define formalistic and synthetic schools of thoughts. give a comparative analysis of both schools of thoughts with the help of suitable examples?
Answers
Opinions of these scholars about the scope of sociology are described below:
(i) Emile Durkheim:
(i) Emile Durkheim:The chief exponent of synthetic school of thought Emile Durkheim opines that the scope of sociology has three main divisions or field of study such as Social Morphology, Social Physiology and general sociology.(a) Social Morphology includes all those subjects which are fundamentally geographic such as population its size, density, distribution, mobility etc. It analyses the size and quality of the population in as much as it affects the qualities of social relationships and social groups.(b) Social Physiology includes all those subjects which are studied by particular social sciences such as religion, language, economy, law etc. In other words social physiology has different branches such as sociology of law, sociology of religion etc. which are regarded as special sociologies. These branches deals with a set of social facts related to different social groups.(c) General Sociology is the philosophical part of Sociology. It aims at discovering the general character of social facts and to formulate general social laws.
(ii) L.T. Hobhouse:
According to him Sociology is a synthesis of social sciences but the immediate task of Sociologist is threefold such as (a) one must pursue his studies in his particular part of the social field (b) keeping in mind the interconnections of social relations one should try to interconnect the results arrived at by different social sciences (c)Sociologist should interpret social lifeas a whole