Sociology: Unit One

• The Scientific Revolution, which occurred circa 1650–1800, is also known as the Enlightenment Period.
• August Comte, a positivist, believed that understanding the inner workings of society is to understand how human thinking has changed.
• Positivism represents objective, scientific approaches, which is the basis of the scientific revolution.
• A chair is a chair and this cannot be debated.
• There exists an objective and knowable reality.
• There is no room in science for value judgments, all science is equally important.
• Anti-positivism represents a subjective approach.
• The social world cannot be understood solely through numbers and formulas.
• No single methodological approach, i.e., science, can reach a complete understanding of our world.
• Science cannot be separated from our values.
• These are part of the positive stage where science is used to interpret the world.
• The Political Revolution, which occurred around 1800, marked a separation between the church and state, allowing society to endorse democratic principles.
• Democracy, citizenship, and self-awareness are marks of this period and the thinkers associated with it: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.
• The Political Revolution led to the establishment of individual rights and social responsibility, equality of opportunity, and the political ideology of democracy, as evidenced by the French Revolution.
• The Industrial Revolution, which occurred around 1850, marked the shift from agriculture to capitalism and urbanization as our dominant means of supporting ourselves and our families.
• Urbanization brought with it a host of social problems, including inadequate housing, crowding, unsanitary conditions, poverty, pollution, and crime.
• Understanding the problems of urbanization (class conflict) problems contributed to the birth of sociology.
• Auguste Comte's Law of Three Stages includes the Theological Stage where science is used to discover God's intentions and the religious outlook on society, the Metaphysical Stage where questions are asked about society and challenges the power of the Church, and the Positive Stage where science is used to interpret the world, guided by the rules of observation, experimentation, and logic.
• Auguste Comte's criticism of human thinking is that it cannot develop further and is very narrow and self-serving.
• Karl Marx believed that people were forced into competition with others because of the material changes brought about by the accumulation of wealth in early agricultural societies, and in capitalist societies, there is a power imbalance.
• Émile Durkheim believed that people wanted to work together for collective benefit, and that low levels of social integration and regulation were a source of various social problems, including rising deviance and suicide rates.
• Max Weber believed that people are becoming more focused on selecting the most efficient means to accomplish any particular end, and how motivated are you to do outside readings about sociology that will not necessarily help you achieve a higher grade?
• George Herbert Mead believed that the individual mind and self rise out of the social process of communication, effectively becoming ourselves through social interaction, a theory known as symbolic interactionism.
• Charles Horton Cooley believed that people define themselves, at least in part, by how others view them, a theory known as the "looking glass self".
• Herbert Blumer believed that meaning, language, and thought are how people create their sense of self within the larger social world.
• Thomas Hobbs posits that man is corrupt by self-interest and greed, and our natural state of the world is a brutal existence of competition and fear.
• According to Hobbs, people are responsible and accountable for the society they created.
• Hobbs believes that the government exists to preserve an individual's rights to achieve self-interests.
• John Locke's Tabula Rase (Blank Slate) theory states that humans are born with a blank slate and gain knowledge and memories with experience.
• Locke also believes that God granted certain rights to people and the role of the government is to preserve individual rights.
• John Locke is an avocate of individual freedom and speech.
• Charles Montesquieu posits that people did not define or create society, but rather humans are created and defined by society.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau advocates for a society that most closely resembles our primitive condition, which unlike Hobbes’ dark view, saw people existing in symbiotic and idyllic relationships based on equality.
• The Enlightenment period, known as the age of reason, represents the advent of independent thought and individual questioning versus accepting and being directed by more theological explanations of behaviour, society, and social interactions.
• The Enlightenment period made it possible for sociology to develop into what it is today.
• James, author of Beyond a Boundary (1963), an autobiographical reflection on his experience with cricket and its links with British imperialism in Trinidad contributed to the growing anti-colonial struggle.
• Social inequality is based on social differences established by humans (e.g., education, income, status, wealth).
• Herbert Spencer is best known for coining the term survival of the fittest and for his application of the principles of biological evolution to human societies, referred to as social Darwinism.
• Spencer’s concept of social Darwinism states that societies evolve just as biological organisms do.
• The belief that it is best to leave things alone and let them take care of themselves is called a laissez-faire approach.