Heinz Maus - A Short History of Sociology

A SHORT HISTORY
OF SOCIOLOGY

SOCIAL THEORY AND METHODOLOGY
In 22 Volumes

A SHORT HISTORY
OF SOCIOLOGY

by
HARRY M. JOHNSON

First published in English in 1962 by
Routledge

Reprinted in 1998 by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

1962 Heinz Maus

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright holders of the works reprinted in The International Library of Sociology. This has not been possible in every case, however, and we would welcome correspondence from those individuals/companies we have been unable to trace.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

A Short History of Sociology
ISBN10: 0-415-17516-X (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-415-43688-5 (pbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-17516-6 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-43688-5 (pbk)

Social Theory and Methodology: 22 Volumes
ISBN 0-415-17818-5
The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes
ISBN 0-415-17838-X

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the
quality of this reprint but points out that some
imperfections in the original may be apparent

W HEN people talked of sociologyin the nineteenth century, the word had an international flavour. It was generally regarded as a theory of social development through which the social and political relations of the contemporary world, conceived as a unity, could be understood. In Europe Auguste Comte, and in England Herbert Spencer, had chosen this word as the name for the new science, and its reception, along with disputes and discussions concerning these first important sociological systems, marked the early years of the new science.

From the beginning of the twentieth century, more obvious national differentiations in sociology began to make themselves felt; but it was not until the outbreak of the First World War that its international coherence was really disturbed. Although contact between sociologists in different countries was not broken off altogether, mutual fructification became sporadic only, despite the fact that the science itself continued to make rapid progress, particularly in this period. Sociology also began to influence public opinion; the universities began to open their doors to the new science; both public and private interests began to make increasing use of it. But at the same time the differences between American and Europeanand in particular Germansociology became more marked; though it was not until Hitler came to power that German sociology finally lost all contact with sociology in the outside world. The present-day eagerness to make up lost ground, the tendency to confuse the new techniques of social research, which have in the meantime been so highly developed in the United States, with sociological theory proper, and the readiness to serve the interests of industry and State administration, have all, amongst other things, tended to cause a neglect of the history of sociology, and an underestimation of the old sociology as a whole.

Comte and Spencer are seldom mentioned today. But the problems which engage the attention of present-day sociology can be traced right back through its history; and they can be found stated in both these authors. To consider the history of sociology today, therefore, helps towards an understanding of its aims and intentions, and the tracing of a development which tends to be forgotten as readily as is the development society itself has undergone in the meantime.

T HE preliminary history of sociology covers to quite a considerable extent the days of the French and English Enlightenment.understanding to consider, intelligently and critically, existing circumstances, and act according to the dictates of reason.

This exclusively political social philosophy regarded society as one whole; and it stressed this whole, despite the great variety of its manifestations, and underlined the connections which made it a whole. The social sciences, which were just beginning to deal individually with this great variety of manifestations, were enlightened enough to subordinate their efforts to the understanding of this whole according to natural necessity. However, it was the process of a Nature which already bore traces of civilization. The idea of the state of nature as the battlefield of a merciless struggle of all against all in which everyone was obsessed by fear had already been discarded, and the idea of the Social Contract which put an end to this struggle was changing too. The State, and its government, were entitled to exist only so long as the general consensus of opinion accepted them as safeguarding the natural and equal right of individuals to property, freedom, and independence. By nature Society was based on the division of labour and on mutual aid, which it naturally involved, for it could not exist without those fellow-feelings of sympathy which men have for each other.