The research reveals the following comparisons and contrasts of August Comte and Herbert Spencer. Auguste Comte was born in the shadow of the French Revolution in 1798, as both technology and science was on the precipice of the Industrial Revolution. The world he was born into was experiencing great conflict, and people’s beliefs in prior institutions were being smashed. His focus was on a new social order and he focused on the study of this new society as opposed to the past belief in monarchism or religion. In fact, it is his work that coined the term “sociology”. August Comte believed that it was only through the methodology of observation, which could be measured and tested, that this new science of sociology would be validated. His belief is that the any study of sociology should be science-based. He was a critic of the Enlightenment, feeling its philosophy was destructive. In his book System of Positive Polity, he emphasized morality and humanity as cornerstones of political organizations in which society participated. His was a new world order and he attempted to use a scientific understanding to bring together history, psychology and economics. Above all, Comte was devoted to the idea of serving for the betterment of society. It's his belief that true knowledge is only found through science.
Herbert Spencer was born in 1820 at the height of the British industrial revolution. His book entitled Social Statics achieved great acclaim when it was published in 1851. He looked at evolution as a change from being unstable (homogeneous), to one that was more stable (heterogeneous). In fact, it was Spencer who initially coined the term “evolution” and “survival of the fittest” many years before Darwin. Herbert Spen...
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...on the other hand, saw these laws, once discovered, as tools for social engineering. Spencer desired the people to be as free from external forces regulating them as possible. His chapter titles in Social Statics communicates his beliefs “Rights”; The Right of Life and Personal Liberty, The Right of Property, The Right of Exchange, etc.
Comte, on the other hand, defines religious and morality as a complete state of harmony. In his positivist view he gives priority to worship, doctrine and moral law which all have the same objective; that being that humanity is loved and served. Morality, along with religion and the sacred were subjected to research in sociological disciplines that developed. Comte was influential in playing a key role in this transformation. His intention was to replace Christianity with a system of an intellectual, moral and religious life.
MAS Ultra School Edition. Wednesday, February 6th, 2014. Internet Stefoff, Rebecca. The. “Charles Darwin: And the Evolution Revolution.”
In Charles Darwin’s life he had helped make a significant advancement in the way mankind viewed the world. With his observations, he played a part in shifting the model of evolution into his peers’ minds. Darwin’s theory on natural selection impacted the areas of science and religion because it questioned and challenged the Bible; and anything that challenged the Bible in Darwin’s era was sure to create contention with the church. Members of the Church took offense to Darwin’s Origins of Species because it unswervingly contradicted the teachings of the book of Genesis in the Bible. (Zhao, 2009) Natural selection changed the way people thought. Where the Bible teaches that “all organisms have been in an unchanging state since the great flood, and that everything twas molded in God’s will.” (Zhao, 2009) Darwin’s geological journey to the Galapagos Islands is where he was first able to get the observations he needed to prove how various species change over t...
Bowler, Peter J. Evolution: The History of an Idea. London: University of California Press, 1989.
Michael Ruse, The Darwinian Revolution, pub. 1979 by The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
Emile Durkheim is largely credited as the man who made Sociology a science. As a boy, he was enraptured by the scientific approach to society, but at that time, there was no social science curriculum. Vowing to change this, Durkheim worked scrupulously to earn his “degree in philosophy in 1882”. (Johnson 34) Unable to change the French school system right away, Emile traveled to Germany to further his education. It was there that he published his initial findings and gained the knowledge necessary to influence the French education system. Emile Durkheim is a distinguished and well versed man who, through his work, established a platform for other sociologist to build on.
A theory which applied natural selection from Charles Darwin and Spencer’s sociological theories together. Herbert Spencer argued that certain individuals or social groups achieve advantages over others because of genetic superiority. This theory helped justify imperialism, racism, and laissez faire policies. This theory claimed that groups or individuals at the top of the social system belonged there because of their genetic superiority. It is because they have competed with other groups and have adapted well, is the sole reason why they belong in the top of the system. If something were to intervene, such as social and political factors, it would erode the foundation of the natural
Keith Henson a writer in evolutionary psychology once said that “Evolution acts slowly. Our psychological characteristics today are those that promoted reproductive success in the ancestral environment.” Evolution was first introduced by a naturalist by the name of Charles Darwin. Darwin had written an autobiography, at the age of 50, On the Origin of Species (1859) explaining how species evolve through time by natural selection; this theory became known as Darwinism. “Verlyn Klinkenborg, who writes editorials and vignettes on science and nature for the “New York Times”” (Muller 706) questions Darwin’s theory in one of his essays he wrote called Darwin at 200: The Ongoing Force of His Unconventional Idea. Both articles talk about the theory of Darwinism, but the authors’ use different writing techniques and were written in different time periods. Darwin himself writes to inform us on what the theory is, where as Klinkenborg goes on to explain why Darwinism is just a theory. Today, evolution is still a very controversial topic among many. It comes up in several topics that are discussed everyday such as in politics, religion and education.
