George Kuhn's Theory Of The Integrated Sociological Paradigm

In an attempt to understand how science evolves, Thomas Kuhn proposed the idea that in a particular scientific discipline and in a specific time period there exist a leading paradigm. This was in response to the commonly held belief that science evolves in a cumulative manner. In addition, George Ritzer uses Khun’s theory as background in order to make the social world easier to understand. He believed that Sociology is a multiple paradigm science, which embodied three major paradigms. Namely, the social facts, the social definition and the social behaviour paradigms, but he found that these paradigms were too one sided in their approach. Thus, he proposes a way to unify the major paradigms, and try to make it easier to understand. He also believed that the social world operates on four interrelated levels of reality. As a result, he uses these levels as way to unify the three paradigms under one paradigm, which he called the Integrated Sociological Paradigm. For that reason, I will look at his breakdown of the four levels of reality and discuss how he uses it to unify the three paradigms. Moreover, I show what paradigms are, how they came about and why they are used in science. This will give a better understanding as to why paradigms need to be unified, particularly in sociology.

The three major paradigms of social reality.

How they came about and why

Kuhn developed the theory of a paradigmatic science because he did not agree with the premise of inductive reasoning and