Sociology from Orgin to 1950s

Sociology is devised from the Greek word ology – the study of and the Latin word Socius – Companion, this can be translated to mean ‘the study of society’.
Sociology first started with the Greek Philosophers: Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. They saw society as a system and noted that there were many inequalities between the rich and the poor. They also noted that there were social ‘laws’ – what the rich can do, but the poor cant and vice versa. In the fourteenth century Ibn Khaldun started to study the following five points: He studied ethnic groups in the middle east; Tribalism (how families and the nation interact) and Kinship (how social groups and religious groups interact); Social conflict and Social Groups; Cycles of power (what were the social expectations ‘Norms’ and keeping the family together); The concept of generation (where were your family / ancestors from). The Enlightenment started in the eighteenth century with the rise of scientific and rational thinking being used instead of traditional and religious thinking. Theorist became interested in empirical observations: measuring plants, animals and people; taking information observing and collecting data to form objective theories and social laws. Theorist started to question everything instead of believing everything that had been told, they wanted evidence that it was true commonly known as positivism. In the nineteenth century the theorist Auguste Comte used positivism to help to prove that social theories were true and could be observed and re-measured, this helped reject stereotyping. Comte is now known as the grandfather of Sociology as it was him who invented the term Sociology. Karl Marx looked at the social inequalities between the rich and the poor and noted that the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer - capitalism. He saw that society was one superstructure, the labourers (working class) were at the bottom working hard but for very little, the middle class people were...