Who is considered as the founder of sociology?
August Comte
Who first coined the word sociology?
August Comte
Who attempted to study their social environment scientifically?
Plato and Aristotle;
- because science was evolving during the 17th century and sociology moved alongside this evolution.
- As it’s founder was a positivist, the scientific status was ascribed to this subject.
Who is a positivist?
A sociologue who states that sociology is a science.
What are interpretivists?
Sociologues claiming that sociology is not a science.
What are the main subject matter in sociology?
Society and it’s components
What are the components of society?
Religion, education, media, family
What are institutions responsible for?
Socialisation
What are the types of socialisation?
Primary and secondary
How can society be defined?
Society can be defined as human groupings in a specific locations guided by it’s culture.
Are sociologists only interested with the physical characteristics of society?
No, they are also interested with it’s functions towards individual.
How does sociology investigate the social world and it’s parts?
In relation to human activities
How does human beings and animals acts?
Human beings learn their behaviour and use their intelligence whereas animals simply act on instincts.
What are the common sense notion that mini sociologists share about human and animals behaviour?
Animals are said to be guided by instinct while human beings live according to the internalized culture and experience.
Give a simple example to illustrate instinctive behaviour in animals
Social insects and bees
Describe insect societies.
Insect societies are well organised in terms of defined tasks and cooperation carried out by insects or bees. The workers; according to their age will perform different roles or tasks such as feeing the youngs, protect them or repel strangers. There is a clear division of labour according to their age.
Describe how a bee society is structured.
Queen occupying the top position and given prime importance in the bee society; bee society is clearly organised with a good stratification, all food are taken to her.
This behaviour if not completely is determined by instincts.
Do bees only rely on instincts?
Experiments have shown that bees have the ability to learn in terms of memorization of paths to a newly discovered hive; where via observations, scientists can claim that different wing beatings could be noted among the leading bee to indicate the distance to the new hive.
What does different beatings of wings in the bee society indicate?
This indicate that even though bees are genetically programmed to behave in specific ways, it will be a mistake to claim that their behaviour is explicitly based in instincts.
Via what examples can you describe that animals’ behavior are based in instincts and through learned.
Macaque monkeys and insect societies.
Give an example to demonstrate that animals also learn behavior.
Macaque monkeys; experiments conducted by Japanese scientists. Monkeys living in forests were supplied with potatoes and they changed their eating habits as this was a new food for them. Secondly, when potatoes were placed across the shoreline, the monkeys moved to the shore and with time, developed new habits; washing potatoes before eating, learned to swim, dive and paddle in water. Later young ones imitated the behaviour of their elders.
What can you say after knowing that macaque monkeys developed new ways of eating habits and learned new behaviours such as swimming, diving etc?
This experience demonstrates that animals do learn behavior and therefore the generalization that animals’ behavior is genetically programmed whereas human’s behavior is learned is incorrect.
What can you say about human behavior? Are they the same as animals’?
No, in comparison to animals’ behavior, human behavior is a complex one and social beings are said to survive in behavioral patterns that are learnt and have no instincts; no inbuilt directives for behaviors
How can you prove that human behavior are different from animals?
Birds are said to have instincts of building nests and therefore the nests constructed by birds share similarities whereas shelter constructed by humans do not and varies.