Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Mars on September 20, 2008, 12:46:43 pm
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I'm sitting here, with the take home exam in front of me. I'm looking up definitions and saying "what?" to myself, over and over. I actually studied, but it didn't make any sense then either. When I asked the professor, he rephrased the definitions I didn't get in ways I still didn't understand.
Take "Sociological Imagination" for example:"Sociological imagination is a sociological term, coined by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959, describing the process of linking individual experience with social institutions and one's place in history." (Wikipedia)
And it takes me twenty minutes to get it to make sense in my head, so I can regurgitate the definition. If it was just one it would be one thing, but I'm having a lot of trouble relating the more theoretical (and most things in sociology are) terms to Real LifeTM.
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I thought this thread was about Scientology. :(
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Take "Sociological Imagination" for example:"Sociological imagination is a sociological term, coined by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959, describing the process of linking individual experience with social institutions and one's place in history."
I think that's some of the most grade-A academic bull**** I've ever come across. Now I remember why I have a built-in disdain for the social "sciences." My sincere condolences to you.
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"Sociological imagination is a sociological term, coined by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959, describing the process of linking individual experience with social institutions and one's place in history." (Wikipedia)
Theres's some ambiguity to this definition (which makes it a rather bad definition IMHO).
Is it
"process of linking individual experience with social institutions and one's place in history"
or perhaps
"process of linking individual experience with social institutions and one's place in history."
To be honest though, neither make much sense to me, but perhaps the latter is somewhat more plausible. The former doesn't specify what kind of experience is linked with social institutions and one's place in history; the latter specifies that it's experiences with social institutions that are linked to one's place in history.
It's a bad definition no matter how you try and dissect it, but reading the wiki article about it, I understand it like this:
People have their image of the society defined by their experiences regarding living in said society.
Experience. A person lives in some slum in a country. Another person lives comfortably in their own home, with every basic need satisfied. These individuals will have vastly different image of the society, even though in the broad sense they live in the exact same society... which means that our image of society is at least partially based on what we see it to be.
I can't really think of any other meaning for this term. Furthermore I question the sensibility of using such a term altogether, because all it does is confuse me by mentioning imagination, when it isn't imagination, it's just subjectivity of opinions depending on different experiences. :rolleyes:
Defining whether or not sociology sucks is questionable since it isn't an exact science. On my personal relevance scale I would grade it about on the same level as psychohistory or something like that. Whether it sucks or not is hard to say. If it's considered as psychology applied to masses, but unlike normally in things involving probability and chance, masses are even harder to predict than individuals. What I mean is that if you throw a dice once you'll get a number from one to six, but if you throw two die, the likelyhood of getting a seven is higher than any other combined outcome (one out of six throws). But with human masses you can't apply psychology in this fashion. It's much more unprecise. And the fine gentlemen with their very fine hats can argue and define human mob behaviour all they want, it'll never make sense.
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Furthermore I question the sensibility of using such a term altogether, because all it does is confuse me by mentioning imagination, when it isn't imagination, it's just subjectivity of opinions depending on different experiences. :rolleyes:
Well, I think it underlines the active (conscious) role of the person in determining his/her position, albeit subjective.
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I for one, enjoyed the sociology class I took. :D
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I for one, enjoyed the sociology class I took. :D
I did too. The best way to explain terms like that is to use examples, and my professor was an extremely adept speaker.
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I have a degree in that stuff =)
Superficially (and in the introductory levels) sociology is more-or-less common sense. When you start to dig deeper into Soc theory it does get really interesting. Soc exposed me to the writings of Marx and Foucault, which in themselves are worth taking Soc just to understand them.
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(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png)
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I'm sitting here, with the take home exam in front of me. I'm looking up definitions and saying "what?" to myself, over and over. I actually studied, but it didn't make any sense then either. When I asked the professor, he rephrased the definitions I didn't get in ways I still didn't understand.
Take "Sociological Imagination" for example:"Sociological imagination is a sociological term, coined by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959, describing the process of linking individual experience with social institutions and one's place in history." (Wikipedia)
And it takes me twenty minutes to get it to make sense in my head, so I can regurgitate the definition. If it was just one it would be one thing, but I'm having a lot of trouble relating the more theoretical (and most things in sociology are) terms to Real LifeTM.
Communications is sort of like Sociology where you get stuff like this popping up. The problem is that what you have there is the bare bones definition. It doesn't really mean anything unless you've read and internalized (to some degree) the theory/writings behind it. I think I see where its going with the definition but I haven't a clue how to apply it because I've never read about it.
Its just surface level learning you have there. You may need to dig deeper to find understanding....at least thats how it works for me. Some folks can just memorize the definition whether it makes sense or not.
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(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png)
On a related note...
(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/impostor.png)
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Uh-huh, that's cute. Ever written a paper on deconstruction? I've never worked so hard for an A in my life.
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You should have just used this (http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/).
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Hey hey keep the Mathematicians out of the academic dick-waving competition!
We could continue debating if there is such a line of pure fields, or if it is actually a curve that loops back to sociologists. Personally I think so, since I don't see that much difference between Mathematicians and Sociologists.
In case anyone wondered, yeah, I hate University level Mathematicians for never teaching me anything remotely useful.
Mika
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Now that I think of it, what are the actual meanings and derivations of the word "image"?
I know two, the first one as in "use your imagination" to figure out something new, and the second one as using lens to enlarge an image. Anyways the second one has something to with Optics in any case.
