xxll ABOUT THE AUTHORS

aa

author of several books as well as ntany articles in researchjournals. He has re-

ceived the arvard for excellence in teaching at Santa Clara. He has served as 1
the editor of the Anrerican Sociological Association's theory section newslet-
ter as well as in several positions in the Pacific Sociological Association.
H,E

The Origins of
Sociology

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY LOOKS

BACK AT THE RENAISSANCE
Sociology emerged in the nineteenth century as an intellectual endeavor ro
make sense of historical developments in Europe. Later, as rhe field grew, ir
shed its Eurocentric orientation as well as some of its preoccupation r,virh his-
tory but sociolog:yt character was formed from theorerical quesrions about the
European historical experience. In particular, nineteenth-cenrury European
theorizing about society was grounded primarily on rhinkirrg about rhe com-
ing and passing of the Renaissance. For it is in the Renaissance thar we see rhe
beginning of a lasting record of intellectual curiosiry about the narure of soci-
ety and the sources of social change. Some of this new interest in the dynamics
of sociery originated with Renaissance scholars themselves, who rvondered at
the remarkable changes that were taking place, bur still nlore came from later
scholars who could see the entire period in historical perspecive.
The point is an important one. The Renaissance provokqd scholarly inter-
est in the nature of society and the dynamics of change. It was the stimulus
needed to get people asking questions and formulating the interpretive fiame-
works through which history would be presented to students '*,ell into the
nventieth century under the heading of a 'tlassical" educarion. Simply put, rhe
1

J&,-.

