However, since the participants are often confined in a laboratory, they are aware that they are being investigated and may behave abnormally. Keeping this in mind, the kind of studies that may be undertaken in a laboratory are somewhat limited. However, under a controlled setting, the sociologist has control over the conditions under investigation, which enables us to observe the causation and/or effect of a certain component. Comparative research is important because it enables sociologists to track the evolution of individuals, societies, and relationships through time. For instance, comparative research enables a sociologist to examine crime rates and methods of punishment in the 1850s and compare them to present crime rates and methods of punishment. How have crime rates varied throughout time? Is it possible that some crimes were perpetrated more often in the 1850s than they are now? How has the manner of punishing offenders evolved since then, and how has this impacted the fall or increase in crime?
Establishing a Discipline
Comte Auguste (17981857)
Sociology's Forefather In an unpublished work, French author Emmanuel-Joseph Sieys (17481836) created the word sociology for the first time in 1780. (Faur et al. 1999). Auguste Comte reintroduced the word in 1838. (17981857). Comte first studied engineering but subsequently became a student of Claude Henri de Rouvroy Comte de Saint-Simon, a social philosopher (17601825). They both believed that social scientists could conduct research on society using the same scientific procedures as natural scientists. Comte also believed in the capacity of social scientists to contribute to society's improvement. He maintained that once researchers discovered the governing rules of society, sociologists could solve issues such as inadequate education and poverty (Abercrombie et al. 2000). Comte used the term positivism to refer to the scientific study of social phenomena. He published a series of publications titled The Course in Positive Philosophy (18301842) and A General View of Positivism (18301842). (1848). He felt that by using scientific techniques to elucidate the principles governing how societies and people interact, a new positivist era of history would dawn. While the discipline and its language have expanded, sociologists continue to believe in their work's beneficial influence.
Comtes' contribution was to establish an antireligious and antimetaphysical attitude in twentieth-century philosophy of science.
In mid-nineteenth-century England, John Stuart Mill was the leading spokesman of the empirical tradition from Bacon to Hume. Mill's theory of knowledge, as best exemplified in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865), was not particularly novel but rather a well-balanced synthesis of Berkeley and Hume's doctrines; it embodied his suspicion of vague metaphysics, his denial of the a priori element in knowledge, and his adamant opposition to any form of intuitionism. Mills' core theoretical insights, on the other hand, are included in his tremendously important A System of Logic (1843).
Due to his position on positivism and its relationship to the supernatural (namely, that one should not consider the existence of one unless it is beneficial to do so), he established a theory, perhaps the first 'theory' of sociology, of how he believed all human societies would evolve and change over time in order to refine their understanding of the world around them.
Stage theological [edit]
