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Introduction: Origins of Sociological Theory

Social life has always been subjected to inquiry and critical probing throughout history. It has been a human drive to push the boundaries of knowledge further, to come out of ignorance, the basic motivation being to explore the secrets of life. Much before the organization of knowledge in systemic form about social life, thinking human beings — from great sages and saints to social reformers have had incisive contemplation of their social environment. The advent of sociological theory is just a little more than a couple of centuries old. But it is preceded by a long history of sociological thinking. So we have a ‘pre-history’ of sociological theory contributed by the sharpest jural-religious thinkers to philosophers of great antiquity. The common thread of all such mostly speculative as well as incisive thinking is to seek answers to the organizing principles of social living. The twin concerns as to how a society holds meanings for its people and how to make such living better, have remained the core of every social thought and thinking.

FROM SPECULATIVE TO DEFINITIVE

Early social thinking, however profound, had very little to engage with in any empirical evidence. Sociology as a distinctive discipline developed out of all such social thoughts and ideas at a particular historical juncture of human civilization. The point of departure was marked by an age which sought the causes and the connections between things. Quite evidently, then, sociological theory is a product of the modern era. The rise of scientific thinking dominated human thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the West. Sociological theory is a product of such a turn in human knowledge. It is the rise of science that changed the cognitive faculty of people vis-à-vis the conditions of their own lives. Science inculcated a spirit of observation and gathering of empirical knowledge. The objective was to settle with causal relationships that exist between events and occurrences of the social world. Sociological theory, then, is historically located at this fundamental turn of human history. As a theory it would always seek causal explanations which could be verified, tested and repeated with respect to the empirical reality.

Unlike the popular notion about ‘theory’ as removed from hard facts, it actually is based on facts. More appropriately speaking, both empirical data and theory work with each other in any scientific enterprise. Classical sociological theories were all grounded in the scientific tradition. Going a step further, one can say that sociological theory is grounded in the tradition of an assertion of social patterns which pre-exist and a belief that scientific study of such pattern/order could bring out general abstract ‘laws’ when based upon empirical study. The task of a theory is to come up with a statement that explains the meaningfulness between observed phenomena; the phenomena in turn being captured through concepts. Obviously, this marked a break from earlier philosophical and speculative thinking on society.

It is not that we all got to know about society only with the coming of sociological thinkers. We have had prior knowledge about society but sociological theory signalled the emergence of systematic knowledge about social life. It is based on an epistemology which held that the best knowledge was that which was premised on logic and evidence. The importance of logic and rational thought as well as of empirical evidence marks the new bent of human thought. All these were directed to think afresh and challenge ‘beliefs’ which dominated orthodox living and in turn, it often went against the most venerated traditions.

AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

To trace the origin and character of sociological theory we are led to acknowledge the impact of both the social and intellectual currents of Europe. It constituted the backdrop of the development of sociology as a distinctive intellectual activity. While the impact of the industrial and revolutionary democratic revolutions served as the social milieu, the Enlightenment thoughts at the turn of the eighteenth century provided the intellectual backdrop. At the level of ideas and worldview the Enlightenment signalled a dramatic break from age-old ideas and beliefs. The so-called medieval period of darkness and ignorance was replaced by a period of Enlightenment — an enlightened realization of reason and rationality as the key to all human and social progress.

The specific discoveries of the seventeenth century actually heralded the modern way of looking at the world. The root of sociology is easily traceable to the philosophers and scientists of the Age of Reason and of Rationality. Opposed to the hold of traditional and religious authority over knowledge, the thinkers of Enlightenment hailed the importance of critical reasoning and liberal individualism. An abiding faith in the power of human reason marked the age in Europe. Such ideas of progress and liberalism developed a new mode of looking at the world. A new attitude invited a new method of thought in every sphere of life. Existing beliefs and thoughts were put to scrutiny by various scholars across disciplines. French political philosopher, Charles de Montesquieu and the French writer, Voltaire led the way to liberate human thought from medieval ignorance and ignite the critical faculty in social inquiry.

It is also to be noted that sociology is claimed to inherit a dual tradition. According to Robert Nisbet (1967), while on one hand the radical–liberal ideas shaped the formative years of sociology, on the other, there were also conservative reactions to that. In terms of the central ideas of the discipline, Nisbet pointed out the distinctive character of sociology which treaded a dual path — that of radicalism as well as conservatism. Pointing to the five basic unit-ideas of sociology as community, authority, status, the sacred and alienation, he shows that nineteenth-century sociological thought worked on the conceptual opposites on each of these ideas.

Accordingly, the antithetical conceptual pairs of community-society, authority-power, status-class, sacred-secular and alienation-progress constituted the core of nineteenth century sociological thought.