So I thought that should the term posted in the first post be understood more like a real picture, rather than something existing in someone's mind?
Mika
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I got out of Sociology. It was hard too. Evryone ragging me about what a bad decision I was making. I guess that's "Seinoritis" for you. :P But seirously I really didn't want to take that class.
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It's a freshmen class at my community college
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wow wow wow, slow down!, please explain it to the rest of us less evolved humans to what you are trying to say? :p
from what i get, sociological structures are all built on the same premise, respect. its irrelevant what point of time you come across because it doesn't mean anything. all things are built/born and decommissioned/die. like the roman empire, things do not last. one day this sociological studies will be old news so the simple reasons as i see it.
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wow wow wow, slow down!, please explain it to the rest of us less evolved humans to what you are trying to say? :p
from what i get, sociological structures are all built on the same premise, respect. its irrelevant what point of time you come across because it doesn't mean anything. all things are built/born and decommissioned/die. like the roman empire, things do not last. one day this sociological studies will be old news so the simple reasons as i see it.
How do you figure? Sociology is the study of society. Its been around for quite some time and will undoubtedly be around until there isn't a society to evaluate. Sure certain theories will be valued differently and new methods of systematically studying society will evolve but its not going to disappear. Its like my field, Communications, which being modern as a study, is basically an offshoot of studying society except that its focused on studying communication which is the centerpiece of human society.
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I thought this thread was about Scientology. :(
I KEEP SEEING THIS!!!
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I thought this thread was about Scientology. :(
I KEEP SEEING THIS!!!
/me also made that mistake... several times.
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Sadly enough, I keep on seeing Scientology too
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I keep seeing Scientology too.
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I'm almost done with that section of the exam, it really wasn't too bad. I think if I had a place where I could go and type without having to listen to my lil bros play Lego Starwars II full blast in the background this sort of thing might be easier.
I keep seeing Scientology too.
But see, I started the topic, so I should know better.
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You have a point.
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i keep seeing sociology :P.
communication is just come about recently because the organisms living on this planet have mutated or evolved to a point where communication is necessary, and give it another few million years and communication will probably not be necessary to figure what anyone is saying off-shoot or not because we might have evolved past such a stage.
as for social structures in human hierarchy it goes:
Father - - Mother - Direct Control __________ <<
| \
_____/ \_____ |
/ Progeny \ |
\_____________/ - Under control until Control is Usurped.
The viscous Circle is complete. there is nothing more to understand...
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That's too bad...
because whatever you're trying to say, I sure don't understand it.
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communication is just come about recently because the organisms living on this planet have mutated or evolved to a point where communication is necessary, and give it another few million years and communication will probably not be necessary to figure what anyone is saying off-shoot or not because we might have evolved past such a stage.
give it another few million years and communication will probably not be necessary to figure what anyone is saying off-shoot or not because we might have evolved past such a stage.
communication will probably not be necessary to figure what anyone is saying
wat
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communication is just come about recently because the organisms living on this planet have mutated or evolved to a point where communication is necessary, and give it another few million years and communication will probably not be necessary to figure what anyone is saying off-shoot or not because we might have evolved past such a stage.
I understand what you're saying but you're wrong. Communication has existed as long as multicellular animals have, possibly even before that. Insects communicate with pheromones. Canines mark their territory with scent marks and use extensive body language and vocal communication. Pretty much all animals communicate with each other in some way or another.
The only reason why communication would ever disappear would be if there were nothing to communicate to, so unless you're suggesting a single conscious entity (not like hivemind mentality but truly just one being) for humanity, with no individuality... no, that won't really happen. And even then there would still need to be information exchange from individual biological brains to others, in other words communication; but if they formed one conscious entity, then it would be more like a networked cluster computation centre. I guess it depends on the definition of communication as well.
Anyway, I don't think loss of individuality will be very probable for humanity as a whole.
as for social structures in human hierarchy it goes:
Father - - Mother - Direct Control __________ <<
| \
_____/ \_____ |
/ Progeny \ |
\_____________/ - Under control until Control is Usurped.
The viscous Circle is complete. there is nothing more to understand...
Vicious is the adjective you're looking for. Viscosity is something else altogether...
And... err... the ASCII flowchart makes no sense. :nervous:
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i keep seeing sociology :P.
communication is just come about recently because the organisms living on this planet have mutated or evolved to a point where communication is necessary, and give it another few million years and communication will probably not be necessary to figure what anyone is saying off-shoot or not because we might have evolved past such a stage.
as for social structures in human hierarchy it goes:
Father - - Mother - Direct Control __________ <<
| \
_____/ \_____ |
/ Progeny \ |
\_____________/ - Under control until Control is Usurped.
The viscous Circle is complete. there is nothing more to understand...
Communication has just recently come about as a field of study. Communication in its most basic form has existed since the very beginning of organisms. Communication can happen in all sorts of various ways. There will never be a time where communication does not exist. How can you suggest that we'll move beyond such a thing? Its the centerpiece of everything....cells have to talk to each other, people talk to each other, so on and so forth.
This is like you saying a similar thing about sociology. We won't have a time where the study of sociology is not important.
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Hey hey keep the Mathematicians out of the academic dick-waving competition!
We could continue debating if there is such a line of pure fields, or if it is actually a curve that loops back to sociologists. Personally I think so, since I don't see that much difference between Mathematicians and Sociologists.
In case anyone wondered, yeah, I hate University level Mathematicians for never teaching me anything remotely useful.
Mika
math is no fun until applied math shows up *sighs* -almost there