,n,
CHAPTER
2 1
I\enaissance was the tnost cbrrrrnoll refe lence point for nineteenth-century
Europeans trvittq to think in tlteoretical terms atbout the nature of sociery'
The ll.cttaissrrtrce had a lorrg and corrrplicated hisrory. So it is understand-
able that trot all nineteenth-century European intellectuals viewed it in the
sirnlc wey. Iltrt the c.tttttltloll tl-renre rttnnitrg thror-rgh virtually all treattrtents of
rlrc pc:riocJ is progrrrs, ar"ld this idea was to bc partictrlarly influenrial not only
for the fbr-rncler of sociology, Auguste Comte, but for others as well' Nine-
teenth-centurv Europeans vierved the Renaissance as the reemergence of cul-
lrirer, first rivaling and tlren surpassing that of the Greeks and Ronrans, after a
iorrg pe rir>.1 oI scientific ancl even artistic stagnation.' Scholars of this time
rrr:riu[;rilrr":tl ;t totru.ll ct)ll('clrtiorr olt Itll'()pellll ltisttll'y lis 0.\terttlirlg thrtlttglt I
prinritive pcriocl followed strccessively by the classical period of the Greeks
;rrrcl I{rlrtr;ut:i; tltc "Micldle," or "l)ark," Ages; the I\enaissance, emulating the
cl:rssic:rl lrcriotl::trrcl llrrrrlly,rlrc Agc clf scicl)cc. At:cottrtting li-rr prclgrcss was
the pivotal challerrge facitrg rhese social thinkers, who asked: Are spurts of
prosress acciclental occurrences that must be explained <ln the basis of unusual
lristorical hflppenstance, or: are progress and decay rnanifestations of underlyirrg
soc:ilil cl1'nirttrics tlrat are recLln:ing ;rnd predictable?
Ahtrost conceived of European history in terms of stages. But
alJ scholars
che clc:l;ate that raged arnong historians of the Renaissance-which means all
Iiberally ecl.,caiecl pcople of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-revolved
arourrd r..,hether each historical epoch was qualitatively distinct from the pre-
cecline per:iocl or was a naturral, evolutionary progression of trends evident in
erariicr staqes.t Tire for,rrtdcrs of sociology were itrrnrersecl in this debate by
virtue of their trairring, atrd the ttrany educated people r'vho were interested in
these issues rrradc LrP l11uch of the ar-rdience to whom early sociologists spoke'
Historical periods are difficult to date with precision. However, [hb "clas-
sical per iocl" of Westertr history, the era of Greece and, later, Rome, lasted
rorrghly lronr the eighth certtuty rl.c. until the fourth century A.D. Many note-
rn,clrthy scientific ailci ;rr:ristic advances were nracle clur:ing that period. To nanle
just a fbr,,nr: geolretry r,vas developed; rnoney came into circulacion; trade ex-
panded; accounring practices enlerged; shipbuilding improved; the Phoenician
alphlbet r.vas trrade more precise with the inclusion of vowels; literature was
borrr; cotnedies and cragedies were written; anrphitheaters were constructed;
l. ()g()rgr) (lhrk,Sellt-:rv,'1}r'llt'rl,li-i.(r'ltricr /r.s N/otrrrc and Origirr's (Madison, Wl:UIriver.siry o[Wiscon'sitr Press,
l9(.,5).
2. 'l'hc rrrort ('()nun()il ttinc(r'ctttli-ccllttlt] r'icr,l'rvits tlrlt cvct) stagc <lf history rvas qtr.tlrtativcly tlistirrct 'rud sepa-
r.riris ll'onr c.rrlicr \t.tucs. lltrt ,rthcrs s.tu' thc variotts lristorical periocls ;ts tltoroughly interlrreshccl' Sec John
lt.rrr,,l.rll. "l)cvcloptttcnt oiscicntitic N4cthod irr tlre School of I)adtta," Joilnnl ttf tlrc Histttry'of Idaas 1(1940)' pp'
177-]('t(t; rrril IL-rberr Iltrttcr(icltl, ?7rt'Origirl., ,:.f lt'lttdt.rn S'rirttrt'(Ncw York: Free Prcss,l()57)'
ir
THE OR|GINS OF SOCIOLOGY . ,\\ 3 I
\\.\\\
\..
great philosophical debates r agcci; ettsittcers acltieved lvorrr,lt.otts tclts (litcr.rllt',
the "wonders of the ancicnt r,vorld"); nrolttlt)lcl)ts rvt:t'c btrilr; tttcrclicirrc ltr.l-
vartced; libraries were cotrstruc:red; eletttents clf derrtot:r'lrtic govc:rlltllctttltl
fornrs canle into being; and eclttcatiott expeltclcd. Irt short, civill716irtt] il<lrv-
ered, Advances were intertnittent, to be sure, lrttt <lver tittrc thc totll stoc:k of
krtowledg. increased ancl diffusccl widt:ly to othcr parts c'rf thc rvr:r'ltl. At lerst
itwas the nineteenth-centttry E,trropean vierv tlrlt thc clrssicll pct-it>cl of tlic
Greeks and Romaus marked such a florverins of civilizatiorr,
Therr calne the "Dark Ages," or nredieval period, lastil)g l-otlrrlr11' fl'onr thc
fifth through the thirteertth centr-rries A.r>. The prevailing Ettropeatt vicrv oltlrc
"l)ark Ages" was tlrat civilizaticltt hnd stagltate(1, Nclt ottly u'c:r'e s(:ic'ttriflc lrrtl
lrtistic ndvttlccs fllle, bttt trttrclt ttl'th.: kllowlr:,.lgc tll'tlt,-:..:lrrssir,rtl 1tt't'itltl tvrls
los[. Cultural activities catrre to an etrcl witlr rhc arrival oIirtvrcli,rg "lt:irtrrtt'iiltrs."
ancl lhe western l\otnan Enrpir:e clisitrtegrarcd irtto tltotlsrll)cls oI isolrtte d villrtgt:s
where there was little iutcrest iu, or titttc tbr, strtrly. Mclllot'y of'tltc cllssic,rl 1rc-
riod faded except in a few sequestered nronasteries, rvhel'e ancietrt texts wcre
stored and in the Islamic world, where scholars trarrshteci Greek texts itttct Ar:r-
bic. During the "I)ark Ages" rlte overwlrc'ltttitts ttt;rjority oI Eur'()p1:;1t)s \vcl"(:
crude illiterates, and evelr educatecl peoplc kncw lcss ebotrt scicttcc' lttctlicilic,
and art than their counterparts in the classical period. The Fact thlt this pt:r'iocl
e')'[ I.Ir c co I -
;T,,TI,H[,TTI, H,'ffi:,fffi. :l,Tl'J.'#::*:: ;il::rl,
This "Dark Ag.",was followed by the l\enaissance, collring in the fcrttt'-
teenth century and lascing to the er-rd of,the sixteetttlr cettttrry. Thc I(cnrriss.u)cc
refers, in a literal sense, to the intellectr"ral rebirth of-ELrropc as pcoplc triecl t<> -!l
l+,
recapture the artistic, philosophical, scienrific, and conuner:cial glory of- the I
classical period. It is irrpportant to emphasize that the convel)tiorrrl rrirtetccrrtlr- lr
centLlry assesslnent was that the l\enaissauce had bccn a period of rccliscovcry.
There was a great appreciation for the cultural acconrplishnlents c-rf rlrc, Clrceks
artd Romans anci a genuing desire to replicrte those acconrplishulents uutl,
hence, to recapture thc cr.rltur:al glory ofcar:lier tinres. Again,:r qualitativc clrrttrgc
rlight be said to have occurred, for in thc eyes of scholars ancl laypcople hlikc:,
Graeco-Roman culture had been reborn. lr
I3y'tlre seventeenth cetrtttry, Europe was leavirig thc l\cn:tiss:urcc b,:hirrcl
aud entering a new stage. People were beginning to eutr:ttairr thc: idca th:rt tlrc
Greeks nright not have known everything rhat it w:rs possible to kr)ow. Aricl
so, after three hr.rndred ycars of tryir)g to cntulrtte crrct'ytlrirr5l Cireck, I-tu'opcan
scholars began to nrove beyond the Greeks in unlockins thc rtrysterrics of thcr
urriverse through systenratic and controllcd ob:;crvariort artcl c;lrcftrl t,:stirrg oi
hypotheses. In so doing, tlrey gave birth to the Ag. of Sciencc, atrcl tlrcrc \\rrs
a grow,'; v,; belief that knov,zledg. could be used to cxert corrtrc-rl o'vcr r)llturc.
(
C

