Sociology has definitely come a long way through the years. Our book raises many issues, one that I found interesting was the existence of illusions. "The problem of separating illusions from reality has been an especially difficult one for sociology," was a line in our book that I kept reading over. The only way I think I can best describe this is by saying what you see isn't always what you get. This coincides with the idea that we don't always need facts but we try and get the best possible answers to the questions we ask by coming up with theories and testing them. I believe at times it is hard to understand something that is so easy to understand because we aren't asking the right questions. I also think that what we believe reality to be isn't necessarily reality at all, which I think ties into the fact-value issues.
             Sociology is not like an experiment. Testing or theorizing is not like a science experiment that can be proven right or wrong. We are still learning from former sociologists and our ideas have stemmed off of theirs. Our theories are more of what we believe and through research and study they will or will not prevail.
             Our book also discusses briefly the ideas of social norms which is a very interesting topic I believe. Sometimes I do little "experiments" so to speak or I test out little theories I come up with, on other people. For instance, when I am at the grocery store I purposley stand very close to someone in my line. I do this just to see what reaction I can get from people. This is a violation of a social norm. People are used to having their own space and they feel violated when someone they don't know violates their space. It is hard for us to overcome these norms or values because they are such things that we always believed to be right and when slight changes like this occur, it causes implications.
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