These ideas — community, authority, status, the sacred and alienation — taken together constitute a reorientation of European thought quite as momentous. I believe, as that very different, even opposite, re-orientation of thought that had marked the waning of the Middle-Ages three centuries earlier and the rise of the Age of Reason. Then it had been individualistic rationalism asserting itself against medieval corporatism and authority. Now, in the early nineteenth century, it is the reverse: the reaction of traditionalism against analytic reason; of communalism against individualism; and of the non-rational against the purely rational. (Nisbet 1967: 8)

As we note, Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim's ideas of order, morality and community do echo the propositions of the conservative reaction against the liberal radical appeal of the Enlightenment, yet they all build their foundation on the scientific temper fostered by the same Age of Reason. The counteracting currents of liberalism, radicalism and conservatism continued to mark the nineteenth and early twentieth-century, which were reflected in the range of theories of the classical sociologists.

THE REVOLUTIONS

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the European society was marked by the collapse of the old traditional authority; the resultant problem of order served as the social conditioning for the development of sociological theory. The political as well as the industrial revolutions overhauled the old order which rested on kinship, land, religion, local community and monarchy. Actually, the Age of Reason stimulated the questioning of the traditional order of society. The concepts of individual rights and democracy came to dominate social thinking. The American Revolution extolled the value of individual freedom and citizen's rights. The French Revolution of 1789 brought forward the principals of reason and justice, as the political rumblings sought for a new social order. The secular ideals of liberty and equality that stirred a whole range of French intellectuals also impacted upon other European societies. The whole scenario along with all the positive gains of a democratic revolution also put up the question of order and stability of a social structure. No wonder that we find in the writings of classical thinkers the concern with order and social change.

As the most significant product of the French Enlightenment, as well as a reaction to the French Revolution, Auguste Comte's (1798–1857) foundational efforts in developing a ‘science of society’ point to the social moment of early sociological theory. Published in 1839, in the fourth volume of Cours de philosophie positive, Comte first used the term sociology. Through a study of the history of the world ideas and thought, he proposed the law of three stages of human intellectual development. He surveyed the passage from theological thought to metaphysical and finally to a positive and scientific thought. Correspondingly he showed the social change from a militaristic to a legalistic type of society, ending with the modern industrial society. Comte's positivist insistence for a science of industrial society served as the formative ideas for all subsequent classical sociological thinking.

The French Revolution sparked off a series of political churnings which continued well into the nineteenth century in many parts of the world. Inevitably such reordering of society attracted sociological attention from incisive thinkers across the continent. The central problem that emerged from political upheavals was that of ensuring social stability. Re-thinking of individual–societal bonding(s) also figured as the dominant concern of classical sociological theory. The question of individual–societal relationship was further aggravated with the Industrial Revolution in the later eighteenth century with England as its epicentre. It spread across the Western societies and exhibited a culmination of a number of interrelated developments that transformed the very basis of economic production. The fundamental change of source of energy to machine from raw human and animal energy had a wide ramification in every society.

The social events that accompanied the Industrial Revolution were rapid urbanization, migration of rural people to cities, better communication, concentration of production activity, increased specialization and division of labour and so forth. The formation of an industrial working class and growing pauperization, the question of health and better working conditions and finally a growing antagonism between the newly formed social classes — all variously characterized a wide range of societies. The issues of modernization, equality and justice came to the fore in social philosophical deliberations. Quite evidently, thus, sociological thinking directed its attention to seek ‘answers’ to such intriguing issues of the changed social world. All such social issues and developments fundamentally prompted the thinkers to probe into the ties between an individual and the society. All classical sociological theories essentially were driven by this very problematic of resolving the issue of individual–societal relationship amidst overwhelming alterations of every aspect of social life. The search for regularities, patterns and processes of social change, whether in the name of ‘social law’ or otherwise, dominated classical sociological theory thereby. The methodological preference for a scientific mode of inquiry also was a direct fallout of the triumph of both the industrial as well as the political revolutions.

If Auguste Comte was a child of the French Revolution, Saint-Simon reacted directly to the grand societal changes occasioned by the Industrial Revolution. Claude–Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825) was influenced by the Enlightenment thoughts prevalent in France. In 1807, he wrote Introduction to the Scientific Studies of the 19th Century to affirm the importance of observation in order to arrive at a science of social organization. Drawing upon organismic analogy, Saint-Simon held that the stable pattern of social order could be comprehended by deriving laws of social stability. Thereby, one could arrive at the broad historical trends of human society. The overall project to see for scientific laws was to gain control over the apparent gigantic changes that marked the post-Revolution European societies. In fact, Comte was highly influenced by Saint-Simon's treatise and ultimately recognized the fundamental ideas of Saint-Simon to propose the new discipline of Sociology in 1839.