4 CHAPTER 1
Sociology is a product of this scientific age. It owes its inception to the be-
, lief by * number of scholars that they could understand how social as well
as
physical and biological systenls work. And in trying to understand how social
systenls operate, many early sociologists used their understanding of European
history as an irnplicit starting point. Nineteenth-century intellectuals were
inrpressed by the sharp disjunctiOhs betr.veen the Middle, or "Dark," Ages, the
I\enaissance; alld the Age of Science, and many saw each period as dramati-
cally arrrl inherently distinct in its own right. Crossing over from one period
to another was viewed as a fundamental fransformation in the underlying char-
acter o[the society, 4nd the goal became to describe and explain this meta-
nrorphosis. The first great masters of sociology whose work was most clearly
influcnced by this tttode of tlrinkirrg were Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Max
'Weber..And Enrile Dr.rrkheinr. They sought, first and foremost, to describe
rvhat was clistinctive about new periods and to Provide explanations for the
eppearance oi new fornrs ofnocial organization. Thus, some of the important
currents in early sociology had their intellectual roots in conventional think-
ing about the Renaissance. a '
The view of history as a series of distinct epochs was not universally ac-
cepted, however. A nunrber of people detec,fed the seeds of the Renaissance in
the Middle Ages arrd the seeds of the Age of Science in the Renaissance. As
people with this view understood historical change in Europe, the fundamental
nattrre of society never comirletely changes. Each historical period is defined
by nranifestrtions of trends that had their root causes in an earlier period. This
alternative view saw uhe Renaissance as a product of intellectual endeavors of
"
the Micldle Ages, for despite the general medieval pattern of cultural stagna-
tiotr, changes began to take place around A,D. 1100. Population movement sta-
bilized sonrewhat, in patrt because of reduced Pressure from Danes to the north,
Arabs to the south, and Magyars to the east. Meanwhile, a number of monastic
scholars began a self-cotrsciotts effort to "recapture the wisdom of the ages" by
resLrrrecting works fiorn the classical period. This was a slow and arduous
H:T;ffi i:til;:Tl,,::':ffi iLH:T:::;*,1Th:IT'#,Hl;;:?:
Once a manlrscriprt was rediscovered, it would then have to be carefully trans-
lated, and scholars or even generations of scholars would argue over each man-
uscript's real rneaning. Changes of an unknown character were often assumed
to have been introduced as manuscripts were copied and recopied by hand and
sonrctinles translated arrd retranslated over a thousand-year period.
Ac fir:st, otrll'a few'people werer engaged in this process of locating, trans-
lating, sturJying, or copying Graeco-I\oman and Arabic manuscripts. Prior to
the twelfth centtty, the prevailing attirude anrong Christians was that Aristotle
ancl other pre-Chris.rian writers must have been morally deficient. Looking
backward to the world'before Jesus was considered by many Christians to be
r
THE ORIGINS OF SOCIOLOGY 5
heretical. But this anticlassical sentiment was overcome by Thomas Aquinas
(1225-7 4), who argued that reason and revelation could coexisr and that the
physical world was a legitimate subject of investigation independent of, bur
ultimately harmonious with, theology. His success made possible an explosion
in knowledge seeking revolving around the rediscovery of lost ideas from the
past. Thus, by convincing people that a basic consiqtency exisred tret'uveen
Christian faith and knowledge in all its forms and that rediscovery of the
knowledg. and culture of the classical period worked to the grearer glory of
God, Aquinas established a blueprint for a spurt of intellecrual activiry in the
medieval period. In this sense, it is reasonable to see the accomplishments of
the Renaissance as the culmination of this medieval intellectual agenda rather
than as something qualitatively new and distinct. This viewpoint, which was
circulating in some nineteenth-century intellectual circles, was predicated on
a very different way of thinking about society'. This view saw hisrory and
change as cyclical and was to be incorporated into the early sociological theo-
ries of Spencer, 'W'eber, and Vilfredo Pareto, although both Spencer and'Weber
recognized that social change also involved fundamental alterations ro the
structure of sociery.
As the Middle Ages came to an eqd, it was commonly assumed by learrred
people that the ans*.i to any question could be derived frorrr the scientitlc
and philosophical principles enumerated by the Greeks, especially Aristotle.
Not surprisingly, then, those people who were privileged enotrgh to be able
to pursue studies fervently sough6 out the wisdonr of the Grecks and tr:iccl to
replicate their cultural accomplishments and those of the l{ornans. And as
scholars of the late Middle Ages and "early Renaissance began to recaptLrre an-
cient knowledg., the total stock of l.,,rring incrcasecl clrarnaticrrlly
Yet this worship of classical wisdorn was not entirety positive. Meclievrl
and early Renaissance scholars had their intellectual horizons stricrly con-
strained by Graeco-Ronlan thought. Remenrber that books hrcl to be h:rrrd-
copied and were therefore rare. Because books were so rare ancl becatrse chere
was a strong presumption thaf the G'reeks and Romans kner,r, everything that
could be knowr, nianuscripts from the classical perioct were essentially the
only books other than the Bible to be reproduced lbr a considerable period.
The scientific and philosophical principles of the Greeks, especially Aristotle,
assumed an almost inviolible status because they were taught as the tr:urh arrd
were all that was taught, other than basic Christian doctrine" Little was dis-
covered. And old misconceptions, such as the notion that the earth r,vas the
center of the universe, were accepted uncritically until around the middle of
the Renaissance, about 1500.
At roughly the same time that Er.rropeans began to free therrrselves fronr
the illusion that Aristotle embodied the beginning and end o[ all humarr wis-
dom (in part because of the discovery of additional manLrscripts fiorn the
. I,
 si*'" r
s\
CI.IAPTER I THE OR|G|NS OF SOCTOLOGY ' ,.. I
A,
6
.1
1.\\
7
t
classical period indicating that tlrere was disagreement even among the an- the concept of magnetism, which turned the issue of graviry into a question € a

