Why did Auguste Comte consider his newly discovered discipline sociology the “queen of the social sciences?
1) “Auguste Comte revived the term ‘social physics’, suggesting thereby that society was best studied along the model of physics. Thus, to study society, one had to be scientific in the sense that the study should be confined “to the study of real facts without seeking to know their first causes or final purpose” (page 12). In the period 1850-1914, clear divisions emerged between the disciplines belonging to the social sciences. There were five main places where these disciplines were institutionalised: “Great Britain, France, the Germanies, the Italies and the United States.” Five disciplines were accepted as belonging to social sciences. These were history, economics, sociology, political science and anthropology. A tradition of history was already present in some form and it became the first discipline among these five to attain a degree of autonomy. History also offered a striking parallel with the natural sciences. Just as natural sciences attempted to explain the world as it ‘rea
1) “Auguste Comte revived the term ‘social physics’, suggesting thereby that society was best studied along the model of physics. Thus, to study society, one had to be scientific in the sense that the study should be confined “to the study of real facts without seeking to know their first causes or final purpose” (page 12). In the period 1850-1914, clear divisions emerged between the disciplines belonging to the social sciences. There were five main places where these disciplines were institutionalised: “Great Britain, France, the Germanies, the Italies and the United States.” Five disciplines were accepted as belonging to social sciences. These were history, economics, sociology, political science and anthropology. A tradition of history was already present in some form and it became the first discipline among these five to attain a degree of autonomy. History also offered a striking parallel with the natural sciences. Just as natural sciences attempted to explain the world as it ‘rea
Comte was obsessed by the idea to classify sciences. But I am not quite sure he would have said that sociology was the queen of social sciences. From his point of view, there was a only one social science and it was sociology. But he may have aimed his remark to statistics which another scientist of the time – Quetelet – was putting forward under the name of social physics. And Comte actually was of the opinion that statistics are pure non-sciences.
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