CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL THINKERS

SOC 223
Lecture- 14
• Today’s lecture focus on…………….
• Summarizing the Unit 2
Summary of Uni 2

• Herbert Spencer (1820- 1903)

• English Sociologist and Philosopher

• Examined social phenomena in a scientific way

• Believed – fundamental sociological classification – between;

• military societies and industrial societies

• Militant Society- means of acquiring wealth through compulsion/threat/oppression/

• Industrial Society- means of acquiring wealth through voluntary production and exchange
• Evolutionary Doctrine
• Important contribution of spencer to sociology
• Term borrowed from biological science. That is; Organic evolution
• Social evolution denote evolution of human society
• Change from homogenous to heterogenous displayed in the progress of
human civilization
• Survival of the fittest- struggle for existence
• Those who adapt the change in society can be survive along with the growth in
society
• Organic Analogy
• Compare society with living organism
• Found similarity and differences in society and living organisms
• Society change from simple to complex like an organism
• Types of Societies
• Based on composition and construction types
• Composition
• simple societies consists of;
• families
• a compound societies consist of;
• families unified into clans (Clan- people belong to a common ancestor),
• doubly compound societies consists of;
• clans unified into tribes (Tribe- blood related people associated with a particular territory) and
• the trebly compound societies have;
• tribes brought together forming nations or states
• Construction
• Militant
• Industrial
• Three main system –common- animals and societies

• Regulative system (regulate / control whole system of society)

• Sustaining system (supporting for the existence)

• Distribution system (for distributing the energy/ moving/exchanging

ideas)
• Ethics
• Ethics as a fundamental value;
• That promote life and
• produce happiness,
• the conditions of social existence, and
• the recognition of life
• Self centered-Egoist
• Process of increasing individuation (process through which individual
differentiated each other ) and self-sufficiency
• Utilitarianism - philosophical belief that;
• social, political, and economic actions produce pleasurable benefits to
people in society.
• any action promotes justice and liberty; generates pleasure and a stable,
peaceful, and cooperative society
• Political Philosophy
• life in community- important.
• mutual dependency, and
• Collective life
• For the natural growth of an organism require liberty
• Development of social life through liberty (individual rights)
Summary of the Unit-1

• Sociological theories emerged as a response to the crisis caused by

French Revolution and Industrial Revolutions in the society
• Comte born after the French Revolution
• Societal change happened during that time
• Class system dramatically changed
• Comte thought about the need of understanding growth of society
and human intelligence
• Comte introduced the theory of The Law of Three Stages
• This is based on the changes happening in Comte’s French society
• Law of three stages are;
• Theological or Fictitious Stage
• Metaphysical or Abstract Stage
• Positive or Scientific Stage
• Comte argued that in theological stage, primitive man lived in
superstition.
• They believed that in every object, presence of God or super natural
powers can be found.
• Kings, emperors and priests compelled the common man to believe
so
• Gradually people started to think about the reason behind each social
phenomena
• When this kind of change happened in the way of thinking of people
society also progresses
• For this, Comte given the term; Metaphysical stage
• In this stage people started to think about everything occurred
because of the presence of an unseen force
• They started to search for the reason behind every phenomena
• This paved the way for scientific thinking
• In positive stage, people started to find a scientific reason behind
everything
• Importance of God, super natural powers and unseen forces became
irrelevant
• Science became important in this stage
• Comte introduced Sociology to scientifically study about society
• He adopted scientific methods from other sciences to conduct the
study
• And he arranged the sciences on the basis of the
complexity/simplicity and dependency
• Comte argued that scientific knowledge developed on the basis of
human thinking developed
• Comte arranged the scientific disciplines based on its dependency with
other sciences
• From simple to complex Comte given the order like;
• Mathematics
• Astronomy
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Sociology
• Comte argued that for finding the scientific reason behind every social
phenomena, one needs to use scientific methods and thinking

• Therefore Comte introduced Positivism and Positivism rejected

theological and metaphysical opinion

• Positivism is based on systematic observation and experiments

• Experiment in social science try to test the reaction of people into a

particular social problems, events, circumstances etc
• Comte used two different ways to use the term Positivism

• Positivism as a doctrine- based on observation-way of thinking

• Positivism as a method- based on the application of scientific method

to understand the society and its changes
Dr Aswathy V K
28401
aswathy.28401@lpu.co.in
9526277463

Thank You!