ORGANIC ANALOGY AND EVOLUTIONISM

Apart from August Comte's pioneering effort to develop sociology as the abstract theoretical science of social phenomena and to formulate general laws of the variation of human thought process, the evolutionary perspective dominated the embryonic years of sociology. In fact Comte himself was influenced by physiology to effect the division of the study of society into two parts — statics and dynamics. Statics represented the aspects of order and stability of a society, while dynamics stood for the study of the laws of the succession of the stages of human development. In his concept of dynamics, Comte insisted on the idea of evolution and progress. Progressive development is evolutionary as Comte understood, but not a linear one. Accordingly, the course of social evolution is marked by a basic antagonism between the instincts of innovation and conservation. (Timasheff 1967)

The evolutionary scheme was furthered by Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), who readily incorporated Charles Darwin's ideas of the Origins of Species (1959) to reflect on the universal law of progression of human society. In the history of sociology, Spencerism is synonymous with evolutionism. He identified a parallelism between generalizations about living organisms and those involving societies. A general acceptance of the doctrine of evolution marked the several works of Spencer like Social Statics, The Study of Sociology, and Principles of Sociology. He held a close analogy between the biological organism and human society. Accordingly, the history of both the organic and the super-organic (social life) is a process of development and such a development involves an increase in both quantity and complexity. The ideas of natural selection and the survival of the fittest were present in Spencer's evolutionary scheme, but for him the idea of adaptation was purposive in case of social life. Subsequent classical thinkers of sociology were variously impacted upon by this elementary evolutionary scheme of Spencer. In many classical thoughts we find the traces of evolutionism in their conceptualizations of social development, progress and change.

BASIC IDEAS OF SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

Ideas are a product of history and time, and not simply extensions of individual personalities. Any discipline is a product of a historical time. By locating the principal issues of a society we get a clue of the organizing concepts that govern the development of an intellectual activity striving to emerge as an organized system of knowledge. We have already seen the social events of the eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe as providing the milieu so necessary for the emergence of a new line of thinking among intellectuals. The focus on society as an organization, as an ensemble of social relationships and social action formed the backdrop of the development of classical sociological theory. The root ideas of sociology were located in the changes that marked the eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. As commented upon by Calhoun and others (2002) the four most important social change to affect social life were:

1. The rise of individualism
2. The rise of modern states
3. The development of modern industry/large-scale markets, and
4. The European expansion/colonization.

The ideas emerging from Reformation and Enlightenment fostered a new sense of self amongst the people. A qualitatively different notion of individualism that appeared was not an anathema of collective life or society. Rather a fresh and different way of understanding individual–societal relationship marked the ‘new’ society where more than communalties, associative and contractual ties were held at premium. The element of choice and freedom dominated social living in the new epoch.

Side by side there was a shift away from medieval aristocratic order marked by people's uprising to constitute democratic modern States. Attempts to create modern political institutions broke away from the notions of Divine order. People aspired to constitute nations and national governments which could cater to the aspirations of the people. The idea of nation-states developed as a bounded, internally organized population sharing similar culture and history. Such an idea of nation deeply influenced the new idea of society, which also entailed the idea of a civil society marked off from the State as a free zone of private interpersonal relationships.

Related to the constitution of a civil society was the spread of large-scale markets, which in turn were complementary to the development of industrial capitalism. The growth of impersonal sites of exchange of goods and services and an increasing emphasis on specialization of labour altered interpersonal relationships in society.

Finally, the expansion of the European power through exploration of the rest of the world resulted in the ‘appearances’ of hitherto ‘unknown’ people and society. Study of society and developing a theory of such got a fillip in the wake of such colonial exercises too. The recognition of ‘other’ cultures also prompted thinkers to compare and contrast human societies across the world. All of these events stimulated in a major way the birth of sociological theory to account for the organization and differences of human societies. The logic of society came to be the central concern as a result, which in other words has been the central purpose of sociological theory.

Key Words

• Intellectual Background
• Scientific Theory
• Social Evolution
• Modernity
• Social Conditioning

Glossary

Enlightenment: Essentially refers to the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth-century. The re-awakening to the thought of applicability of reason and science in order to understand and improve humankind.

Organic Analogy: Comparing with living organic beings. In sociology, understanding society like an organic body conforming to the scheme of evolution.

Civil Society: Marked off from the structures of the State and the Market, a space for voluntary social relationships and institutions. Classically speaking, a feature of modern society.

Theory: An explanatory statement on two or more phenomena on their meaningful relationships. While the phenomena are captured through concepts, the building blocks of any theory.

Discussion Points

• The bearings of Enlightenment Ideals on Sociology.
• The social background for the development of Sociology.
• The primary constitutive ideas of Sociology.