Ideas of postpositivism in sociology: the reception by J. Berger, M. Zelditch Jr. and D.G. Wagner

Abstract

J. Berger, M. Zelditch and D.G. Wagner carried out a long-term reception of the ideas of postpositivism in sociology. In the 1970s, these researchers began to apply the concepts of scientific paradigm and research program to studies of the structure and dynamics of theoretical knowledge. They identified conceptual convergences and possibilities of combining various alternative post-positivist approaches in sociological studies. From the mid-1980s, they analyzed the metatheoretical implications of postpositivist ideas in sociology, defined the metatheoretical functionality of paradigms and research programs. In the early 1990s, the basic principles of postpositivism in sociology were systematized (the presence of non-empirical elements in empirical sociological knowledge, all facts are theory-laden, all theories are metatheory-laden). In the 2010s, the functional analogy of paradigms and research programs in sociology was discovered. Theoretical research programs at their local subject level function as universally accepted scientific paradigms and contribute to the theoretical growth of sociology.