cient Greeks about the validity of some of Aristotle's scientific ideas), other of attraction, and an infusion of challenging new ideas from orher parrs of rhe
I
I,I

clevelopnrenrs opened the floodgates of intellectual exploration and scientific
discovery: scientific instruments, such as the microscope and telescope, were
invented; Europeans ventured to. new lands and began to catalogue unfamil-
iar varieties of plants, animals, and social customs; cities grew in size; and
most importantly, the printing press was developed. Printing presses spurred
the growth of knowledge by making it possible to disseminate scientifi c data
and to disctrss scientific ideas.
As Europeans developed scientific instruments and explored lands that had
been unknown to them, the "encyclopedic movement" reached its apex. En-
cyclopedists devoted themselves to cataloguing, describing, and categor rzing
everything they could identift in the physical environment. The encyclope-
world, such as the rudimentary yet radical Persian reconception of the nacural
universe in a state of constant nrotion propelled by inertia. Arrned wirh rhese
new conceptual tools in conjunction with the empirical data that had accu-
mulated after the invention of the telescope, as well as wirh a Baconian will-
ingness to recast the way we look at the universe, Newton produced his law
of gravity: the attraction benveen rwo objects is directly related to their masses
and inversely related to the distance berween them.
Yet these spectacular scientific achievements were not enough to create a
science of sociery. The Renaissance had initiated new thinking about rhe na-
ture of sociery, and the Age of Science had created a sysrem fbr connecring g;
theoretical speculation with empirical data. But by themselves, these evenrs i{

