History of sociology & auguste comte

1. History of sociology & augustecomte HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY: Age of Enlightenment French Revolution Industrial Revolution AUGUSTE COMTE

2. HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY • People choose to study fields or disciplines that are most important to them or that affect them. • In the past (primitive societies), survival was most important, so people would study crops, climate, migration patterns. • By the beginning of the 19th Century, humanity had succeeded in making the natural world seem more predictable. • But then, Westerners’ social world became frighteningly chaotic.

3. HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY • People were accustomed to wars with foreigners, but in the 18th Century nearly every European nation faced internal war in the form of revolution. • By the time the 19th Century rolled around, the political, economic and religious foundations of society appeared to be on the verge of crumbling. • Things were in chaos & people were frightened.

4. HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY There are three main eras in history that led to the creation of Sociology as we know it: • AGE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT (1700S) • FRENCH REVOLUTION (1789-1799) • INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (1750s onwards)

5. AGE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

6. Since the dawn of time, we have been interested in the source of our behaviour. • However, these ideas were traditionally expressed in religious terms, or drew on well-known myths, superstitions or traditional beliefs. • Prior to the times of Copernicus (1543), Galileo (1632) & Newton (1687), the Catholic Church determined the laws and principles of nature and the world at large.

7. Newton began to formulate theories on scientific principles. • Newton’s theories were so simple, profound and compelling, with the evidence he provided, that the Roman Catholics had no choice but to accept his ideas. • During the next century, religious leaders retreated from their position that their authority was the last word on the natural world but they still maintained that it was God that determined man’s “estate” or position in society and that was condition in which he or she would die.

8. But Newton’s ideas made people question the Church. • Hence began the Age of the Enlightenment (Age or Reason). • This was a period where there was a drastic change in Western philosophy, science, intellect and culture. • At this time, individuals began to use science and rationality to understand the world. • The Enlightenment, therefore, became a shift in the thinking process at the time. • The philosophers encouraged the masses to think logically (or shed light/become enlightened) about any phenomena that occurred in the society.

9. The Enlightenment was a period of profound optimism, a sense that with science and reason (and the consequent shedding of old superstitions) human beings and human society would improve. • They also promoted ideas of power, rights and equality. • Thus this trend of thought influenced Sociologists (like Comte, Durkheim and Parsons) who believed that Sociology could help solve mankind’s problems.

10. These individuals were anti-clerical and were particularly opposed against the traditional Catholicism. • They weren’t atheists; rather they believed in Deism where God exists but He leaves it up to mankind to make their own path in life. • Famous Enlightenment thinkers: Locke, Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Newton, Voltaire, and others.

11. FRENCH REVOLUTION

12. The Enlightenment encouraged criticism of the corruption of the monarchy (King Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette), and the aristocracy. • The French revolution was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France from 1789 to 1799. • It marked the triumph of secular ideas and values, such as liberty and equality, over the traditional social order. • It was the start of a powerful and dynamic force that has since spread across the globe and become a staple of the modern world.

13. These new ways of thinking, combined with a financial crisis (the country was literally bankrupt) and poor harvests left many ordinary French people (landless serfs) both angry and hungry. • In 1789, the French Revolution began. In its first stage, all the revolutionaries asked for was a constitution that would limit the power of the king. • Ultimately the idea of a constitution failed, and the revolution entered a more radical stage.

14. In 1792, Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, were beheaded along with thousands of other aristocrats believed to be loyal to the monarchy.

15. INDUSTRIALREVOLUTION

16. The other great revolution that led to the evolution of Sociology began in Britain in the late 1700s to the late 1800s. • It was an ongoing process in Britain which spread to other parts of the world. • It can be defined as the broad spectrum of social and economic transformations that surrounded the development of new technological innovations such as the steam power and machinery.

17. The rise of industry led to an enormous migration of peasants from the land to factories and industrial work, causing a rapid expansion of urban areas (urbanisation) and ushering in new forms of social relationships. • Consider the table below which showed the rate at which urbanisation took place:

18. This drastically changed the face of the social world and with it came many problems, including child labour, poor working and living conditions, poverty and increased diseases. • People (including children) worked for long hours, with little wages, insufficient food, lack of clean water, no health insurance and inadequate shelter.

