The Sociology of Sociology
The sociological imagination is a technology that could have developed only during a certain time. Arguably, the 19th century, when French Scholar Auguste Comte (1798-1857) invented "social physics" or "positivism"

Comte:

Positivism arose out of a need to make moral sense of the social order in a time of declining religious authority
A secular basis for morality did exist- we could determine right and wrong without reference to higher powers or other religious concepts
Human society had gone through three historical, epistemological stages

Theological stage: Society seemed to be the result of divine will. If you wanted to understand why kings ruled, why Europe used a feudal and guild system of labor, or why colonialism took root, the answer was that it was gods plan
Metaphysical stage: Enlightenment thinkers (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hobbes) saw humankind's behavior as governed by natural, biological instincts. To understand the nature of society- Why things were the way they were- we needed to strip away the layers of society to better comprehend how our basic drives and natural instincts governed and established the foundation for the surrounding world.
Scientific stage: We would develop a social physics of sorts in order to identify the scientific laws that govern human behavior

Comte's analogy was physics. He was convinced that we could understand how social institutions worked, how we relate to one another, and the overall structure of societies if we merely ascertained their "equations" or underlying logic.

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)

The first to translate Comte into English
Wrote Theory and Practice of Society in America (1837) - Describes our nation's physical and social aspects. This book addressed:

The way we educate children (affords parents too much control and doesn't ensure quality)
Relationship between the Federal and state governments

Wrote the first methods book in the area of sociology, How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838), in which she took on the institution of marriage, claiming that it was based on an assumption of the inferiority of women.

	Created by Caitlin Walker almost 10 years ago

Sociology 200 notes