dists recorded as rnuch as they could about the world that the telescope, the
microscope, and the colonial explorations could bring into their view. And al-
though th.eir activities were principally descriptive, their observations were su-
perior to those of the Greeks, thereby establishing a better inventory of
did not produce sociology. Rather, it was the dramaric and disruprive changes
in social organizafion accompanying the Renaissance and Ag. of Science thar
caused sociology to emerge. For the revolutions of the intellect were inti-
mately connected to the reo rganization of sociery, and only these togerher
l
i
;.''l l

information that *,vould eventually set the'Stage for development of better the- would produce sociology as a mode of inquiry. Indeed, as we have empha- S
ory. But this movement from description to theoretical explanation did not sized, it was these transformations that motivated eighteenth- and nineteenrh-
happen automatically, which is an important part of our story. century thinkers to look back at the past in an eflbrt to undersrand rhe presenr C
Sir Isaac Nervton's law of graviry offers a good illustration for the way in and to see the future. They did so because the forces of change were dramari-
I
which Greek thinking impeded the development of new theoretical explana- cally accelerating, giving rise to an intensified interesr in undersranding the -l
^l
tion. Ne'wton (1642-1.727) laid out a number of physical laws, including his social universe.3 A I
iaw of graviry, in Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687). In doing so, -r
he signaled that the Age of Science, which had begun around a hundred years
e
\,.
earlier, had indeed arrived in full force, although in fact his law of gravity
-SOCIOLOGY AND THE FORCES OF CHI[NGE
could easily have been articulated in Galileo's time (1564-1642). The inven- Al
tion of the telescope had led to a series of observations that were clearly in- The Economic Revolution
t)
;

consistent with Aristotelian predictions regarding the behavior of the universe,
and still Ar:isrotle's ideas persisted: the natural state of objects in the universe is
rest, and hence, motion of celestial bodies must be explained by . pressure
(from God) that keeps them in motion'and thereby prevents them from falling
to the center of the universe.
Sir Francis Bacon (1 546-1626) fundamentally changed the world of schol-
arship and the hold of the ancients on thought. He developed what is now a
comrnonplace idea but what, at the time, was a radical position: theories
should always be viewed with skepticism and tested for any inconsistency with
,cbsen'able facts. 'fhe encyclopedists had gathered enough data to reco gnrze
rhat the knorvledg. base had advanced beyond the science of the ancient
Clreeks, but they had to be nudged into approaching their work in different
ways. Once people began to follow Bacon's path, however, there was a sudden
spurt of ner,v ideas, such as the articulation byJohannes Kepler (1,571-1630) of
ll
During rnuch of the eighteenth century, the last remnants of rhe old econonric
order were crumbling under the impact of the corrrnrercial and industrial rev-
olutions. Much of the feudal order had been eliminated by the expansion of
trade during the seventeenth century. yet economic activiry in the eighteenth
I
I
3. Robea A. Nisbet in his The Sociologiul Tradition (New york: Basic Bootcs, 1966), chap. 2, has presentcd this
l
I
line of argument undcr "The Two Revolutions.', Although we owe much ro Nisbet's work, there are grear
differences in emphasis between ttris discussion and his. For other interesting discussions of this period,
sc. Er,rst
Cassirer, The Philosophy oJthe Enlightenmenr @oston: Beacon press, 1955; origin:rlly published in 1932);
R. V.
Sarnpson, hogress and the Age otReasorr (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univcniry press, 1956);J. Srlwyn
Condorcet and the Rise of Liberalism (New york: Octagon Books, 1963), chaps. l-3; lnd
Sch:rpiro,
E. J. Hobsbarvnr, T}c
Age oJ Revohilion (New York: Mentor, 1967). For sonre more general summaries of pre_ninerecnrh_ccnrury
social thoughr, see Howard Becker and Harry Elmcr Ilarnes, Social Ttronght jron, Iari to g11rrr, (Ncs, york:
Dover, 1938); and Roben A. Nisbet, The Sordal philoscphcrc: Connnutity and Cott/ria in Wcsrent Thtt*ltt (Nov
York: Thonras Y. Crowell, 1973). (
 THE ORIGINS OF SOCIOLOGY 9
I CHAPTER I

