Who is the founder of sociology
Founding Fathers of Sociology
hello again everyone it's been a bit of
time since we've had a sociology video
on this page but we're going to add a
new one today and the topic of this one
is going to be on the founding fathers
of sociology so we're going to look at
how sociology came to be as its own
discipline kind of the context behind
that as well as the ways in which the
early sociologists impacted the study of
sociology and how we continue to do it
today also I'm going to throw this out
there right away if anyone can get me
this shirt you'll be my best friend of
all time and I'll give you some candy or
something but this shirts awesome so get
it for me thanks in advance all right to
our central questions we have two of
them in this particular video why do
people consider sociology a science in
other words what makes a discipline a
science and we'll see that with
sociology and then second how did early
sociologists help define the science of
sociology so what kind of ideas thoughts
concepts did they create that became the
foundation for that discipline so before
we get into the actual father's
themselves we need to look at how
sociology became an educational
discipline compared to other disciplines
especially in the social sciences
sociology is really young in fact we
didn't start to see sociology emerge
until 18th the 18th and 19th centuries
in Europe why might that be
well one major event and hopefully you
remember back to your world history days
but a major event in the history of
mankind especially in Europe was the
Industrial Revolution where we see a
rise in a factory based industrial
economy so we see factories we see
cities rising which is this next one we
see all of these different things being
created that created an entirely new
society especially with the creation of
social inequalities the third reason we
start to see this emerge in the 18th and
19th centuries is because at this time
there is an explosion of new ideas about
democracy and political rights also
thinking back to your world history
think about the Enlightenment this time
when people were questioning absolute
rule and then also these these pretty
violence oftentimes social revolutions
that changed the way a lot of people
look at society so these are the origins
of the science that we call sociology
but now we're going to take a look at
the guys who really made it what it is
the first is this dashing gentleman
right here his name is Auguste Comte
he was a French social thinker and he's
considered to be the quote father of
sociology mostly because he's the one
who actually coined the term okay when
we talk about ologies any kind of ology
biology it's the study of something and
he since there wasn't really anything
like this at his time he said I want to
study society we'll call it sociology
the study of society so we can we can
attribute that term to him his big
contribution to the field itself that we
still see today is the idea of
positivism which is understanding
society based on science compte believed
that society has its own laws much like
the physical world has its own laws
think about gravity and stuff like that
he says society operates in a very
similar fashion and other sociologists
have disagreed with him but this is a
pretty key concept in creating the
science of sociology the other part
about positivism positivism is that we
need to make sure that the knowledge we
have is knowledge that we know for sure
in other words we can be positive of it
so we can't really say something is true
until we found that it's that's true
which is a big component of science
compte also studied something called
social dynamics and along with that
social statics looking at two different
things first how society changes and
then secondly how society stays the same
and different sociologists look at
different things so how does order
created and how does how do things
change in our society the second guy
with the awesome sideburns there is a
guy named Herbert Spencer very
controversial figure in the study of
sociology
he was an English sociologist the big
part that he said about how societies
formed is that society is like the human
body much like the human body has
different parts and all those parts work
together to make the human being
function Society has something very
similar the example he gives here is
just as the heart and eyes help body
function social institutions like
religion education whatever it might be
help society function so it is the sum
of all these different parts and they
all work together however the thing that
Spencer is most known for that's very
controversial is his idea of social
Darwinism hopefully you've heard of
Darwin before Charles
one who studied the theory of evolution
especially with his finches in the
Galapagos Islands Herbert Spencer took
that theory and he kind of twisted it a
little bit it's kind of a distorted view
of of Darwin's theory but he took
natural selection did it the survive the
strongest will survive things like that
he and he applied that to society he
applied that to people all right we call
it social Darwinism so he believed that
the strongest members of a society
should not help the weaker ones because
the stronger ones are strong for a
reason the weaker ones are weak for a
reason so the rich deserve to be rich
the poor deserve to be poor and if we
have that it creates a stronger society
we should let the sick let the weak let
the homeless the people in poverty let
those people go away because it makes
our society as a whole
stronger so as you can probably imagine
this is a very controversial topic the
third one I'm guessing you've heard of
before in world history is a guy named
Karl Marx great again another great
beard he was a German economist
sociologist among many other things but
as far as sociology goes he's best known
for looking at conflict in society and
he argued that no matter where you are
in society there is always some kind of
struggle going on and usually it has to
do with valued resources whether it's
countries going to war whether there's
rivalries between schools whether
there's an ax fight between two people
at school Marx would look at all of that
and say look our society is full of
conflict everywhere we go specifically
he talked about class conflict according
to Marx there were two social classes
the proletariat and the bourgeoisie okay
to kind of long fancy words but the
proletariat according to Marx were the
