Discuss the emergence of sociology.
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Emergency of Sociology:
Sociology has a long past, but only a short history. The study of human society in scientific way is said to have begun with August Comte. The emergence of sociology as a discipline of academic interest is of recent origin. Its emergence as a discipline can be attributed to the vast changes that took place in the nineteenth century.
Various strains and tendencies, some intellectual and some social, combined to-form the science of sociology. To quote Bottom ore, “The conditions which gave rise to sociology were both intellectual and social”.
The chief intellectual antecedents of sociology are summed up by Ginsberg in the following words: Broadly it may be said that sociology has had a fourfold origin in political philosophy, the philosophy of history, biological theories of evolution and the movements for social and political reform which found it necessary to undertake survey of social conditions.
Over the time, there had grown the intellectual tradition described as the historical tradition or the philosophy of history, which believed the general idea of progress. To combat the influence of theology on history, the thinkers of the Enlightenments introduced the idea of causality into history of philosophy, elaborated the theory of progress. But philosophy of history as a distinct branch of speculation is a creation eighteenth century.
The philosophical historians introduced the new conception of society as something more than the political society’ or the State. They were concerned with the whole range of social institution and made a distinction between the State and what they called ‘civil society’.
They were concerned with discussions of the nature of society, classification of societies into types, population, family, Government, morality and law etc. In the early part of the nineteenth century the philosophy of history became an important intellectual influence through the writings of Hegel and Saint-Simon. The features of writings of philosophical historian reappeared in the nineteenth century, in the works of Comte and Spencer.
“A second important element in modern sociology” to quote Bottom ore is provided by social survey which itself has two sources. The first was the growing conviction of the applicability of the methods of natural sciences to the study of human affairs.
The second was the movement for social and political reforms which made it necessary to undertake surveys of social problems like poverty which arose in the industrial societies of Western Europe. The social survey came to occupy an important place in the new science of society and it was one of the principal methods of sociological enquiThese intellectual movements, the philosophy of history, and the social survey were themselves the product of social settings of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Western Europe. The Philosophy of history was not merely a child of thought. It was born of two revolutions, the Industrial Revolution and the Political Revolutions in France. Similarly, the social survey emerged from a new conception of evils of industrial society.
All intellectual fields are profoundly shaped by their social setting. This is particularly true of sociology, which is not only derived from that setting but takes the social setting as its basic subject matter. We will focus briefly on few of the most important social conditions of nineteenth and early twentieth century that were of type utmost significant in the development of sociology.
The long series of revolutions ushered in by French Revolution in 1789 and carrying over through the nineteenth century, and the Industrial Revolution were the important factors in the development of sociology. The upheaval of French revolution was a turning point in the history of thinking about society. It was also largely responsible for the development of Sociology.
According to Berger and Berger, So is one of the intellectual products of the French Revolution. The impact of these revolutions on many societies was enormous and many changes were resulted which were positive in nature. But these revolutions have also brought about social changes which had negative effects.
The negative effects of social change brought by French Revolution manifested in forms of chaos and disorder. Similarly, Industrial Revolution brought many social problems and evils such as labour-capital dispute, the problem of housing, increasing concentrations of people in urban areas etc.
The chaos and disorder resulted by political revolutions in France and the problems unleashed by tremendous changes brought by the industrialisation led to the study of social problems and to find new bases of order in societies. The interest in the issue of social order was one of the major concern of August Comte who created sociology as a separate science.