In order to examine the evolutionary approaches of Leslie White and Julian Steward, we must therefore discuss about what the theory of neo-evolutionism is. Neo-evolutionism is a nomothetic theory which is based on using the general principles of evolution to explain how cultures change through time. This theory is a “reformation” of the late nineteenth century evolutionary theory of cultural evolution. (Erickson 1998:116) Cultural evolution explains that all cultures, progress through different evolutionary stages, which starts from a “simple”
The concept of Social Darwinism was a widely accepted theory in the nineteenth-century. Various intellectual, and political figures from each side of the political spectrum grasped the theory and interpreted it in various ways. In this paper, we will discuss three different nineteenth-century thinkers and their conception of Social Darwinism. The conservative, Heinrich von Treitschke, and liberal Herbert Spencer both gave arguments on the usefulness of competition between people on a global scale. The anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, refuted the belief of constant competition among members of the same species and emphasized mutual aid.
Sociology emerged from the desire of humans to understand our behaviour. However, throughout the years the way humans behave and believe has been passed through generations; and it was mainly explained in religious terms. The origins of sociology started with the social movements of the late XVIII century such as the French Revolution in 1789 and the subsequent Industrial Revolution in Europe. (Giddens, 1997)
In 1853, she was the first to translate August Comte's exposition, Cours de Philosophie Positive, from French to English. Harriet Martineau’s translation provided English scholars with a way to learn the works of Comte, who is best known as the father of sociology. Additionally, Martineau observed and studied social practices and their effects on society. These social practices included social class, religion, suicide, national character, domestic relations and how these elements affected social problems and individuals. Martineau was also passionate and active in the women's rights movement. She studied and focused on the power relationships and inequalities between men and women. In 1873 Harriet Martineau wrote in her book, Society in America, that it is important to address the conditions of inequality faced by
During the conflict surrounding the Dreyfus Affair, Durkheim used the new field of sociology to try to make sense of society and the world around him. The Dreyfus Affair was a government cover up framing a Jewish captain named Dreyfus. It turned into a political scandal splitting the people of France. As Collins & Makowsky (2010) stated, doing this allowed him to discover that “society is a ritual order, a collective conscience founded on the emotional rhythms of human interaction” (p. 92). The students at the University of Paris were not exempt from conflict and the professors gave lectures for the Dreyfusard cause. He was one of the most renowned of the professors at the University of Paris at the time. He went to Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory to investigate the social sciences though he accepted Comte’s sociology over psychology. He wanted to take sociology and do what Wundt had done with psychology. Durkheim wanted sociology to be a researchable science instead of a philosophy. He became a professor at the Ecole Normale and then became the first chair of the science of Sociology in the early 1900’s. Durkheim published several works on different topics in sociology including suicide, religion, and the ...
Auguste Comte (Newman 2010) pointed out the need to keep society unified as many traditions were diminishing. He created the term sociology. Auguste Comte suggests that sociology is the product of a three-stage development.
Emile Durkheim was born in the eastern French province of Lorraine on April 15, 1858. He was the s on of a rabbi and descending from a long line of rabbis, he decided early that he would follow the family tradition and become a rabbi himself. He studied Hebrew, the Old Testament, and the Talmud, while following the regular course of in secular schools. He soon turned away from all religious involvement, though purposely not from interest in religious phenomena, and became a freethinker, or non-believer. At about the time of his graduation he decided that he would dedicate himself to the scientific study of society. Since sociology was not a subject either at the secondary schools or at the university, Durkheim launched a career as a teacher in philosophy. Emile Durkheim made many contributions to the study of society, suicide, the division of labor, solidarity and religion. Raised in a time of troubles in France, Durkheim spent much of his talent justifying order and commitment to order. Durkheim was a pioneer French sociologist, taught at Bordeaux (1887-1902) and the University of Paris (1902-17). He introduced the system and hypothetical framework of accurate social science. Durkheim was author of The Division of Labour (1893), Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide (1897), Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1915). Emile Durkheim has often been characterized as the founder of professional sociology. He has a great closeness with the two introductory sociologists, Comte and Saint-Simon. Durkheim willingly noticed the ideas of the Division of Labor and the Biological Analogy.
The early developments of sociology date back to the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. Sociology’s development was driven by a shift in three main factors; social, economics and politics. All the major philosophers in the early years of sociology thought about the great transformation from “simple, preliterate societies to massive, complex, industrial societies” (Asanet.org, 2014). This paper will discuss and evaluate how the Industrial revolution, French revolution and the dissolution of feudal social order to influenced the creation of sociology as an academic discipline.