A Science Invented to Explain a Rupture
Sociology emerged to explain a massive European upheaval. Three revolutions shaped it:
- intellectual: Adam Smith analysed the division of labour in The Wealth of Nations. Rousseau argued in Discourse on the Origin of Inequality that social structure causes inequality.
- political: The French Revolution destroyed the old legal order. Conservative critics like Louis de Bonald and Joseph de Maistre asked what could hold society together without tradition. This created sociology's core concern: the problem of order.
- socio-economic: Industrialisation transformed daily life, starting in Britain.
| Change | When | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Mechanised textiles | 1760s–1800s | Moved work into factories |
| Steam power | 1780s–1830s | Concentrated industry in towns |
| Railways | 1830s–1850s | Accelerated transport and news |
| Urban majority | 1851 census | Over 50% lived in towns |
Urbanisation was rapid. Manchester held roughly 75,000 people in 1801, rising past 300,000 by 1851. London expanded to six million by 1901. In 1845, Friedrich Engels documented this in The Condition of the Working Class in England.
The discipline soon gained a name. Auguste Comte coined sociologie in 1838. He switched after Adolphe Quetelet used his preferred term, physique sociale.
Two cautions apply. First, it was not purely European. Ibn Khaldun analysed group solidarity in 1377. Second, British industrial growth was gradual across England and Wales.
Common pitfall: assuming sociology began as simple curiosity. Scholars always observed society. The new insight around 1800 was that society followed its own discoverable laws.