SOC100 Lecture 3: Sociology 100- Lecture 3

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC100
• Professor: Jonathan Simmons

Document Summary

Comte tried to understand how societies construct order out of what appears to be chaos. He came up with what he thought of as a scientific explanation of how societies evolved. We refer to this as the law of three stages: theological, metaphysical, and scientific (positive) stages: comte"s scientific approach to society is referred to as positivism, which is a way of understanding society based on science. Structures are simply regular, observable patterns of behaviour or organized social arrangements that persist through time. Invisible structure: road traf c; rules about driving, orderly fashion, familiar, persists through time, observable, predictable. Functions refer to how the various needs of a society are satis ed. How do we educate our children, how do we protect people from bad behaviour. Society"s basic requirements; water, food, sense of community, safety etc. Social processes can have more than 1 function.