WHAT IS Marshall High School Sociology Mr. Cline Unit One- Slides B
* The Birth of Sociology • To understand what Sociology is, and how it became this, we must reach even farther back into the history of History itself, and examine why “the truth” was so elusive in the field. • To do so, we must understand that while Archaeology is the study of artifacts, History is the study of written records, and without writing, there can be no History. • If writing is an aid to memory, and memory is imperfect, it reasons that History is imperfect as well, and therefore cannot accurately reflect the truth.
* The Birth of Sociology • As the first writing was merely lists of things, not only did it inaccurately portray truth, but it also left much to be desired in what to take from it in the way of lessons. • For example, what lesson could you learn and be prepared to impart to others by reading an old grocery list to someone? • The lack of applicable lessons was also the weakness of the next period of History, the Chronicle.
* The Birth of Sociology • It also relied heavily on imperfect memory, but it was a little more than merely a list, as it did give dates and what events occurred on those dates. • For example, this from the Irish Annals; “March, 824: Scelec was raided by heathens and Étgal was carried away as booty, and he perished with hunger because of them.” • Who was Étgal, why was he important enough to note in the annals? Who were these heathens? Where did they come from? Why did they take Étgal? • All of these questions lead to the second element necessary for the study of History; and that is inquiry, or the interpretation of events in order to derive some meaning from them.
* The Birth of Sociology • The first person to add this element to the study of writing, and is now considered the “Father of History”, was a Greek philosopher named Herodotus.
* The Birth of Sociology • He described his process, and defined the study of History in the introduction to his first great work, The Persian Wars , a history of the wars between Greece and Persia, as such; • “ Herodotus of Halicarnassus, his histories are here set down to preserve the memory of the past by putting on record the astonishing achievements both of our own and of other peoples, and more particularly, to show how they came into conflict. ” • Of course, his interpretation of the events meaning to the daily lives of Greeks was hotly contested. The great philosopher Socrates even went so far as to describe Herodotus as “The Father of Lies”. • So, if interpretations of the meaning of historical events can differ, where again, do we find the truth that we can universally learn from? • To complicate matters further, History has also been used for other purposes throughout the centuries, by Historians who have their own objectives, goals agendas, and biases. • Take for example, History used as the great story….
* The Birth of Sociology • If History is intended to impart meaning and a lesson for future generations, does the truth even matter? Can’t a great story set in the past, with, perhaps, some basis for truth, serve just as well for this purpose?
* The Birth of Sociology • And for that matter, if truth is not that important to providing material to teach a lesson, then why bother with it at all, and then you can impart any lesson you want freely, including why some are superior to others?
The History of History • For nearly 4,000 years History was dominated by the great story used as propaganda, or to draw out moral lessons, and it was only the actions of great men that moved it forward. • The Catholic Church was fond of this method as a means to impart moral lessons and the lives of the saints, as well as their own theological interpretations of scripture. • The Renaissance, and the increase in literacy, as well as changes in religious thought during the Enlightenment, forced man to consider the nature of truth, and if the history they had learned was true. • Much of what the Catholic Church taught could not be found in the Bible, so if the church could not be trusted to impart truth in their histories, then who? • If these histories were not true, then what was History for, who moved it, and what was its purpose?
The History of History • It was about this time that several learned men, philosophers, developed multiple theories on the nature of truth, what it was, and how we acquire the knowledge to recognize it. • One of these men was an English scientist named Francis Bacon. • Bacon is considered the father of modern science, for, among many things, creating what we refer to today as the scientific method • The Scientific Method is a way of gaining knowledge in order to lead to truth. It always begins with a person’s (the scientist) curiosity, and thus is born a question, such as “Why do we have war?” • The scientist would then take his best, educated, guess as to the answer, what we would call the hypothesis. For example, “We have war because men are inherently aggressive and violent creatures.”
The History of History • A scientist, using the scientific method, would then have to develop some sort of experiment to test their hypothesis. • Experiments, by necessity, are designed to collect quantitative data, or in other words, non emotionally biased numbers, that when analyzed can either prove or disprove a hypothesis. • When enough experiments are done that can show a general trend that the hypothesis usually holds, then this becomes a theory . • If the repeated results of several experiments almost always follow this theory, it can be said to be a law . • Theories and laws, because they can be applied to repeated manifestations of an experiment and receive the same results, are said by followers of the scientific method to then be “truth”. • Followers of This Baconian Method (another term for describing the scientific method) became known as empiricists . Empiricists believe that knowledge only comes from experience gained from our senses (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting) and the collection of evidence, especially as discovered in experiments.
The History of History Beginning in the mid to late 18 th century, the field of History came to be dominated by • empiricists, who saw the success that empiricism had in the fields of the natural sciences (chemistry, biology, physics) during the historical period we refer to as “The Scientific Revolution.” • Many historians who believed in empiricism felt that many fundamental questions of human existence, such as; Why is there war? What is the proper role of government? Is there free will?, etc. could be answered not through the philosophical interpretation of past events, but through observation and experimentation. (and there is a way to accomplish this in the field of History, but that is for a History class) All of which would require the collection of data. • However, that nagging question of the existence of truth returned to haunt even the empiricists. • We all have our own biases, our own reasons for looking at the world as we do, and therefore our hypotheses, the educated reasons we think things happen, are inherently biased. • This is not a bad thing, in of itself, and instead of the connotative and loaded term bias, we might call it a different perspective .
The Birth of Sociology • For some, to answer the question of “Why do men go to war?”, their automatic assumption would be predicated on scarce resources, such as land, money, oil, power, and the desire for some men to have more than others. • If you remember from a previous slide, we identified seven different social sciences, one of which was Economics. • Economics is the study of the choice of allocation of scarce resources in conditions of unlimited demand for them. • So, if your hypotheses generally tend towards how scarce resources are allocated, such as in our example answer to the question regarding war, you may have more of an economic perspective . • For others, the answer to the question may always be predicated on the actions of the individual leaders who bring them into conflict, and their personalities and behaviors. • This is a psychological perspective . • Having these unique perspectives about how things happen, and what governs human behavior and actions is what guides empiricists in developing their hypotheses.
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