subject: Comparative Essay on Comte, Martineau, and Spencer [print this page] Comte: Comte wanted to create a discipline for understanding society based on science. He believed that society and it's' interactions were based on a set of universal rules that could be found through scientific methods. As summarized in our text, Comte focused on observation and experimentation, as well as comparison between humans and animals, a society to other existing societies, and societies at different stages of their development. He also used historical analysis to see how laws and society changed and 'evolved' over time. The conclusion Comte came to was that society was evolving towards an ordered and positivistic existence based on scientific reasoning. He saw chaos and disorder as the cause of conflict in society, so the solution was the 'Distribution of function and the combination of effort'. This would be a kind of secular religion where the head figure (which would be Comte himself) would direct the efforts of society towards a common goal.
Martineau: Martineau devised a methodology using many different methods to gather scientific data on society. She called for the use of interviews, unobtrusive methods, analyzing discourse, analyzing and gathering statistics, using typologies for making generalizations, and sampling. From her studies and travels Martineau came to the conclusion that conflict in society was caused by a societies goal ideal (like universal freedom) not matching what the society actually does (enslavement, disempowerment, etc). She called for whatever changes were needed to bring a society into line with it's' ideals, even if this meant changing the foundations of a society.
Spencer: Spencer's views were similar to Comte's in that he believed society evolved, but with a different conclusion. Spencer believed in using scientific reasoning in every sect of life. He started his career of theory in biology, and was very taken by Darwin's theory of evolution. He applied this to sociological study and believed that society acted much as an organism did in that it grew, adapted, and evolved. For Spencer, society's hosted the least chaos and strife when all it's individuals worked towards adapting to the obstacles of survival, and that the social contract was the strongest foundation for this.
Comparative Essay on Comte, Martineau, and Spencer
