Follow-up & A Few Lecture Notes

FOLLOW-UP:
One final comment about "social realism" vs. "nominalism," referred to in the first of those propositions about society, which I commented on yesterday (Tues., 2/22) in class: remember that I drew a parallel with the debate between the Catholic Church (representing the "social realist" point of view -- that the Church is a reality over and above individual followers) and the Protestant Reformation (representing the "nominalist" view -- that the individual believer is the foundation). Proposition #8 from that same handout alludes to this as well. Check it out.

A FEW LECTURE NOTES: In order to get a head start on covering Auguste Comte tomorrow, I am going to post some of my lecture notes on his biography and his notion of the "hierarchy of the sciences."

Auguste Comte (1798-1857)

A. Overall, Comte's biography does not sound like someone credited with founding a whole new scientific discipline, especially when the authors suggest his love life may have inspired his "Religion of Humanity" idea. Whether or not there is any truth to that, I would still maintain that his advocacy of this new religion was logically consistent with his view of the "Law of Human Progress," or Law of Societal Evolution. Where he may have "gone off the rails," so to speak, was in preaching it or regarding himself as the "high priest" of this new religion.

1. In his favor, I would point out that Comte was a very precocious child and his education in all of the sciences was very broad and deep. In fact, he supported himself as a tutor in mathematics. He never had a regular job in academia -- he was on the outside looking in, which may have contributed to his strident tone.

B. Like Saint-Simon, Comte believed that a new science was needed to discover invariable social laws that applied to society. He, of course, dubbed this new science "sociology" and believed it would rightfully take its place at the top of the HIERARCY OF THE SCIENCES. (see, mid. p. 39)

1. That hierarchy began with the "most general, simple, abstract and remote phenomena known to us" (math & astronomy) and it increasingly became more complex, concrete, and synthetic -- also "more interesting to man." (at the high end, biology, physiology, and social physics or sociology).

a.) Each science in the hierarchy builds on the sciences that precede it.

2. Sociology and biology are closely connected because they deal with life and are synthetic sciences -- i.e., examine the parts of any phenomena in relation to the whole.

3. Another similarity with biology (and Saint-Simon) is that Comte saw society as an ORGANIC phenomenon, and as with any living, organic thing, "there must be a spontaneous harmony between the whole and the parts of the social system." (pp. 39-40)

C. "Comte advocated that sociology be concerned with the discovery of the most general, most fundamental social laws. Such laws would indicate the ways in which society could be changed. That is, sociology could determine what IS, what WILL BE, and what SHOULD BE, because it discovers what conforms to human nature." (p. 40) And, as the authors observe, this is no modest claim.

1. "The sociologist is spontaneously the prophet of the new order and a scientist employing an objective methodology." (p. 40)

D. They proceed to outline four methods for learning about social phenomena that Comte employed, which are all very general and obviously overlap: Observation, Experiment (which is really mislabeled because what is described is a far-cry from a classical experiment), Comparison, Historical Analysis.

1. Let me just highlight a couple observations here, that really characterize Comte's methodology --

a.) "No social fact can have any scientific meaning (or any meaning, really) till it is connected with some other social fact." (i.e., nothing stands alone; explanation is basically about unraveling the meaning of facts as they relate to the larger reality of which they are a part. (p. 40)

b.) "...that (the) chief quality of sociological science, (is) its proceeding from the whole to the parts." (p. 41) (or, forest to the trees)

E. Underlying this methodology and the whole new science of sociology is (what the text neglects to label) his SOCIAL REALISM -- "...the idea that society has a 'real' existence with properties separate from, and different from, those of the individuals who make it up."

1. Citing a critical theorist by the name of Marcuse, the authors suggest that such a position means that individual human beings are absent from Comte's sociology. (I disagree. It is not that they are absent, but that who they are or what they are is defined in the context of society. Society is the starting point, not the individual.)
_________________________

That brings us up to Comte's "Law of Human Progress" or Law of Societal Evolution, which is where I'll start tomorrow. Be sure to incorporate the above notes in your class notes.