Asst.Prof.

Bengi Bezirgan Tanış

bengi.bezirgan@nisantasi.edu.tr

Synchronous lectures are held on every Wednesday at 11:00

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 WHAT IS THEORY?
• Theory is defined as scientific explanations that are based on the
assumed relationships between variables in scientific research and
supported by studies conducted in the literature through scientific
research process (Feigl, 1951). Popper (1963) claims that any
information that is not based on theory will have no validity and
reliability.
• The function of theory in science is to predict and understand the
relationship between variables. If it is accepted that science has a
mission that tries to reveal the reality in the universe, the theory fulfills
the function of defining and explaining the relationships in the
universe (Popper, 1963).
• While the theory provides to establish the relationship between the
variables of the problem determined by the researcher, it guides the
researcher in the research process (Mintzberg, 1989).

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 THEORIES and THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

• Theories involve constructing abstract interpretations that can be used to explain

a wide variety of empirical or 'factual' situations. A theory about industrialization,
for example, would be concerned with identifying the main features that processes
of industrial development share in common and would try to show which of these
are of importance in explaining industrial development.
• We need theories to help us make sense of the many facts that we find. Contrary
to popular assertion, facts do not speak for themselves. Many sociologists do work
primarily on factual research, but unless they are guided by some knowledge
of theory, their work is unlikely to be able to explain the complexity of
societies.
• Without a theoretical approach, we would not know what to look for when
beginning a study or when interpreting our results at the end of the research.
However, the illumination of factual evidence is not the only reason for the prime
position of theory in sociology. Theoretical thinking must respond to general
problems posed by the study of human social life, including issues that are
philosophical in nature.

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 AUGUSTE COMTE (1798- 1857)

• Responsible for coining the term “sociology”

• Set out to develop the “science of man” that would be based
on empirical observation
• 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.
• Comte's vision for sociology was for it to become a 'positive
science'. He wanted sociology to apply the same rigorous
scientific methods to the study of society that physicists and
chemists use to study the physical world.

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 POSITIVISM

vScience should be concerned only with observable entities that are

known directly to experience.
vBy understanding the causal relationships between events, scientists
can then predict how future events will occur.
vA positivist approach to sociology aims for the production of
knowledge about society based on empirical evidence drawn from
observation, comparison and experimentation.
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METHODS in the NEW SCIENCE of SOCIAL PHYSICS

• For Comte, positivism was based on use of the senses to

Observation observe social facts

• He argued that observation of empirical facts, when unguided
by theory, will prove useless in the development of science.

• Comte recognized that artificial experimentation with whole

societies, and other social phenomena, was impractical and
often impossible
Experimentation • Much as the biologist can learn about normal bodily
functioning from the study of disease, so also social
physicists can learn about the normal processes of society
from the study of pathological cases.

• By comparing elements that are present and absent, and

Comparison similar or dissimilar, knowledge about the fundamental
properties of the social world can be achieved.

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 Comte claims that it is inevitable that these
three traditional methods of science are used
in sociology. But sociology must follow an
additional and far more important fourth
method: the historical analysis.

According to Comte, the historical comparison

of the successive stages of humanity is at the
heart of sociological research.

From this point of view, it is possible to reach

the following conclusion: The real object of
study of sociology is the history of the
human species. In short, for Comte, sociology,
which is not guided by a historical
understanding of evolution, is meaningless.

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 The LAW of THREE STAGES

Theological Metaphysical Positive

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 A HIERARCHY OF SCIENCES
• Comte’s Positive Philosophy can be viewed as a long and elaborate advocacy for a
science of society. Most of the five volumes review the development of other sciences,
showing how sociology represents the culmination of positivism.
• As the title, Positive Philosophy, under- scores, Comte was laying a philosophical
foundation and justification for all science and then using this foundation as a means
for supporting sociology as a true science. His advocacy took two related forms: (1) to
view sociology as the inevitable product of the law of the three stages and (2) to
view sociology as the “queen science,” standing at the top of a hierarchy of
sciences.
• In Comte’s view, then, astronomy was the first science to reach the positivistic
stage, then came physics, next came chemistry, and after these three had reached the
positivistic (scientific) stage, thought about organic phenomena could become more
positivistic.
• The first organic science to move from the metaphysical to the positivistic stage was
biology, or physiology. Once biology became a positivistic doctrine, sociology could
move away from the metaphysical speculations of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries (and the residues of earlier theological thought) toward a
positivistic mode of thought.
• Sociology has been the last to emerge, Comte argued, because it is the most complex
and because it has had to wait for the other basic sciences to reach the positivistic
stage.

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 SOCIOLOGY
• Laws of society
• The study of social structure, its elements, and
Social Statics their relations
• To examine and analyze the society as a social
whole

• The study of social progress and change

• How society changes depending on the law
Social Dynamics • To examine the successive stages of human
thought and the formation of human societies

According to Comte, understanding of history starts with

the order of every society. In short, social dynamics
depends on social statics, and as Comte puts it, progress
is actually the development of order.

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 EMILE DURKHEIM (1858-1917)
• Durkheim saw sociology as a new science that could be
used to elucidate traditional philosophical questions by
examining them in an empirical manner.

• Durkheim argued that we must study social life with the

same objectivity as scientists study the natural world. His
famous first principle of sociology was: «Study social facts
as things!»

• For Durkheim, the main intellectual concern of sociology

is the study of social facts. Rather than applying
sociological methods to the study of individuals,
sociologists should instead examine social facts - aspects
of social life shape our actions as individuals.

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 Social Facts

ways of acting, have their own constraining they are

thinking or reality outside exercise a nature of social invisible and
feeling that are the lives and coercive power facts is often not intangible, they
external to perceptions of over individuals recognized by cannot be
individuals individuals people as observed
coercive. directly

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 Material Social Non-Material
Facts Social Facts

Laws Norms

Social
Morality
Institutions

Collective
Consciousness

The sociologist usually begins a study by focusing on empirically

accessible material social facts in order to understand the intangible
social facts that are the real focus of her work.

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The priority of the social over the individual

The idea that society can be studied scientifically

According to Durkheim, society consists of "social

facts" that transcend our intuitive understanding
and must be investigated by observation and
measurement.

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 THE DIVISION OF LABOUR IN SOCIETY
Like other founders of sociology, Durkheim throughout his life dealt with the changes that transformed
society. He was particularly concerned with social and moral solidarity, in other words, what holds society
together and prevents it from falling into chaos.
Solidarity is preserved when individuals are successfully included in social groups and guided by a set of
shared values and traditions.

Mechanic Solidarity

Organic Solidarity

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 DURKHEIM’S STUDY of SUICIDE
• One of the early sociological classics which explores the relationship between
the individual and society is Emile Durkheim's analysis of suicide rates, Suicide:
A Study in Sociology (Durkheim 1952 [1897]).
• Even though people see themselves as individuals exercising free will and choice.
their behaviors are often socially patterned and shaped, and Durkheim's study
showed that even a highly personal act like suicide is influenced by what
happens in the social world.
• In examining official suicide statistics in France, Durkheim found that certain
categories of people were more likely to commit suicide than others.
Durkheim also noted that suicide rates tended to be lower during times of war
and higher during times of economic change or instability.
• These findings led Durkheim to conclude that there are social forces external to
the individual which affect suicide rates. He related his explanation to the idea
of social solidarity and to two types of bonds within society - social integration
and social regulation.

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SUICIDE: A STUDY in SOCIOLOGY (1897)

Egoistic suicides

Anomic suicides

Altruistic suicides

Fatalistic suicides

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 Why do People Commit Suicide?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YABSGnHuVtM

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REFERENCE

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