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Sociological Thought

notes

Did You Know? The word sociology first time used by the August Comte in 1839.

This extraordinarily talented and able social thinker, Comte died in 1857, but his infinite labour and
thoughts have not died out, nor will they die out. Whatever Sociology is today, is because Comte gave
his life and labour to lay the foundations of this science, and he nurtured it with such determination
that this foundation will never break, sink or shake.

Task To what extent were Comte’s thoughts influenced by the contemporary
renaissance?

Harry Elmer Warnes has written that, “social philosophy students of Comte most by accept that,
Comte’s main contribution besides original social theories was his extraordinary ability for organiztions
and unification.” Warnes has proven this in his writing and says that Comte has taken a lot from
social, philosophical writers right from Aristotle to St. Simon. These claims become even clearer by
the examples given below:
The foundation of social organizations and its related fundamental ideas were taken from Aristotle.
The foundation of social organization is the delegation of work/activities, and united action in a
clear manner. Only when activities of social life are delegated distributed and members co-operate
together to work in such a way that social organizations are possible. In other words actions of two
or three members is not sufficient to make an organization. The active efforts of the ordinary man
and the members in necessary. On this basics Comte has developed his idea of social unification. We
will discuss this later. In a similar way, Comte took the idea of factual representation from Human,
Kant and Gaul. From Humne, Kant and Turgoat, he took the idea of historical decisiveness, and
from Bussey, Wico and Moustry he took the idea of historically destined systems, and its unrelated
theories. Not only this Turgot, Konderset, Burdin and St. Simon gave Comte the idea that human
beings intellectually developed into three levels. This rule will be discussed later.

Notes Comte accepted Sociology as a fundamental and directive science. This acceptance
of his is influenced by St. Pierre, Montesque, Konderset and St. Simon.

Instead of trying to present original and new ideas, Compte always attempted to present and unified
the ideas of great thinkers, and was aware that these ideas should be given a scientific basis. Remaining
true and steady to this scientific foundation, and studying Sociology and social events scientifically
so that social organizations can work systematically well, and society can progress.
Comte’s fundamental methodological state is that if human knowledge expanses in the future, it will be
possible on the basis of the scientific methodology of the comparative study and inspection – research
of evidences. This knowledge will be the foundation–stone on which will be build the intellectual and
moral/ethical unity of all members of society.
The idea of classification of the sciences that Comte took from St. Simon, was the basis on which he
presented as a layer of sciences. This begins with Mathematics, going through astronomy, physics,
chemistry and biology, it arrives and ends at the new science of Sociology. We will discuss this in
detail later.

10 LoVeLY professionaL uniVersitY