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HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY &
AUGUSTE COMTE
HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY:
• Age of Enlightenment
• French Revolution
• Industrial Revolution
AUGUSTE COMTE
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HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY
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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.
HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY
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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.
HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY
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There are three main eras in history that led to the
creation of Sociology as we know it:
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AGE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT (1700S)
FRENCH REVOLUTION (1789-1799)
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (1750s onwards)
AGE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
FRENCH REVOLUTION
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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.
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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.
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In 1792, Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, were
beheaded along with thousands of other aristocrats
believed to be loyal to the monarchy.
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
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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.
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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:
CITY
LONDON
1800
900,000
1900
4.7 MILLION
PARIS
BERLIN
600,000
170,000
3.6 MILLION
2.7 MILLION
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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.
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Many of our personal habits also changed.
Most of the food we eat and the beverages we
drink are now produced by industrial means.
How does all this affect Sociology?
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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.
AUGUSTE COMTE
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AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Comte’s law of the three stages claims that human
efforts to understand the world have passed through
three stages:
1.
Theological – all phenomena and thoughts
were guided by religious explanations and
the belief that society was an expression of
God’s will.
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Metaphysical – which emerged around the
time of the Renaissance, society came to be
seen in natural, no longer supernatural
terms.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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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)