Brief history of sociology from antiquity to the present day

The history of sociology is the science of sociology as an industry of knowledge, the process of its development and formation. On the path of its development, sociology underwent quite significant changes, both in the subject of research and in methods. If we talk about such an object as the history of sociology, then it is worth dividing it into two periods: pre-scientific and scientific (modern).

History of sociology - pre-scientific period

An ancient period. The problem of society in ancient times seriously engaged in Greek philosophers. The fruits of their reflections they made out in the form of recipes of the "ideal society", a portrait of the ideal person. In the matter of determining the essence of society, the main philosophers of that time disagreed. For example, Aristotle considered society a natural and natural consequence of human development, and Plato, on the contrary, was an artificial formation.

Middle Ages. The basic idea at that time was that a person is a citizen of the world - a system arranged according to the providence of God. According to this idea, the world is one, all people are brothers, and all are equally sinful. For this time, the mood of the original sinfulness of each person and his inability to self-correcting without the will of God is characteristic.

Renaissance. This time of discovery is not only in the field of geography, but also in the laws of human society. In the 14-16 centuries, the first thinkers-utopians appear (the utopia is an idea, incompatible with the real conditions of life), Englishmen Thomas More, F. Bacon, Spaniard T. Campanella and others. In their utopia stories, they drew prototypes of a "bright future" for all people.

New time. The time of the triumph of scientific progress and the rapid development of the economy and the growth of population led to the emergence of new theories. Thus, the idea of a "social contract" was invented by the representative of Hobbes' enlightenment in the 17th century, which justified the conditions for the legitimacy of power and for the first time called for the restriction of the monarch. Locke put forward a theory of universal equality of people, which later became the basis of the modern declaration of human rights.

The history of sociology - from the first scientific concepts to our days

1842 is the year of the creation of the philosophy of positivism. The author of this theory, O. Comte, is also considered one of the first sociological scientists, since he was one of the first to determine the foundations of this science. Thus, he proposed using methods of observation, comparative analysis and experiment in sociological research , and determined the object and purpose of the research. He was the first to generalize previously collected knowledge, which formed the basis of the science of sociology. One of the most prominent sociologists is also called G. Spencer, who described in detail the idea of the evolution of society as part of animate nature. One of the branches of his teaching was social Darwinism, which later developed into the racial-anthropological school and the social revolution of Sumner, according to which the process of the development of society is natural and is part of the natural course of development of the species of man.

In the mid-19th century, Marx developed a theory on class struggle and inequality, the theory of socio-economic formations, according to which the main contradiction in society is private property, the destruction of which will lead to the disappearance of classes. And M. Weber at the same time creates his theory of understanding sociology.

L. Gumplovich in the late 19 th century put forward the idea that the study of sociology should be the study of social groups and their interaction. According to his works, each social group competes with others for the right to survive and absorb most of the common resources. The beginning of the last century was marked by the theory of the Pareto elites .

In the 20th century, many new concepts were developed (behaviorism, symbolic interactionism, phenomenological sociology, the theory of integral synthesis) and scientific schools, especially popular among them were Chicago, Columbia and Frankfurt.

The history of Russian sociology is in many respects similar to that of the European one. The foundations were laid in prerevolutionary Russia thanks to the ideas of the Slavophils and Westerners. Subsequently, after 1917, Russian sociology was under strict ideological observation and developed more in line with the sociology of Marx. Only in the early 1990s did Russian sociological science begin to take advantage of the fruits of Western thinkers and scientists to the fullest.

Today the history of the development of sociology continues to be replenished with new concepts and theories.