Class 5 - Historic and Scientific Foundations of Sociology.pdf

CLASS 5 / Part II: Historic and Scientific Foundations of Sociology Ø SUMMARY: Ø The Enlightenment and the birth of social science Ø What was the Enlightenment? Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø What was the Enlightenment? Ø A ne...

CLASS 5 / Part II: Historic and Scientific Foundations of Sociology Ø SUMMARY: Ø The Enlightenment and the birth of social science Ø What was the Enlightenment? Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø What was the Enlightenment? Ø A new framework of ideas about man, society, and nature which challenged existing conceptions rooted in a traditional world-view dominated by Christianity It pursued universal models of knowledge, still following the earlier model of the Renaissance man as the archetype of cultivated knowledge Ø However, the Enlightenment heralded the very process of specialized disciplines presided over by certificated experts, first in the natural sciences and then in the social sciences as well Ø CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø What was the Enlightenment? Ø “Age of the Enlightenment” – a term implying the general process of society awakening from the dark slumber of superstition and ignorance Ø “siecle des lumieres” – “light of reason”: this spirit of enlightened and critical rationalism helped to encourage a mood of impending disaster, sowing the seeds for the French revolution in more than one way Ø Belief in a “new man” created by the scientific method (knowledge derived from ‘experience, observation, experiments’), a man who understands nature and by his understanding masters it. CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø What was the Enlightenment? - social, spatial and historical location: Ø Roughly over the period of the 18th century Ø Geographically centred on France Ø Promoted by the “philosophes”: “man of letters who is also a free thinker”; self-proclaimed “enlightened” intellectuals; cosmopolitanism CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø What was the Enlightenment? - social, spatial and historical location: Ø Was the work of three overlapping generations: Ø 1. generation: Voltaire (1694 – 1778) and Motesquieu (1689 – 1755), both strongly influenced by Locke and Newton Ø 2. generation: David Hume (1711 – 1776), Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778), Denis Diderot (1713 – 1784), Jean d’Alembert (1717 – 1783): combined the fashionable anti-clericalism and the interest in the scientific method of their predecessors into a “coherent modern view of the world” CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø What was the Enlightenment? - social, spatial and historical location: Ø Was the work of three overlapping generations: Ø 3. generation: Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804), Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), Marquis de Condorcet (1743 – 1794), Adam Ferguson (1723 – 1816) – developed further the Enlightenment world view into a series of more specialized proto-disciplines: epistemology, economics, sociology, political economy, legal reform Ø Kant’s sapere aude (dare to know) CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø What was the Enlightenment? - the Encyclopedie: Ø Central project / example of Enlightenment thinking; Ø written between 1751 – 1772; encompassed 17 volumes of text, 12 volumes of plates Ø Hugely influential; virtually all major philosophes contributed to it; until the French revolution, the project sold 25 000 copies Ø at the centre of the project lies “man” as an organizing principle of the knowledge presented in the Encyclopedie Ø Universalistic approach: the project should preserve all human knowledge CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø What was the Enlightenment? - tradition vs. modernity: the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries (Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton) was used by the Enlightenment thinkers to replace any form of knowledge dependent on religious authority with modern science (experience, experiment, observation, reason). Ø New cosmologies: the vision of a human world living in a harmonic cosmos was gradually replaced with the vision of a mechanical, infinite cosmos founded on chaos Ø CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø What was the Enlightenment? - tradition vs. modernity: The philosophes were virulently anti-clerical, challenging the role of the Church in society, its role in the transmission of knowledge, and attacked even Church teachings /theology at the core of Christian faith: divine revelation in history (Christ), the idea of miracles etc. Ø In sum: the Enlightenment worked to debunk scripturally based accounts of the universe, the earth, human society and its history, and even of the Revelation story. Ø CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø What was the Enlightenment? - social orders and social structure: Ø Ø Ø most of the philosophes came from the higher orders of society (nobles), but also from the gentry classes or the professional milieu The works of this