SOSC 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Paradigm Shift, Secularism, Empiricism

• School: York University
• Department: Social Science
• Course: SOSC 1000
• Professor: Mathew Tegelberg

Document Summary

Peter hamilton, the enlightenment and the birth of social science . Enlightenment brings abut new ways of thinking of society as something more than the individual . Society comes to be viewed as something constantly evolving and thereby, open change and transformation (p. 19) May seam obvious today, but during the enlightenment this presented a radical new way of thinking about the social world . Refers to the application of natural scientific methods to the study of the social world, human behavior. Social (or human) scientists could learn causes of certain types of human action. Then harness this knowledge to influence human behavior. Traffic engineering, retail design, development policy, etc. Francis bacon calls for a scientific approach to the world (to) dispel the phantoms" and idols" that held pre-modern mind captive. By phantoms and idols bacon eludes to the powerful influence of the church (christianity) in pre-modern europe. Bacon, hobbes, locke set course for a major paradigm shift .