Reading Questions Define The Term Nomothetic

Reading Response
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READING RESPONSE
* Define the term “nomothetic” (as used by Wallerstein)
Nomothetic is an approach that seeks to come up with overall statements that account for a bigger social pattern which form the context of experience, the behavior of people, and single events. It is an approach to understanding social life. Wallerstein suggests that the world system theory is an approach to the history of the world and social change which indicates that there is a world economic system where nation’s benefits and others get exploited. Nomothetic sciences emphasizes on what differentiates these sciences from the historical discipline. Nomothetic was closer to natural sciences.
* Define the term “idiographic” (as used by Wallerstein)
Idiographic focuses on individual events and cases unlike nomothetic. Idiographic is an approach that derives meaning from certain research and it does not infer generalization. Idiographic can be defined as the study or discovery of particular scientific facts and processes, as discrete from general laws.
C) What gave natural sciences especially physics legitimacy?
It is indeed true that in the 1700s it was all about natural sciences like psychics. Natural sciences gained their legitimacy from the study of celestial mechanics. Physics gained its legitimacy through idiographic. People wanted to study and discover particular scientific facts and processes, as discrete from universal laws. At first, people attempted to develop the priority and legitimacy of the scientific search for the laws of nature which made a little distinction between philosophy and science. Experimental and empirical work became the vision of science while ph...