had been occurring in France and elsewhere in Europe for the enrire eigh-
century haci beconle greatly restricted by guilds, which controlled labl-;r's ac-
teenth century.
cess to skillccl occup{rtions, urd by chartered corporations, which restrained
tracie and procluction.
By the time of the Frcnch Revolution, the old feudal sysrenl \,vas nrerelv I
The eighteerrtll cerltury saw the growth of free labor and more competi- skeleton. Peasants were often landowners, although many engaged in the
tive nranufacturing. The cotton industry was the first to break the holci of the French equivalent of tenant farming and were subject to excessive taxarion.
guilds a.nd chartered corporations, but with each decade, other industries were
The old landed aristocracy had lost much of its weakh rhrough indolence, in-
co:mpetence, and unwillingnes$ to pursue lucrative, yet low-status, occupations.
subjected to the liberating t:fFecrs of fiee labor, free trade, and free production.
Indeed, many of the nobiliry lived in genteel poverry behind the walls of their
Ily the tinrc largc,--scale industry errrerged-first in England, then in France,
disintegrating estates. And as they fell into severe financial hardship, the afluent
atrcJ lnter in Gerrnany-the economic reorganization of Europe had been
achieved. Lrr-ee-scale industry and manufacture simply accelerated the trans-
bourgeoisie were all too willing to purchase the land. Indeed, by 1789 the
bourgeoisie had purchased their way into the ranks of the nobility as the finan-
fbrnrations in sociery that had been occurring for decades.
These transformations involved a profound reorganization of sociery Labor
cially pressed monarchy sold titles to upwardly mobile families. Thus, by the
was liberated trorn the land; wealth and capital existed independently of the
time of the Revolution, the traditional aristocracy was in a less advantageoLls
large noble estates; large-scale industrt accelerated urbanization of the popula-
position, many downtrodden peasants were landholders, the afflLrenr bour-
geoisie were buying their way into the halls of power and prestige, and the
tion; the extenlion of competitive industry hastened the development of new
monarchy was increasingly dependent on the bourgeoisie for financial supporr.
technologies; increased production encouraged the expansion of markets and
The structure of the state best reflects these changes in the old feudal order.
world trade for securing raw resources and selling finished goods; religious or-
By the end of the eighteenth century, the French monarchy had become al-
garrizatiorrs lost rnuch of their authoriry in the face of secular economic activ-
most functionless. It had, of course, centralized governnrent througtr the sLrp-
ities; fanrily structure was altered as people moved from rural to urban areas;
pression of old centers of feudal power, but its monarchs were now lazy,
larv became as concerned with regularizing the new economic processes as
indolent, and incompetent. The real power of the monarchy increasinglv be-
with preserving the privilege of the nobiliry; and the old political regimes le-
longed to the professional administrators in the state bureaucracy, most of
gitimated by "divine right" successively became less tenable.
Thus, tire emergence of a capitalist economic system inexorably deitroyed
whom had been recruited from the bourgeoisie. The various magistrates were
virtually allrrecruited from the bourgeoisie, and the independent financiers,
the last renlnAnts of the feudal order and the transitional mercantile order of
particularly the Farmers General, had assumed many of the tax-collecting
rr:strictive guilds and chartered corporations. Such economic changes greatly
functions of government. In exchange for a fixed sum of money, the rnonar-
altered the rvay people lived, created new social classes (such-as the bourgeoisie
chy had contracted to the financiers the right to collect taxes, with the result
rncl urban proletariat), and lecl not only to a revolution of ideas but also to a
that the financiers collected all that the traflic could bear and, in the process,
series of political revolutions. These changes were less traLrmatic in England
generated enormous resentmgflt and hostiliry in the population. With their
than in Fmnce, where the full brunt of these economic forces clashed with the
excessive pro{its, the financiers became the major bankers of the monrrchy,
Old Reginre. It was in this volatile nrixture of economic chanBes, coupled
with the king, nobiliry church, guild rnaster, merchant, and monopolistic cor-
with the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that
porate manufacturer often coming to them for loans.
political ancl intellectual revolutions were to be spawned. And out;,of these
Thus, when the violent revolution came, it hit a vulnerable political sys-
conrbined revolutions, sociology emerged.
tem that had been in decline for most of the eighteenth ciirlrur\i The ease
with which it crunnbled highlighted its vulnerability, while the political irrsta-
The Political Revolution biliry that followed revealed the extent to which the ascendance of the bour-
geoisie and large-scale industrialists had been incomplete. In other societies
Tlre l{evolution of 1789 nrarked a dramadc transformation in French sociery.
where sociolory was also to emerg€, this transition to industrial capitalism and
The l\evolution ancl the century of political turmoil that followed provided
new political forms was less tumultuous. Particularly in England, the political
elrly [rr"r:rrch sociolosisrs rvith their basic intellectual problem: how to use the
"lrlrvs <li-socitl rlrgnrrizatiorl" to crcatc n llcw socinl ordcr. Yet in many ways,
rcvolution was more evolutionary than revolutionary, creilting a sociology ciis-
tinctly different than that in France.
the Frerrch l{evolubi,on was nrerely the violent culmination of changes that