cultural group was gradually popularized by lower-middle-class journalists and other writers supplying a growing number of popular newspapers Few philosophes pursued an agenda of integrating the mass of the population into the government of society, even though many of their ideas (equality, emancipation) had obvious explosive political potential. CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø What was the Enlightenment: the salon Ø The institution of the salon was invented in 1623 century, in Paris, by the Marquise de Rambouillet Ø Central for the development of Enlightenment Allowed for unique opportunities of social mobility, mixing up nobility, bourgeoisie, intelligentsia, men and women Ø Cultivated “rational” conversation, “sociability” between men and women, materialism and hedonism - all hallmarks of the Enlightenment Ø CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity: Ø 4 main areas of thought: Ø a. Anti-clericalism: Voltaire’s: “ecrasez l’infame” (crush the Church and its authority); the philosophes were against the idea of a God who reveals Himself through scripture, the life of Christ, miracles, the Church etc. Ø better said: Anti-Christianity CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity: Ø 4 main areas of thought: Ø b. Belief in the pre-eminence of empirical, materialist knowledge Ø c. Enthusiasm for technological and medical progress Ø d. Desire for legal and constitutional reform CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity: Ø Emergence and purpose of the “moral sciences” Ø The emergence of “moral sciences” (David Hume) to replace “moral philosophy” Ø Part of these “moral sciences” was also sociology, not in the sense of an established field (the word “sociology” did not even exist yet), but in the sense that, starting with the mid-18th century, the philosophes displayed characteristically sociological concerns: Ø how societies were organized and developed, the workings of social relationships etc. CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity: Ø Emergence and purpose of the “moral sciences” Ø concern with a deeper understanding of the human condition as a prelude to the emancipation of man from the ties of superstition, ignorance, ideology, and feudal social relationships Ø This peculiar project of the “moral sciences” constituted the basis for the formation of the professionalized disciplines in the social sciences during the 19th century CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity: Ø Emergence and purpose of the “moral sciences” Ø The understanding of human nature seen as the key to an objective science of man: Ø 1. Human nature was seen as possessing an essential uniformity Ø 2. The human mind as “empty slate” as “empty sheet of paper” – all knowledge and emotion proceeds from experience (empiricism) CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity: Ø Emergence and purpose of the “moral sciences” Ø The moral sciences developed as a distinctively empiricist endeavour Ø The social sciences that they inaugurated reflected this concern with understanding social phenomena on the basis of human experience, and a scientific approach to those phenomena CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity: Ø Enlightenment, science and progress Ø The Enlightenment fused the founding concepts of the social sciences with the concept of progress Ø progress: the idea that through the application of reason and empirically based knowledge, social institutions could be created that would make men happier and free CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity: Ø Enlightenment, science and progress Ø the construction of science as a salvationist project: Ø science could be applied to society and it could become the basis of future social values selected rationally on the basis of predetermined goals CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity: Ø Enlightenment, science and progress Ø Voltaire’s Lettre Philosophiques (1723): Locke’s empiricism, Bacon’s ideas on the empirical methods, Newton’s cosmology, religious pluralism – Ø This was the “popular” mix for modern science as salvationist project CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity: Ø Enlightenment and social science Ø The huge weight of the natural sciences: the adoration or even “deification” of Newton: Rousseau was called the “Newton of the moral world” (Kant) Ø Central figures of the Enlightenment made significant contributions to a philosophical understanding of the natural sciences, and thus to the grounding of the scientific method as the basis for an understanding of human nature CLASS 5: The Enlightenment and the Birth of Social Science Ø Enlightenment as the pursuit of modernity: Ø Enlightenment and social science Ø The philosophes wished to free moral philosophy from theology, put it in a scientific and rational base and derive objective knowledge from it CLASS 5 – The Enlightenment and the Birth of the Social Science Ø Bibliography: Ø “Chapter 1” Ø Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies; Wiley- Blackwell (1996),by Stuart Hall, David Held, Don Hubert, Kenneth Thompson (eds.);