PSY 446 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Francis Bacon, The Sociological Imagination, Auguste Comte
3 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
The Sociological Imagination
SOC 101: Introduction to Sociology
Week 1: Thinking Sociologically
A Discipline Born of Chaos
As a formal discipline, sociology began in Europe during the 19th century
● Historical context – modernity
● Industrial capitalism and class conflict
● Urbanization and shifting demographics
● Political revolution
● Modern science
Industrial Capitalism
● •Economic transformation from agriculture to manufacturing
● •Lack of regulation led to deplorable working conditions
•Rapid development of new technologies threatened job security
Urbanization
● •Rapid growth of cities, especially between 1800 and 1900
● •London – from 900K to 4.7M
● •Paris – from 600K to 3.6M
● •Berlin – from 170K to 2.7M
● •Development of infrastructure lagged
● •Political Revolution
● •Contractarian political philosophy
● •John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
● •Government should be legitimate and thus consensual – democratic, not autocratic
● •French Revolution (1788-1789)
● •Sociology
● •Early sociologists like Auguste Comte (1798-1857) sought to make sense of this upheaval
● •What holds society together?
● •Used the knowledge-producing tools of the day, science
● •Modern Science
● •Scientific Revolution – 16th and 17th centuries
● •Empiricism
● •Sir Francis Bacon – Scientific method
● •The intellectual groundwork for the Enlightenment
● •Law of Three Stages
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
As a formal discipline, sociology began in europe during the 19th century. Industrial capitalism: economic transformation from agriculture to manufacturing, lack of regulation led to deplorable working conditions, rapid development of new technologies threatened job security. 1. theological led by religious authority and doctrine. 3. positive, or scientific led by scientists, including sociologists. Sociology is the scientific study of social life the interactions and relations among human beings: initially called social physics, comte coined the term sociology in 1842, socius- ( companion in greek) Imagination (1959: the sociological imagination, a quality of mind that allows its possessor to grasp the interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and world , two elements . Personal troubles of milieu: individual problems affect individuals, not groups, the statement and resolution of troubles properly lie within the individual as a biographical entity and within the scope of his immediate milieu .
