Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

We see this also in the writings of Herbert Spencer, one of the early
social Darwinists, and Karl Marx. Spencer viewed society as an
organism that adapts to environmental changes. Marx put forth a
theory of cultural development that focused on class as an operative
factor driving large-scale social change. Again, our concern is not
whether these theorists were right or wrong but that they viewed
society as an emergent entity unto itself.
From Comte, Spencer, and Marx, we get the precondition of
sociology, namely, that society is a thing itself, not just a collection
of individuals.
The book recognized as the beginning of sociology as a science
is Émile Durkheim’s masterpiece, . The motivation for
the study was a sudden dramatic uptick in suicides across Europe
in the late 1880s. Why were people killing themselves at an
unprecedented rate?
On the one hand, the decision to end one’s life is incredibly personal.
If one were to ask the victims beforehand why they were thinking of
taking their lives, each would appeal to his or her own circumstances.
idiosyncratic aspects of the person’s individual life.
Despite the fact that each decision was made individually, people
were making the same decision at a rate much higher than
previously. Was there a factor at work at the sociological level that
could not be reduced to individual deliberation?
Durkheim believed that the answer could be found at the
sociological level, especially once he started collecting and
evaluating data. Immediately, one pattern jumped out. The suicide
rate was correlated with religion. The greatest number of suicides
per capita occurred in the primarily Protestant nations, while the
lowest rates were in the predominantly Catholic countries.
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