Early Thinkers in the development of sociology along with their major contributions
Auguste Comte
Comte named his scientific study of social patterns "positivism"
Comte also believed in betterment of society
Harriet Martineau
Was the first to translate Comte's writing from French to English
Is credited with the first systematic methodological international comparisons
Karl Max
Marx predicted that workers would revolt from inequalities of capitalism
Believed that societies grew and changed as a result of the struggles of different social classes
Herbert Spencer
Published "The Study of Sociology" with it being the first book with the term "sociology" in it
He favored a form of government that allowed market forces to control capitalism
Georg Simmel
Addressed topics such as social conflict, the function of money, individual identity and European fear of outsiders
Much of his work focused on micro-level theories and it analyzed dynamics of two person and three person groups
George Herbert Mead
Emile Durkheim
Durkhiem theorized on how societies transformed from a primitive state into a capitalist, industrial society
He believed that sociologists could study objective "social facts"
His work focused on the ways in which the mind and the self were developed as a result of social processes
Mead's work is closely associated with the symbolic interactionist approach and emphasizes the micro level of analysis
Max Weber
He is known best for his 1904 book "The Protestant Ethic" and the "Spirit of Capitalism"
Weber believed that it was difficult, if not impossible, to use standard scientific methods to accurately predict the behavior of groups as people hoped to do
William Edaward Burghardt
He made lasting and profound contributions to the social sciences by pioneering several sociological methodologies.
His now well-known studies introduced and implemented many of the principles that became the foundation for modern sociology
Claude Henri de Rouvroy and Comte de Saint-Simon
Both thought that social scientists could study society using the same scientific methods utilized in natural sciences.
They were pupils of Auguste Comte