SOC 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Auguste Comte, Age Of Enlightenment, Social Order
Document Summary
Many of the seeds for what would become sociology were first planted with the. Enlightenment, a period of remarkable intellectual development that occurred in europe during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. During the enlightenment, a number of longstanding ideas and beliefs on social life were turned upside down. However, the enlightenment wasn"t so much fixed set ideas, but a new attitude, a new method of thought. One of the most important aspects of this new attitude was an emphasis on reason. The enlightenment emphasis on reason was part and parcel of the rise of science. Advocating the triumph of reasoned investigation and systematic observation of phenomena over religious faith and common sense ways of understanding,enlightenment intellectuals rebuked existing knowledge as fraught with prejudice and mindless tradition. The rise of science and empiricism would give birth to sociology in the mid- nineteenth century.
