Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 116

A distinct sociological perspective emerged out of two revolutionary transformations in Europe. First, the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century radically transformed material conditions of life and work, bringing with it new social problems such as urban overcrowding, poor sanitation, disease and industrial pollution. Reformers sought ways to mitigate and solve these problems, which led them to carry out research and gather evidence on their extent and nature to reinforce the case for change.

Second, the French Revolution of 1789 marked the symbolic endpoint of the old European agrarian regimes and absolute monarchies as new republican ideals of freedom, liberty and citizenship rights came to the fore. This revolution is often seen as, in part, the outcome of mid-eighteenth-century European Enlightenment ideas, which challenged tradition and religious authority, promoting philosophical and scientific notions of reason, rationality and critical thinking as the keys to human progress. These revolutionary developments are often seen as instituting a process of European modernization that led to modernity, a term that refers to an era characterized by a combination of rationalization, democratization, individualism, growing reliance on scientific thinking and rapid, continuous technological development. In this sense, sociology was a ‘modern’ discipline that developed to try and understand how such radical social change had occurred and what its consequences were.

Enlightenment philosophers saw the advancement of reliable knowledge in the natural sciences, particularly astronomy, physics and chemistry, as showing the way forward. The English physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) was singled out as an exemplary scientist whose ideas of Natural Law and scientific method appealed to Enlightenment scholars. The latter argued that, in principle, it should be possible to discover similar laws, using similar methods, in social and political life as well. This idea is the basis of positivist philosophy in the sciences.