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Summary Of Paradoxes Of Reduction 'By Jodi O' Brien

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Sociology professor Jodi O’Brien wrote her academic article, ‘Paradoxes of Reduction: Some observations on Sociology as Science” while teaching at Seattle University. At the start of her essay, she wonders the many ways as to how scientific thinking can or cannot answer social life questions. She has given the readers strengths and weaknesses of scientific procedures. There can be many ways to answer this enquiry, especially with the positions regarding the dispute O’Brien has given us in her essay, but here is the view I’m representing. Scientific thinking can be useful and meaningful to apply to questions regarding social life. Throughout my academic life, every question and concept that has derived from human interrelations has been answered by scientific research.
In my social research class, we have …show more content…

She mentioned an example where researchers were looking into demographics of IQ between blacks and whites. She said “demographic information is extremely useful in providing a big picture view of observable social patterns, but the same information can’t tell us anything about why these patterns occur” (25). She was trying to talk about how even though the IQ for blacks were lower, it did not mean they were biologically unintelligent compared to whites. It has been said by many that IQ is systematically more beneficial towards whites since it uses words they are accustom to. For O’Brien, “social life is complex, contradicting and ambiguous” (26), which is true. Humans are way too complex to understand. I found through the social research class that one way to try to see population’s point of view is through surveys. Each survey has to be considerately thought out, and take every survey taker into consideration in order them to be comfortable answering the questions. Questions have to be broad, not being exclusive to

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