19. Many of our personal habits also changed. • Most of the food we eat and the beverages we drink are now produced by industrial means.

20. How does all this affect Sociology? • The shattering of traditional ways of life challenged thinkers to develop a new understanding of both the social and national worlds. • Early pioneers of sociology were caught up in the events surrounding these revolutions and attempted to comprehend both their emergence and potential consequences. • It was no accident that the first sociologists emerged in Britain, France and Germany and these 19th Century thinkers sought to answer and offer solutions to the pressing problems of modern society.

21. AUGUSTE COMTE

22. AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857) • Auguste Comte is the founding father of Sociology. • His contribution to sociology can be divided into five categories. • They are namely:- • Classification and ordering of social sciences. • The coining of the term sociology. • The law of three stages. • The plan for social reconstruction. • Positivism.

23. No single individual can establish a whole field of study and there were many contributors to early sociological thinking. • However, French author, Auguste Comte, has been credited with coining the term “sociology.” Comte originally used the term “social physics” but some of his intellectual rivals at the time were also using the term and he wanted to distinguish his studies from theirs.

24. Comte’s thinking reflected the turbulent events of his age. • The French revolution had introduced significant changes into society and the growth of industrialization was altering the traditional lives of the French population. • Comte sought to create a science of society that could explain the laws of the social world just as natural science explained the functioning of the physical world.

25. Although Comte recognized that each scientific discipline has its own subject matter, he believed that they all share a common logic and scientific method aimed at revealing universal laws. • Just as the discovery of laws in the natural world allows us to control and predict events around us, uncovering the laws that govern human behaviour and society could help us shape our destiny and improve the welfare of humanity. • Therefore, for Comte, society conforms to laws in the same was the physical world does.

26. Comte argued that sociology should become a positive science or as he called it “positivism.” • He believed that sociology should apply the same rigorous scientific methods to study of society that physics, chemistry or biology use to study the physical world. • Positivism holds that science should be concerned only with observable entities that are known directly to experience (Giddens 2001, 8). • A positivist approach to sociology believes in the production of knowledge about society based on empirical evidence drawn from observation, comparison and experimentation. Scientific sociologists would be the experts on the earthly social world just as astronomers were experts on the heavens.

28. Comte’s law of the three stages claims that human efforts to understand the world have passed through three stages: • Theological – all phenomena and thoughts were guided by religious explanations and the belief that society was an expression of God’s will.

29. Metaphysical – which emerged around the time of the Renaissance, society came to be seen in natural, no longer supernatural terms.

30. Positive – was ushered in by the discoveries and achievements of Copernicus, Newton, Galileo and others who encouraged the application of scientific techniques to the social world.

31. Bearing these stages in mind, Comte advocated that sociology was the last science to develop but it was the most significant and complex of all the sciences.

32. Comte was aware of the state of the European society in which inequalities were being produced by industrialization and the threat posed to social cohesion (unity). • The long term solution: the production of a moral consensus that would help hold together society despite the new patterns of inequality. • Although Comte’s vision for the reconstruction of society was never realized, the contribution to systematizing and unifying the science of society was important to the later professionalization of sociology as an academic discipline.

33. In the latter part of his career, Comte drew up ambitious plans for the reconstruction of French society (in particular) and for human societies (in general) based on his sociological viewpoint. • He urged the establishment of a ‘new religion of humanity’ which would abandon faith and dogma in favour of scientific grounding. • Sociology would be at the heart of this new religion. Sociologists would investigate the world in a scientific manner and advise people about how life ought to be lived.

34. Comte called his religion the Universal Religion and referred to himself as the “Great Priest of Humanity”. • Comte even wrote to the Catholic Pope and suggested that he abdicate and let Comte take his place. • He did have many followers, including English philosopher John Stuart Mill & some formed a cult called Comtism. • Unfortunately he went too far and by the time Comte died in 1857, Sociology was the laughingstock in France.

37. BIBLIOGRAPHY • Giddens, Anthony. (2001). Sociology. 4th Edition. Cambridge, UK: Polity. • McIntyre, Lisa. (2006). The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology. 3rd Ed. New York, NY: Mc Graw Hill. (Chapter 1 pgs 5-10)