Revision summary
Sociology arose as a science of society after industry and revolution. Comte named it; Durkheim, Marx, and Weber gave it method and objects. Rationality is both a method and, in Weber, a historical process. Scientific temper uses comparison, rates, and social facts. The Census later became a public file for that temper.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Sociology became a distinct discipline when European order after industry and revolution was treated as a worldly object of reason. Rationality and scientific temper meant explaining groups by evidence and comparison, not by theology or court chronicle.
Body
Rationality as a new object and a new method
- Auguste Comte named sociology as a positive science of social order and progress, placed after biology in a hierarchy of sciences.
- Max Weber later made rationality itself a historical process: legal-rational authority, calculation, and disenchantment.
- Karl Marx treated capitalist production as a lawful, if conflictual, structure that could be studied, not only morally denounced.
Scientific temper
- Emile Durkheim demanded social facts be treated as things: external, constraining, and comparable, as in the study of suicide rates.
- The French Revolution and the factory made society a problem that natural law and sermons could not settle.
- Census counting, later NFHS-type surveys, and comparative history supplied files that a scientific temper could use.
Distinct from neighbours
- Economics kept price, political science kept the office, and psychology kept the mind. Sociology claimed patterned relations among institutions as its own field.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD EN[Industry and revolution] --> SOC[Sociology] R[Rationality] --> SOC ST[Scientific temper] --> SOC SOC --> D[Durkheim facts] SOC --> W[Weber action] SOC --> M[Marx class]
Conclusion
Sociology emerged when Comte, Durkheim, Marx, and Weber treated society as knowable by reason and method. Scientific temper meant evidence, types, and rates. Distinctness is that joint map of relations, not a claim to own every neighbouring fact.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Can we equate 'poverty' with 'poor living' ? Elaborate your answer
Next question on this syllabus topic (2017 · Q1(e)). View answer →
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Is sociology only a child of the Enlightenment?
Enlightenment reason made it thinkable. Industry, revolution, and conservative worries about community also founded it.
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Does scientific temper mean copying physics?
No. It means public evidence and comparison. Weber still studies meaning.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2021 · Q1(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Europe was the first and the only place where modernity emerged. Comment
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