workers who sold their labor for wages
so they're the ones that worked in these
new factories that were created in an
industrial revolution the Persian huazi
are the owners of those factories the
owners of those means of production and
Marx said that those two are always
conflicting with each other and that
they're never going to be able to get
along he actually predicted that
eventually the proletariat would rise up
and overthrow the bourgeoisie the
workers would overthrow the owners which
is kind of the foundation for communism
which again is part of our modern world
today even though it's kind of gone away
in the
the last 50 years or so Marx also
rejected the idea of individualism which
is a pretty significant concept he
called it false consciousness often
times people blame individuals for the
flaws of society like there's some bad
eggs or whatever it might be
Marx believed that the system itself
should be considered the cause of social
problems the system in other words
creates the problems not the individuals
themselves and that's something we'll
debate later on our next founding father
is Gandhi here named Emile Durkheim and
he was a French sociologist credited
with and and even though Kampf T's is
credited with the creation of the word
sociology Durkheim was really the one
that's credited with making an academic
discipline something that could be
studied in schools colleges universities
whatever it might have been and he
believed that society exists beyond
ourselves and he has a famous quote here
to love society is to love something
beyond us and something in ourselves
it's kind of a complicated quote when
you break it down it really makes sense
Durkheim said that society is beyond the
individual society was here before we
were here any individuals were here it
shapes us while we are on this earth and
even after we die long after we die
society can still continues to shape
people's lives so our personalities are
created by the societies we live in so
that quote where it says something in
ourselves
he argued that society is in us it's
part of who we are because it shaped our
personalities okay so it's beyond us but
it's also within us
he was also big on qualitative data
collection we'll talk more about this
later on he was the first to use the
scientific method to create sociological
experiments okay and we start to see
data being collected to create social
realities for example dirt kind of spent
a lot of his time studying the concept
of suicide and he tied that concept of
suicide into another major concept that
you definitely need to know it's called
social integration Durkheim said that
the degree to which an individual is
connected to society will effect
the self-destructive behaviors a person
engages in so if someone who has very
weak social ties that person is far more
likely to go through self-destructive
behaviors including suicide he also
looked at famous people or we've used
his ideas to look at famous people and
to see why famous people commit suicide
and you take a look at the chart here
this is an example of quantitative data
how we use numbers in order to create
social realities for example we see here
that men have much higher suicide rates
than women and it also varies within
their different race and ethnic groups
so that is something that Durkheim would
have looked at and we help we also use
the quantitative data to help us figure
that out he also said that an
individual's desires must be balanced by
the guidance of a society so there
should be a balance between what the
individual wants and what society thinks
is appropriate and if you can't find
that balance which honestly it can be
very hard to find sometimes that's when
you start to see very deviant behaviors
very evil people being created those
types of things and lastly but certainly
not least we have Max Weber even though
his name has a W he's Germans who
pronounce that W as a V he was a German
scholar and sociologist and the big
thing that he contributed to us is the
idea of interpretive sociology if you
remember back we talked about compte the
idea that that society was governed by
laws there were social laws weber kind
of disagreed because he said that these
realities are created by people
themselves and as sociologists it's our
job to figure out what those realities
really mean and unlike Durkheim who has
began quantitative data weber used
qualitative data so more observation
looking at the people around you looking
at different social situations and
figuring out the construction that we've
made in those particular areas one of
the most famous contributions he made to
sociology is called verstehen which is a
german word that basically translates
into what we consider you probably heard
this phrase before putting yourself in
someone else's shoes Weber believed that
in order to truly understand the people
you're studying in order to truly
understand the social situation you have
to put yourself in that situation
and immerse yourself in that particular
situation only then according to
verstehen is when you realize the social
realities that exist in those places
finally he created the idea of
rationalization basically
rationalization is the idea that our
society has shifted and a lot of that is
because of what happened in Industrial
Revolution he says that modern society
is based on the use of knowledge reason
and planning rather than what it used to
be which was tradition and superstition
examples of this if you think about it
people are willing to accept new
technology and modern societies because
we have this idea this knowledge of what
it can do and the reason the reasonable
idea that whatever this technology is is
going to improve our lives people who
don't believe in rationalization would
say would be afraid of things like
computers or cell phones because it
would ruin the traditional ways of life
but rationalization according to Weber
is what our society today is based on
knowledge reason planning ok and there
you have it even though there are
countless other individuals who have
made really significant contributions to
the field of sociology these are the
five that we are going to ask you to
know going forward and the ones that
really got this study going now that
you've watched this video make sure
you've completed your chart we also have
the quiz on Schoology to take and you
can take as many times as you need in
order to show that you understand some
of the key concepts from the video
thanks guys have a good one