&

.&i
7i-
?*r-
10 CHAPTER 1 THE ORIGINS OF
The political and economic changes of the eighteenth century were ac-
conlpanied try intensified intellectual activiry. R.eacting to economic and po-
litical changes, anci the concornitant reor gantza;tion of social life, mLlch of the
eiglrtcrcr)tlt ccrrrtury was collsLlllred by intellectural ferurent. On the one hand,
inrellectuals reflected the changes occurring around them; on the other hand,
their forceful advocacy helped cause these changes. Social thinkers in the eigh-
teer)th century, including scholars like Adanr,snrith in England and philoso-
phers like Voltaire and llousseau in France, began to exert a powerful
influence on public opinion, and in the Process they helped accelerate the
very changes to which t].reir work had initially rePresented a response., This
influence of idears and ideology on social events in the eighteenth century
nrll:cs the social thought of the tirtres a true intellcclual revolution.
The lntellectual Revolution
f he intellectual revolution of the eighteenth century is comrnonly referred to
as th e Enlightcn,mutt. In England and Scotland, the Enlightenlnent was dorni-
rrated by , group of thinkers who argued for a vision of hurnan beings and so-
cier1, that both reflected and justified the industrial capitalism that first ernerged
in the Ilritish Isles. For scholars such as Adam Smith, individuais are to be free
oIexternal corrsuaint and allowed to compete, thereby creating a better sociery.
lrr France, the Enlighrenulellt is often termed the Age of Reason, and it was
dorrrirrated by a group of scholars known as the philosophqs. It is out of the in-
tellectual fernrerlt generated by the French philosophes that sociology was born.
Althr:rrgh chc Enlightetlurent was fueled by the political, social, and eco-
nonric; changes of the eighteenth century, ir derived considerable inspiration
fronr the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As
noted earlier:, the scientific revolution reached a symbolic peak, at least in
rhe eye of eighteenth-century thinkers, with Newtonian physics, The post-
Newtonian r,,iew of science was dramatically different from previous views.
Tlre old dualism becween reason and the senses had broken down, and for
the first rinre, it could be confidently asierted that the world of reason and
the ,uvorlcl of phenomena fornred a single unity. Through concepts, specula-
tion, and losic, the facts of the empirical world could be understood; and
through the accumulation of facts, reason could be disciplined and kept from
f zrncifurl flights of speculation.
The worlcl was thus viewed as orderly, and it was now possible to under-
stand irs conrplexity through the use of reason and the collection of facts.
i-
Newton's principle o{ graviry was hailed las the model for this reconciliation
betrveen rea,son ancl senses. Physics was to'beconre the vision of how scientific
inquirv and theory should be conducted. And the individual and sociery were
(
SOCIOLOGY'r
tt. 1 'U
t
\ (
increasingly drarvn into the orbit of the new view of scienie.. This gradual in-
clusion of the individual and society into the realm of science represented a
5
startling break wirh the past, because heretofore these phenonlerla had been
considered the domain of morals, ethics, and religion. Indeed, much of the
b
philosophes' intellectual effort involved the errrancipation o[ thought about
hunrans from religious speculation, and while the philosophes .,,vcre far fror-n I
scierrtific, they performed the cssential function of placing speculatiorr about
the hunlan condition in the realm of reason. Indeed, as can be seen in their (
statenlents on universal human rights, laws, and the natural order, rnuch of
tlieir work consisted of attacks on established anthority in both the church I
rttd state, From notions of "natural law" it was to be brrt e shorc srep to corl-
siderati,:n of the laws of human organization. And as we will see in the next (
chapter, many of the less shrill and polemical philosophes-first Montesquieu,
then Turgor and Condorcet-v-rere acturallv to r1)rrke this short stcp arrcl scck d
to unclerstand the-social order in ternrs of principles the1, flelt were tlre equiva-
lerrt in the social reahn of Newton's law of gravitation. t
The philosophes' view of hunran beings and sociery w:rs grcatly inflr:encecl
by the social conditions around them. They were vehenrer:tly opposed to the
\
Old l(cginre in France and highly supportive of the interest of tlre bourgeoisie t
in fiee trade, free commerce, free industry, free labor, and tr:ee opinion. And
in fact, tlre large and literate bourgeoisie fornred the reading public that t
boughr the books, papers, and pamphlets of the philosophes, Thus, their con-
cern with the "laws of the human condition" was as rnuch, and probatlly rrrore, t
irtfluenced by their nroral, political, and ideological c<.rnrnritnrents as by a dis-
passionate search for scientific laws. Yet it would be lnisraken to ignorc the t
extent Ig'rvhich the philosophes raised the possibility of a science of society
nrolded in the image of physics or biology. (
The basic thesis of all philosophes, whether Voltaire, I\oLrsserLr, Con-
dorcbt., Diclerot, or others, was that hurnans had certairr "natural riehts," which t
rverel,violated by institutional arrangements. It would be necessarl,, thereforen
{
to disrnantle the existing order and sr-rbstitute a ne\,v order considered more
cotnpatibte with the essence and basic neecls of hurnankind. The transforrna-
t
tion \vAs to occur rhrough enlightened arrd progressive leqislation; ironically,
rlre philosophes were to stand in horror as their ntrnes and iders were used to I
I
jusri$ the violent Revolution of 1789.
In alnrost all of the philosophes' fornrulations was a vision of hurnan (
progress. f{umanity was seen to be nrarchirrg in a direction and was consid-
crecl ro be qoverned by a "law of progress" tllat was as fr-rndarnental as the law
oigravitation in the physical world. In particular, rhose who were to exert the
nlosr irtfluence oll Comte-Turgot, Condorcet, and Saint-Siuron-built tlreir
intcllectr"ral schenres aroLrnci a larn, of progress. Thus, the philosophes \ rere, orl
 12 CHAPTER 1

