sociology, scientific study of human social behavior. As the study of humans in their collective aspect, sociology is concerned with all group activities—economic, social, political, and religious. Sociologists study such areas as bureaucracy, community, deviant behavior, family, public opinion, social change, social mobility, social stratification, and such specific problems as crime, divorce, child abuse, and substance addiction. Sociology tries to determine the laws governing human behavior in social contexts; it is sometimes distinguished as a general social science from the special social sciences, such as economics and political science, which confine themselves to a selected group of social facts or relations.

The Evolution of Sociology

A number of Western political theorists and philosophers, including Plato, Polybius, Machiavelli, Vico, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, have treated political problems in a broader social context. Thus Montesquieu regarded the political forms of different states as a consequence of the working of deep underlying climatic, geographic, economic, and psychological factors. In the 18th cent., Scottish thinkers made inquiries into the nature of society; scholars like Adam Smith explored the economic causes of social organization and social change, while Adam Ferguson considered the noneconomic causes of social cohesion.

It was not until the 19th cent., however, when the concept of society was finally separated from that of the state, that sociology developed into an independent study. The term sociology was coined (1838) by Auguste Comte Comte, Auguste (ōgüst` kôNt)
..... Click the link for more information. . He attempted to analyze all aspects of cultural, political, and economic life and to identify the unifying principles of society at each stage of human social development. Herbert Spencer Spencer, Herbert, 1820–1903, English philosopher, b. Derby. He projected a vast 10-volume work, Synthetic Philosophy, in which all phenomena are interpreted according to the principle of evolutionary progress.
..... Click the link for more information. applied the principles of Darwinian evolution to the development of human society in his popular and controversial Principles of Sociology (1876–96). An important stimulus to sociological thought came from the work of Karl Marx Marx, Karl, 1818–83, German social philosopher, the chief theorist of modern socialism and communism .

Early Life

Marx's father, a lawyer, converted from Judaism to Lutheranism in 1824.
..... Click the link for more information. , who emphasized the economic basis of the organization of society and its division into classes and saw in the class struggle the main agent of social progress.

The founders of the modern study of sociology were Émile Durkheim Durkheim, Émile (dûrk`hīm, Fr. āmēl` dürkĕm`), 1858–1917, French sociologist.
..... Click the link for more information. and Max Weber Weber, Max (mäks vā`bər), 1864–1920, German sociologist, economist, and political scientist.
..... Click the link for more information. . Durkheim pioneered in the use of empirical evidence and statistical material in the study of society. Weber's major contribution was as a theorist, and his generalizations about social organization and the relation of belief systems, including religion, to social action are still influential. He developed the use of the ideal type—a working model, based on the selective combination of certain elements of historical fact or current reality—as a tool of sociological analysis. In the United States the study of sociology was pioneered and developed by Lester Frank Ward Ward, Lester Frank, 1841–1913, American sociologist and paleontologist, b. Joliet, Ill. Largely self-educated, he eventually took degrees in medicine and law.
..... Click the link for more information. and William Graham Sumner Sumner, William Graham, 1840–1910, American sociologist and political economist, b. Paterson, N.J., grad. Yale, 1863, and studied in Germany, in Switzerland, and at Oxford.
..... Click the link for more information. .

The most important theoretical sociology in the 20th cent. has moved in three directions: conflict theory, structural-functional theory, and symbolic interaction theory. Conflict theory draws heavily on the work of Karl Marx and emphasizes the role of conflict in explaining social change; prominent conflict theorists include Ralf Dahrendorf and C. Wright Mills. Structural-functional theory, developed by Talcott Parsons Parsons, Talcott, 1902–79, American sociologist, b. Colorado Springs, Colo., educated at Amherst College (B.A., 1924), London School of Economics, and Univ. of Heidelberg (Ph.D., 1927). He was on the faculty at Harvard from 1927 until his retirement in 1974.
..... Click the link for more information. and advanced by Robert Merton Merton, Robert King, 1910–2003, American sociologist, b. Philadelphia as Meyer Schkolnick, grad. Temple Univ. (A.B., 1931) and Harvard (M.A., 1932; Ph.D., 1936). From 1941 on he was a professor of sociology at Columbia Univ.
..... Click the link for more information. , assumes that large social systems are characterized by homeostasis, or "steady states." The theory is now often called "conservative" in its orientation. Symbolic interaction, begun by George Herbert Mead and further developed by Herbert Blumer and others, focuses on subjective perceptions or other symbolic processes of communication.

Bibliography

See P. Sorokin, Contemporary Sociological Theories (1928, repr. 1964); R. Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition (1966); R. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (enl. ed. 1968); G. D. Mitchell, A Hundred Years of Sociology (1968); H. Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism (1969); J. H. Abraham, The Origins and Growth of Sociology (1973); J. E. Goldthorpe, An Introduction to Sociology (1974); L. Broom et al., Essentials of Sociology (3d ed. 1984); W. Feigelman, Sociology Full Circle (1989).

sociology

Science of society, social institutions, and social relationships, and specifically the systematic study of the development, structure, interaction, and collective behaviour of organized human groups. It emerged at the end of the 19th century through the work of Émile Durkheim in France, Max Weber and Georg Simmel in Germany, and Robert E. Park and Albion Small in the U.S. Sociologists use observational techniques, surveys and interviews, statistical analysis, controlled experiments, and other methods to study subjects such as the family, ethnic relations, schooling, social status and class, bureaucracy, religious movements, deviance, the elderly, and social change.