Auguste comte and the

Emergence of Sociological
Theory
Lecture 2 -3
Revolution
• The word Revolution has become overused in commentaries.
• The Term captures the dramatic nature of changes in the social moral,
intellectual fabric of European society in 16th and 17th centuries.
• The term Revolution denotes the decisive and radical nature of change.
• Although this change took many decades to be fully realised.
• Sociology thus emerged during a period of change in nature of the social
order and in context of intellectual discourse.
• This discourse were highlighted in France by the advocacy of Auguste Comte
for a science of society.
• Which he first termed social physics, and later he changed it to Sociology.
Sociology and the forces of changes
The Economic Revolution

During the 18th century the old economic were scrambling under the
impact of the commercial and industrial revolutions.
Much of the feudal order had been eliminated by the expansion of trade
during 17th century.
Economic activity in the 18th century had become greatly restricted by
guilds.
Guilds which controlled labour access to skilled occupation and by
charted corporations, which restrained trade and production.
The 18th century saw the growth of free labour and more competitive manufacturing.
The cotton industry was the first to break the hold of the guilds and chartered
industry.
But during that time other industries were subjected to the liberating effects of free
labour, free trade, and free production.
Large scale industry and manufacture simply accelerated the transformations in
society that was occurring for decades.
Labour was liberated from land, wealth and capital existed independently of the large
noble estates.
Large scale industry accelerated urbanization of the population
The competitive industry produced the development of new technologies.
Family structure was altered as people moved from land to urban areas.
Law became concerned with regularising the new economic processes.
Thus, the emergence of a capitalist economic system inexorably destroyed the last remnants
of the feudal order.
Such changes greatly altered the way people lived, created new social classes e.g bourgeoisie
and urban proletariat.
This did not only led to revolution of ideas but also to a series of political revolution.
Such changes were less traumatic in England than in France.
It was in this volatile mixture of economic changes, coupled with the scientific revolution of
16th and 17th century.
That political and intellectual revolutions were to be spawned.
Out of this combined revolutions, sociology was to emerge.
The Political Revolution
• The revolution of 1789 marked a dramatic transformation in French society.
• By the time of French revolution, the old feudal system was merely a skeleton.
• Peasants were often landowners.
• By 1789 the bourgeoisie had purchased their way into the ranks of nobility as
financially pressed monarchy sold titles to upwardly mobile families.
• By the time of revolution , the tradition aristocracy was in a less advantageous
position.
• As many downtrodden peasants were land holders, the affluent bourgeoisie were
buying their way into halls of power and prestige.
• And the anarchy was increasingly dependent on the bourgeoisie for financial support.
• By the end of 18th century the French monarchy became almost functionless.
• French monarchy had centralized the government through the
suppression of old centres of feudal power but its monarchs were
now lazy, indolent and incompetent.
• Political and economic changes of the 18th were accompanied by
intensified intellectual activity.
The intellectual Revolution
• IR of the 18th century is commonly referred to as the Enlightenment.
• The enlightenment in England and Scotland was dominated by a group of thinkers.
• Those thinkers argued for a vision of human beings and society that both reflected
and justified the industrial capitalism that first emerged in the British Isles.
• Some scholars argued that individual are to be free of external constraints and
allowed to compete, thereby creating a better society.
• In France, the enlightenment was often termed the age of reason and was
dominated by group of scholars known as the philosophes.
• It is out of the intellectual ferment generated by the French philophes that
sociology was born.
• Although Enlightenment was caused by political, social and economic of the 18th
century, but it derived considerable inspiration from scientific revolution of the 16th
and 17th centuries.
• In almost all of the philophes formulations was a vision of human progress.
• Humanity was seen to be marching in a direction and was considered to be governed
by a law of progress.
• The philophes were decidedly unscientific in their moral advocacy, but they offered at
least the rhetoric of post Newtonian science.
• It is out of these somewhat contradictory tendencies that sociology emerged in the
work of Augustine Comte.
• Comte sought to reconcile the seeming contradiction between moral advocacy and
detached scientific observation.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
• coined the term sociology,
• while dated and riddled with weaknesses, continue in many ways to be important to contemporary
sociology.
• First and foremost, Comte's positivism — the search for invariant laws governing the social and
natural worlds — has influenced profoundly the ways in which sociologists have conducted
sociological inquiry.
• Comte argued that sociologists (and other scholars), through theory, speculation, and empirical
research, could create a realist science that would accurately "copy" or represent the way things
actually are in the world.
• Furthermore, Comte argued that sociology could become a "social physics" — i.e., a social science
on a par with the most positivistic of sciences, physics.
• Comte believed that sociology would eventually occupy the very pinnacle of a hierarchy of sciences.
• Comte also identified four methods of sociology.
• To this day, in their inquiries sociologists continue to use the methods of observation,
experimentation, comparison, and historical research.
• While Comte did write about methods of research, he most often engaged in speculation
or theorizing in order to attempt to discover invariant laws of the social world.
• Comte also used the term positivism in a second sense; that is, as a force that could
counter the negativism of his times.
• In Comte's view, most of Western Europe was mired in political and moral disorder that
was a consequence of the French Revolution of 1789.
• Positivism, in Comte's philosophy, would bring order and progress to the European crisis
of ideas.
• Comte's philosophical idealism thus separates his views from those of his contemporary
Karl Marx (1818-1883), who was a materialist.
Comte's Sociology

• Comte separated social statics from social dynamics.

• Social statics are concerned with the ways in which the parts of a social system (social structures) interact with
one another, as well as the functional relationships between the parts and to the social system as a whole.
• Comte therefore focused his social statics on the individual, as well as such collective phenomena as the
family, religion, language, and the division of labour.
• Comte placed greater emphasis on the study of social dynamics, or social change.
• His theory of social dynamics is founded on the law of the three stages; i.e., the evolution of society is based
on the evolution of mind through the theological, metaphysical, and positivist stages.
• He saw social dynamics as a process of progressive evolution in which people become cumulatively more
intelligent and in which altruism eventually triumphs over egoism.
• This process is one that people can modify or accelerate, but in the end the laws of progressive development
dictate the development of society.
• Comte's research on social evolution focused on Western Europe, which he viewed as the most highly
developed part of the world during his times.
• Comte believed that positivism could both advance science (theory) and
change the ways people live their lives (practice).
• He argued that the upper classes of his time were far too conservative to
advocate positivistic change.
• Women and the members of the working class, however, were well situated to
advocate positivism and help to implement its programs of change.
• Comte viewed the working class as agents of positivistic change because of
their ties of affection to their families, respect for authority, exposure to
misery, and propensity for self-sacrifice.
• Comte thought of his positivism as a counter-force against communism,
although the latter could provide a foundation for the former.
• Comte thought that women would support his positivist program for
change largely because women, in his view, were more affectionate,
altruistic, and feeling than men.
• He tended to view men as superior in intellectual and practical
matters, and thus better suited to planning and supervising change,
while women are better suited to moral matters.
• Comte did not believe in the equality of the sexes. He saw himself and
his protégés as the "priests of humanity" who would oversee the
religion of positivism.
Class assessment
• Comte’s view of sociological theory
• Comte’s formulation of sociological methods:
Observation
Experimentation
Comparison
Historical Methods
• Comte’s organization of sociology
• Comte’s advocacy of Sociology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIOlHv-JJOY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPJNLYA9ftI

Readings/ text book

• Dillon M (2010) introduction to sociological theory: theorists, Concepts, and

their applicability to the 21th century, 2nd Edition. Wiley Blackwell.
• Turner, J, Beeghley & Powers C (2012). The Emergence of Sociological Theory.
London. Sage.