The specificity of the sociological observation

The article reveals a logical vulnerability of definitions of sociological observation in domestic literature, which actually also suitable for observation in physics, astronomy, biology, and focuses on the characteristics of observa-tion as a method of knowledge in sociology. Sociological observation in a broad sense, in the form of fixing the posi-tion of affairs in society by means of a questionnaire, interview, content analysis or any other method, and sociologi-cal observation itself, is perceived when the behavior of people in physical space and time to define their relation-ships in the social space distinguished are. Probabilistic nature of this method of study is noted. Analysing the specific situation of sociological observation, it is shown that the observation is capable with any degree of accuracy to replace polling methods, in particular, such as sociometric survey or questionnaire. It is indicated that the problem of the influence of the act of observation on the observed situation is actually lift- ed by the transformation of this act in familiar and routine procedure to observe. Much more important is the inevi-table problem of selective observation, which is dictated by the fact that the theory that guides the researcher deter-mines what he sees as reality. It is shown that the solution to this problem is seen in the way of synthesis the paint-ings of reality that are defined by different theoretical settings, up to mutually exclusive, and relying on common sense.