Positivism

Searching for laws of nature and social world

For Comte, Positivism like in the picture is a science that seeks to search for the invariant laws of the natural and social world. One has to look at both natural and social world to find the answers of those laws.

The Law of Three Stages

Our thirst for knowledge 

For Auguste Comte, there a 3 basic stages that all human beings, as well as their minds go through in the maturation process. These three stages come together because all human beings are trying to search for the knowledge of life. Those 3 stages are Theological Stage where we conclude supernatural forces like god is at work. The Metaphysical Stage, where we look at nature to explain the way the world works. Last the Positivistic Stage, where we look for invariant laws that rule everything around us. At the Oviatt Library, students read material, to understand certain concepts from various subjects they might be interested in. In the process get closer to the ultimate stage according to Comte the Positivistic stage.  

Bourgeoisie and Proletariat

One day the revolution will come.

For Karl Marx there are two types of individuals in the capitalistic society, one of those two individuals are the proletariat. These people are the workers in the capitalistic society who sell their labor time because they do not own the means of production. The other people are the bourgeoisie who are the capitalist and own both the means of production and wages of the workers. In this picture I show my three cockatoos. The yellows are the workers who do their jobs in the factories, while the gray is the capitalist who watches every move the workers do. This can be see as a hierarchy of sorts, at the bottom of this cage are the yellow workers, and top the lonely gray bourgeoisie/capitalist.

"Value-Free" Sociology

Facts overs Values

For Herbert Spencer one of the problems he encountered with Sociology was legitimizing the study. A sociologist research findings can be effected by the emotions/values towards a study they are doing. To avoid biases Spencer was the first to bring into the study a "value-free" postion, which meant the sociologist had to study subjects without taking into account one's own judgement into the study. Like in this picture, sociologist only use facts from books or observations to solve sociological problems.

Fetishism of Commodities

I need it, I need it now!!

According to Karl Marx, the fetishism of commodities is the tendency of humans to treat certain objects into magical properties that give these objects of their own. The perfect example of modern day fetishism of commodities has to do with the Iphone or Ipad people have to have the newest one. People have turned this man made product and gave it a worship like status.

Sacred and Profane

What is holy and unholy?

One of the interesting concepts talked about Emilie Durkheim is the concept of what is sacred and what is profane in a society? The way that Durkheim differentiated these two ideas was by defining them based by religion. Things that are considered sacred when created through rituals that transform moral power of society and bind the individuals together. While the profane is considered the everyday commonplace. In this picture the Catholic church is considered the sacred by Catholics, and profane can be the sidewalk.

Types of Authority

The many faces of a leader.

For Max Weber there were 3 types of authority that he identifies in his body of work. The first traditional like monarchies, their leadership is passed on through traditions of a ruling family. Then rational-legal people like U.S. presidents obtain leadership based on enacted rules of law. The last is charismatic people like Cesar Chavez obtain power by the devotion of their followers.