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In the early nineteenth century, Auguste Comte described sociology as an emerging science that should adopt the successful methods of the natural sciences such as physics and chemistry. Durkheim, Marx and other founders also saw sociology as a scientific subject, but today many sociologists are not so sure. Can social life be studied in a scientific way? Should it be? Are Laud Humphreys’ observations on the tearooms scientific, and what is ‘science’ anyway? Perhaps surprisingly there is no simple or agreed answer to that last question. The best way to understand why is to take a whistle-stop tour of key arguments from studies in the philosophy and history of science, which should help us to understand the academic status of sociology.

Imprisonment of offenders is common across many societies, but to understand how similar or different these are requires comparative empirical studies of penal regimes.

Table 2.1 The sociologist’s line of questioning

Factual question	What happened?	It is reported that some men in China use dating apps to find male sexual partners.
Comparative question	Did this happen everywhere?	Is this a widespread phenomenon, or is it occurring only in China? Is the behaviour restricted to self-identifying gay men?
Developmental question	Has this happened over time?	What methods have men used in the past to find male sexual partners? Are they essentially similar to or different from the use of dating apps?
Theoretical question	What underlies this phenomenon?	Why are men now using apps rather than older methods? What factors should we look at that might explain this changing behaviour?

In chapter 1, ‘What is Sociology?’, Comte argued that the positive stage of human knowledge produces reliable, valid knowledge that would, ultimately, enable progressive interventions into nature and society. Science is superior to all previous routes to knowledge and a prerequisite for development in the modern world. For Comte, science is an essentially unitary endeavour. That is, all scientific subjects use a similar method, which means that the social and natural sciences are not fundamentally different. Science begins with observation and the collection of data, then proceeds to look for patterns within the observed facts, before moving on to develop general theories which provide explanations of the evidence. This ‘ground-up’ process of research is known as induction. However, Comte’s argument is rooted in a rather idealized picture of science that is not based on the actual practice of scientists. From the early twentieth century, this inductive description of science began to be overturned.