Nice: Sociology and Emile Durkheim Essay

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Sociology deals with the ways that social structure and culture are related. Social structure is definied by a variety of ideas. The structure of a society can be seen as the society's organization, such as its religious, political, or economical institutions, rules, routines, and relationships that create the society. Social culture deals more with the beliefs and values of the society. Sociology is seen by some as a science, where facts can be obtained by collecting data, and hypotheses can become theorems. As a science, sociology would have to be value-free, and sociologists, as scientists, should not be interested in changing society; rather, they must be interested in observing and explaining it. Others believe that sociology, as a study of the groups of people, should be used to aid in the creation of a better society, and therefore sociologists should be obliged to alter and possibly fix society. This paper will assert that sociology should remain a science which seeks to explain the world. The concept of sociology as a science is supported both by the founding fathers of the field and by contemporary minds. These leading sociologists, such as Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Peter Berger, support the scientific aspects of sociology. In addition, sociology must remain neutral to the religous, political, and moral values which it seeks to describe. The field of cosmology-the study of the universe, in particular its origin-can be used as a model for the movement of sociology into a universally accepted, value-free science. Stephen Hawking's best-seller A Brief History of Time, in particular its first chapter, is an ideal source to back up this claim, as both fields-physics in the mid- and later parts of the milennium, and sociology beginning the late 19th century-had to endure the influence of
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