Hard-Science Sociology

Since sociologyʹs inception as a discipline, basic tension between science andadvocacy has always existed. This paper reviewed the arguments for and againstscientific sociology with an eye to offering another way to reconcile valueneutraltheory and research with what recent sociology now calls sociologicalpractice or the application of sociological knowledge to real world settings.The paper has found that the only way to use theoretically informed knowledgeis to reject ideology and, .instead, become social engineers rather than advocatesfor some value-laden ideological position. It is not the goal of sociology todecide for other what is good or bad, rather, it is the goal of sociology tounderstand how the social world operates and, then, to make this knowledgeavailable for those engaged in building and rebuilding socioculturalconstructions.