UNIT 1 - INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

FOUNDING FATHERS OF SOCIOLOGY

AUGUSTE COMTE

● OBJECTIVES OF THIS LECTURE:

- To explore who Auguste Comte was
- To explore his contribution in Sociology
- To explore Three Stages of Growth

IMAGE- AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857)

(Source: The School of Life)
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● In this topic and the next one, we will be discussing the key ideas of
two founding fathers and key thinkers in sociology- Auguste Comte,
and Karl Marx. As part of the classical tradition of sociology, they
laid the foundation of the subject. Their ideas, insights and
perspectives have remained relevant even in the contemporary
period to understand the roots of sociological thought.

● The social conditions of the nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries were of the utmost significance to the development of
sociology. The changes that were brought by the French Revolution,
the Industrial Revolution, Enlightenment and the shattering of the
traditional ways of life brought by these factors resulted in the
attempts by thinkers at the time to develop a new understanding of
both social and natural worlds.

● There were many contributors to early sociological thinking but

prominence is given to Auguste Comte because he invented the
term ‘Sociology’ which he earlier referred to as Social Physics. His
thinking reflected the turbulent times of his age, particularly
changes ushered by the French Revolution, Industrial Revolution
and the intellectual changes brought by the period of
Enlightenment (Giddens).
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BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF AUGUSTE COMTE

● Auguste Comte (1798–1857) was born into an aristocratic

Catholic family in France.

● At the age of 16, he enrolled in Ecole Polytechnique, a famous

school of France at that time.

● He studied science and for many years was the private secretary
and collaborator of Claude Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), who
emphasized an observation- based, positivist social scientific
method. He is known as “the father of ‘Sociology”.

● He was a French philosopher who is also considered to be the

father of sociology, the study of the development and function of
human society, and of positivism, a means of using scientific
evidence to discern causes for human behavior.

● Many scholars and thinkers at the time of Auguste Comte were

concerned about the rapid changes that were ushered by
modernity, revolutions, and intellectual movements like the
Enlightenment. Auguste Comte too was concerned to understand
human society but to prescribe a system by which we could make
order out of the chaos, and thus change society for the better.

● The Enlightenment’s affirmation of scientific rationality, and the

notion of social authority derived from a social contract among
individuals in society rather than from divine prescription, paved
the way for the emergence of sociology as an intellectual discipline.
Auguste Comte (1798–1857), the figure most associated with the
initial establishment of sociology, embraced the Enlightenment’s
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scientific approach and adapted it to the study of human society.

Comte was a French philosopher, and truly a child of the
Enlightenment. He believed that a science of society was not only
possible but necessary to social progress.

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AUGUSTE COMTE’S POSITIVISM- CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIOLOGY

● In 1822, when Comte (with Saint Simon) conceived the necessity of

a new science, he wrote, ‘we possess now a celestial physics, a
terrestrial physics, either mechanical or chemical, a vegetable
physics and an animal physics; we still want one more and last one,
social physics, to complete the system of our knowledge of nature. I
understand by social physics the science which has for its subject,
the study of social phenomena. According to Comte, the new
science of human society must use the positive method.

● Auguste Comte sought to create a science of society that could

explain laws of the social world just as natural science explained
the functioning of the physical world.

● His Sociology was that of “Positive Science” in which sociology

could apply the same scientific methods to the study of society that
subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Biology did for the physical World.
Therefore, he believed that sociology would approach the social
world the same way like these disciplines did with the same
objectivity, impartiality and systematic attention to the processes
that physical scientists employed.
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● Building on Saint-Simon’s trust in the power of science to produce

calculated order and social progress, Comte believed that sociology
could be the science of humanity.

● Auguste Comte felt that science could be used to study the social
world. Just as there are testable facts regarding gravity and other
natural laws, Comte thought that scientific analyses could also
discover the laws governing our social lives. It was in this context
that Comte introduced the concept of positivism to sociology — a
way to understand the social world based on scientific facts. He
envisioned a process of social change in which sociologists played
crucial roles in guiding society.

● Auguste Comte divided sociology into two main fields, or branches:

social statics, or the study of the forces that hold society together;
and social dynamics, or the study of the causes of ​social change.

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THREE STAGES OF GROWTH

● According to him the three reflect that human efforts to understand

the world have passed through three stages. Auguste Comte
considered sociology to be a true science, which is concerned with
the search of social laws. Based on his belief in social evolution, he
puts forth the law of three stages. According to him, ‘each of our
leading conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes
successively through three different theoretical conditions: the
theological or fictitious, the metaphysical or abstract, and the
scientific or positive’.

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THE THREE STAGES OF GROWTH:

1. THEOLOGICAL STAGE - In this stage society was guided by

religious ideas and on the belief that society was an
expression of God’s will. Priests and the military dominate
this stage. In this stage, man tries to understand the nature of
all beings, origins, and purposes of all effects and the beliefs
that all things are caused by supernatural beings. The
theological stage went through three phases of fetishism,
polytheism, and monotheism.

2. METAPHYSICAL STAGE: In this stage the society was seen in

natural and not supernatural terms.

3. POSITIVE STAGE: This stage is also known as the scientific

stage. This stage started in the beginning of the 19th Century
in which observation predominated over imagination and all
theoretical concepts became positive. The industrial
administrators and scientists dominated this stage. At this
stage, the human mind gives up the futile search for absolute
notions, origin of the universe, and its causes; rather it seeks
to ‘establish scientific principles governing all types of
phenomena.

Some of Auguste Comte’s major Writings:

● The Course on Positive Philosophy (1830-1842)

● A General View of Positivism (1848)

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*Read Anthony Giddens

References:
Bhushan, V., & Sachdeva, D. R. (2012). Fundamentals of sociology.
Pearson Education India.

Crossmen, A. (2011, August 12). Auguste comte and his role in the history
of sociology. ThoughtCo.
https://www.thoughtco.com/auguste-comte-3026485

Giddens, A. (2007). Introduction to sociology (6th ed.).

Wojda, A. (2014, November 13). Auguste comte. The School Of Life.

https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/auguste-comte/

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