**4. References**

160 Sociological Landscape – Theories, Realities and Trends

phenomena in society. How could such a knowledge help people to solve their problems?

To answer such a question we have first of all to remember that sociology doesn't pertain to the low knowledge, to that usually employed by the members in their everyday life: as a matter of fact indeed, ordinary members of a community think about their problems in their turn, and often build some kinds of theories about them. The way they build such theories is just the matter ethnomethodologists are mainly involved in. But if by this way ordinary people could well manage all their problems, nobody would have invented sociology.

Then sociology must pertain to the high knowledge. We have still seen how much problems would arise about the nature of science and of its methodology; even more problems would arise about the question whether sociology is a real science or not. But I suggest not to take a definite party in this debate, because anyway, in my opinion, it is not so useful: scholars make their research and pursue some outcomes (often very important ones) independently on the answers given to that questions (and almost all philosophers of science agree about

But in any case high knowledge must differ from the low one as to the *rigour*: its discourses can't be made casually nor approximately; they can't be built on sheer personal opinions, nor on some kind of wishful thinking. Rigour implies first of all a good faith from the part of the sociologist: he (she) has to take seriously the problem at stake in order to really help the social partner to feel fit with the answers given by sociology. In the second place, sociologists have to single out as much phenomena likely to be someway connected with that which gave rise to the problem, without deceiving him(her)self as well as the partner about the real cause of the problem: to seek the *causes* of a social phenomenon (then also of a problematic one) can be misleading, because social phenomena are usually so interconnected that the one can influence the other and vice-versa. Then actually we can only observe that a change in the one is very likely to modify the whole net of phenomena, but it is very difficult to forecast exactly how much and in which direction it will be

In third place, rigour in the sociological discourse implies to clear all the premises of each reasoning as well as all consequences that one could forecast as likely. Thus any partner of the sociologist, should he (she) be a colleague or a layman, can verify his agreement or disagreement by furnishing arguments for it. Confronting and comparing such discourses could bring to a final agreement, or to an explicit disagreement, but the both grounded on

Rigour is not only a moral rule for a scholar. In the case of a sociologist involved in solving some social problem it is necessary to avoid any kind of wishful thinking: that's a real

But rigour is not enough to implement a clinical approach in sociology, that is in its turn a condition for helping someone to live a better life. At this point sociologists have no remedy, no drug for directly helping partners feeling pain in the middle of a problematic situation. They only can resort to a technique still well known, coming from the professional experience of psychoanalysts: they too don't use indeed any drug to face the disease of their

danger, one of the worst, for people managing or feeling pain.

How, finally, should a clinical sociologist work?

that).

modified.

clear basis.

patients.


**9** 

*USA* 

William R. Catton Jr. *Washington State University,* 

**Sociology's Neglect of Ecological Context** 

Probably for as long as there have been literate humans on this planet, living together in groups, drawing survival strength from such group life, some have wondered whether there were explanations for the patterns and regularities in their lives in company with one another. Their speculative answers about such matters would have constituted a kind of folk

When Auguste Comte decided to coin the word "sociology" (Ca. 1839) to refer to a new science he was seeking to launch, he knew of recent societal change and was concerned to foresee the further evolution of societies and cultures. Humanity's recent intellectual history, Comte believed, had involved a constructing of one science atop another, resulting in a hierarchy with mathematics at the foundation, then astronomy, followed by physics, then chemistry, topped by biology (with psychology included therein), and to be crowned by sociology. He discerned three stages of advancement to the attainment of each layer, from people explaining the world in theological terms, through a metaphysical style of thought, and finally to positivism―understanding a given level of phenomena through scientific reasoning from observations. He believed this "law of three stages" was true for all societies, and he hopefully regarded Europe (France in particular) as on the verge of the

Comte's views on societal evolution preceded by two decades the existence of an adequate theory of the evolution even of plant and animal communities. The products of such societal evolution observable in his time had yet to be complicated by some major developments that have happened since. The industrial revolution had only begun to get under way. There were only about one-fifth as many human beings on this planet as there are alive today, and none were then equipped to amplify their lives and abilities with such an array of powerful technological apparatus as has since become prevalent in many nations. The implications of that fact have not been as obvious as one might suppose. Today there are many more of us, and we have acquired by technological change gigantic powers to reshape our planetary environment, extracting resources from it to feed our proliferating machines, and injecting

Herbert Spencer in Britain, conceiving a human society as a kind of organism, wrote a multivolume *The Principles of Sociology* (1876-1896) as a component of his series of works on a *Synthetic Philosophy*, including volumes on *First Principles*, *Principles of Biology*, and *The Principles of Psychology*. It is doubtful that many sociologists read Spencer's other books

sociology, although nobody at the time called these ideas by such a phrase.

**1. Introduction** 

third stage as he wrote.

into it the products and by-products of all our activities.

