My Experience in Academic Sociology


 * What is sociology?
 * what is science?


 * intro course
 * "theories"
 * methods course
 * knowledge
 * ethics
 * ethnography
 * SOCI 307 Indiginous Peoples of Canada

SOCI 371 Sociology of Families
"My first reaction was dismay when I was invited to contribute a chapter to this book on the future of the family—on what basis could I possibly make any sensible predictions?"

This is the textbook for the course on sociology of families. This quote seems to reveal a comfort with history, not sociology. And not explanatory history, but a kind of mere chronicling.

Predicting the future of technology is similarly difficult, but people do it and never bemoan "on what basis could I possibly make any sensible predictions". Predicting the weather is difficult, but we can predict it fairly accurately for a short term, and climate in the long term. Perhaps most sympathetically comparable might be trying to predict the future evolution of some species, but even there I think it would be pretty clear what basis you might use to make sensible predicitons (or multiple contingent ones).

I'm left wondering what the writer beleives the value of the book would be if this wasn't possible.

Another way of looking at it: instead of arguing here about whether it is possible or not, why didn't the writer already know? Or, why hasn't the scientific community already tried and theorized and tested documented what is possible and what is not? What are they doing?

But there are some ways I could be more fair, or interpret more charitably.