the one hand, clecidedly unscientific in their moral advocacy, but they offered
at least the rhetoric of post-Newtonian science in their search for the natural 2
liws of human order and in their formulation of the law of progress. It is out
of these sorrewhat contradictory tendencies that sociology emerged in the
wo'rk of Cornte, who sought to reconcile the seeming contradiction beiween tsffi
moral advocacy and detached scientific observation.
The rnore enlightened of the philosophes, men such as Montesquieu, Titr-
Bot, and Condorcet, were to present the broad contours of this reconciliation
The Origin and Context
to Cornte: the laws of human organization, particularly the law of progressive
development, can be used as tools to create a better sociery.
'IVith
this mixture of Auguste Comte's
of concerns-rnoral action, progress, and scientific laws-the Age of Reason
endeci anC the nineteenth century began. From this intellectual milieu, as it
was influenced by social, economic, and political conditibns, Comte was to
Thought
pull diverse and often contradictory elements and forge a forceful staterntnt
on the nature of a science of sociery

: :THJ T* :il ::= I;:: :J, ;1:

U' ,$.
Auguste Comte was born in 1798 in Montpellier, a cttsy in the south of France.
,.F et, The period from Comte'i birth to his formative years as a srudenr in Paris was
_\

,.
;f,
*r , socially and politically tumultuous, punctuated by revolution and revolr. Ar
'
'' './t,
,.
his birth, the Directory ruled France after the Reign of Terror imposed by
\ Robespierre, trurt within o c.oLrple of years Napoleon lucl lecl a coup and be-
come first among equals in the council. Before Comre entered school five
st- years later, Napoleon had been crowned emperor of France. After Napoleon's
defeat at Waterloo in 1 81,4, the throne was abdicated to the brother of the for-
mer king, retaken briefly by Napoleon in his escape from confinement, and
abdicated again to Louis XVIII in 1815, For the next fifteen years, Louis XVIII
and later his brpther, Charles X, ruled France. In 1830, the publication date
for the first installment of Comte's The Course of Positiue Philosophy, yet an-
other revolution established Louis Philippe, duke of Orleans; and betrveen

1. This brief review borrows heavily from Lewis A. Coser's review in his Masters of Sc,ciolryical Tlrcuphr (New York:
Harcourt IlraceJovanovich, 1978), pp, 13-40, as well as Frank E. Manuel's Trc Pntplrcts <1[ Pais (L-anrbridge,
MA: Harvard Universiry Press, 1962).

13 '

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