 Dear students, in this module, we are going to talk about a very important aspect in the field of sociology. We continuously claim that sociology is a science. So let us discuss what actually science is. It's a systematic and empirical approach to understanding the natural and social word around us. We can call it an empirical approach, we can call it a five-senses-based approach, but this abstract theoretical approach, the matter-physical approach, is an empirical approach that can be verified as a fact, and we can test its stock of knowledge. So based on the observations, experimentation, and data analysis, these three different methodological approaches we can reach to reality through which we can reach to reality. Amid at developing testable and falsifiable explanations of natural and social phenomena. Falsifiable is an opposition to verificationism. This means that science or scientific activity continuously adopts the skepticism approach and sees how we can create such facts through which the existing hypothesis, the existing stock of knowledge, can be rejected. Its value, its significance as a fact will only be established when we cannot get such facts that we can reject that hypothesis or that proposition. So this is falsificationism, so basically science claims that its approach is based on falsification principle. So it involves the use of logic, reason, critical thinking to evaluate certain evidence and its relevant theories. So theory or evidence is a continuous two-way process in which we use evidence to build theories and verify different theories to use evidence and similarly we deduce different theoretical approaches based on new evidences. So it incorporates the peer review and replication to ensure the reliability and validity of findings. When we talk about other approaches towards the knowledge, we see that there is no principle of verificationism in them. We cannot validate it. Science or scientific knowledge is based on verificationism and on falsification and its reliability or credibility is based on the fact that we can validate its findings again and again. For example, for example, we take different natural sciences, physics, chemistry, biology, social sciences, sociology, psychology, political science or economics, so these scientific approaches adopt social reality or knowledge essence or truth credibility. Examples from sociology can include studying the impact of social media on mental health. There is a hypothesis, we can develop such innumerable hypotheses and propositions which can be empirically tested. For example, what can be the impact of social media on our mental health? We can verify it empirically through a study or survey in our society. In this picture, you are seeing a small demonstration of how science brings different ideas. Through different ideas, we get help in producing scientific activity. Just think about the data, the difference here we can say think about the data. It's a meta-cognitive scale. It's an open learning initiative which guides us towards the knowledge and then we also compare and contrast between different aspects of knowledge. So on a nutshell, we can say that scientific activity or scientific knowledge is considered more credible as compared to other sources of knowledge in the modern world.