A central issue that arises concerning the scientific status of social studies is how far the existence of meaningful purposive ACTION and choice in social life removes any possible basis for explanation involving general scientific laws. As well as questions about the effectiveness of explanation based on scientific laws, questions also arise as to the appropriate ethical posture to be adopted towards the human social actor.
For some sociologists, the essential features of social action mean that sociology can only explain satisfactorily using MEANINGFUL UNDERSTANDING AND EXPLANATION and that scientific laws can play no part. However, whereas most sociologists recognize that important differences exist between the social and the physical sciences, they usually reject any suggestion that these differences mean that sociology must be seen as ‘nonscience’ because of this. The more usual position is to see the use of the term social science as justified by the existence in sociology of systematic RESEARCH METHODS, and both meaningful explanation and a variety of more general forms of sociological EXPLANATION. Thus, although there are important exceptions, sociologists will usually be found to regard sociology as scientific in one or more of the several senses in which the term science is used. Sociologists and philosophers who reject the term social science (e.g. Winch, 1958) usually do so on the basis of restrictive conceptions of science, when in reality conceptions of both physical and social science are both more open and more variegated than this. See also SCIENCE.