The History of Sociology

 During

the 18th century, religion dominated in providing explanations of social life, in the C18th scientific, political and social revolutions created the way for alternative thinking about society to emerge.  Watch clip on French revolution  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEZqarU nVpo  During this time an intellectual movement called the ENGLIGHTENMENT emerged which allowed people to challenge the word of God and replace the beliefs of the bible with other (more scientific, rational) ideas.

 Comte

was a child of the ENLIGHTENMENT and was opposed to the Church – regarding it as preventing the progress of man. He saw science as providing the basis of progress, and adopted this in the creation of a new subject – Sociology (the science of society)

 By

adopting scientific methods in his study of society, he coined the term Positivism, which was later adopted by functionalists.

Like Comte, Durkheim was known as one of the Founding fathers of Sociology.  He too came from France and was concerned to use the new science of society to analyse the issue of social order.  He thought that by using scientific methods like the comparison of statistics (hard factual data) he could help identify how traditional societies could cope with rapid social change leading to societies  He was known based on consensus, as the foundation of Functionalism, and stimulated a mass of research with anomie, suicide and religion


 Originally

a German, who lived in Paris, and then London  Marx challenged the view that societies were based on consensus but instead on divisions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat  Marx did little direct research. Instead he produced a flood of writings, whilst active in radical politics – although he did examine the findings of study on poverty.

 Born

in Prussia, he drew on the methods of science but emphasised the need to take more into account the subjective state of mind if the individual  Seen as...