Definition of Sociology

SOCIOLOGY

Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who coined the word ‘sociology’ and Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who developed it, sociology has been defined variously by various writers. Indeed, there are as many definitions as there are sociologists. Sociology has been called the study of society, of human society and their cultures, of human behaviour, of social interactions and relationships, of men in groups, of groups of people, of man’s social life, of the social bond, of social institutions, of social actions, of social structure and social systems, and in various other ways.

The new social science that Comte (Coser, 1996, p. 3) sought to establish he first called “social physics”; later, when he thought that the term had been “stolen” from him by the Belgian social statistician Adolphe Quetelet, he coined the word “sociology,” a hybrid term compounded of Latin and Greek parts. The Latin word ‘societus’ means ‘society’ and the Greek word ‘logos’ means ‘study or science’. The etymological meaning of ‘sociology’ is thus the ‘science of society.’ In 1839 (Comte, 2009, p. 10), the term Sociology was coined and considered to be the youngest of all the social sciences.

Definition of Sociology

Sociology has been defined by different sociologists and yet not a single definition has been accepted which could be satisfactory. Let us highlight some of the definitions of eminent thinkers in the following.

1. Auguste Comte, the founding father of sociology, defines sociology as the science of social phenomena “subject to natural and invariable laws, the discovery of which is the object of investigation.”

2. Emile Durkheim defines sociology as the “science of social institutions.”

3. Kingsley Davis says, “Sociology is a general science of society.”

4. Harry M. Johnson opines that “sociology is the science that deals with social groups.”

5. Emile Durkheim: “Science of social institutions.”

6. Park regards sociology as “the science of collective behaviour.”

7. Small defines sociology as “the science of social relationships.”

8. Marshal Jones defines sociology as “the study of man-in-relationship-to-men.”

9. Ogburn and Nimkoff: “Sociology is the scientific study of social life.”

10 Franklin Henry Giddings defines sociology as “the science of social phenomena.”

11. Henry Fairchild: “Sociology is the study of man and his human environment in their relations to each other.”

12. Max Weber defines sociology as “the science which attempts the interpretative understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a casual explanation of its course and effects.”

13. Alex Inkeles says, “Sociology is the study of systems of social action and of their inter-relations.”

14. Kimball Young and Raymond W. Mack say, “Sociology is the scientific study of social aspects of human life.”

From the above definition by different sociologists, we could understand their opinion in defining sociology from their own perspective, which has a distinct approach to studying society. However, they are concerned with man and his social relationships in the society. In other words, Sociology is the study of man’s behaviour in groups or interactions among human beings, of social relationships and the processes by which human group activity occurs.