Emile Durkheim Theory Of Social Fact

Emile Durkheim, world renown French sociologist, has developed through his career the scientific study of social systems and phenomena in our world. The use of the scientific method to examine culture and society produced crucial differences with his predecessors or colleagues such as Herbert Spencer or Max Weber. Trying to know if society is something tangible or a social construct, Emile Durkheim wrote his famous book The Rules of Sociological Method (1895) that laid down the guidelines to follow to study what he called a positive social science. His expertise in the social subject has led to powerful conclusions such as the presence of social facts in society. Durkheim termed these facts also “things” and considered that social science …show more content…
According to him, sociology must be grounded in empirical data, tested, and theorized. Instead of considering sociology as a philosophy focusing on our lives, Durkheim considered sociology as part of the three live sciences which are biology, psychology, and sociology. Following this idea, he declared society as a fact and not as previously thought an abstract concept we are all part of. Based on the factualization of society, Durkheim studied the group and not the individual, which is a crucial part in his writings. By demonstrating the independence of the society and its consciousness towards the individual, Durkheim argued the reality of social …show more content…
It is worth mentioning that social facts are “things”. The interchangeability of these two terms demonstrates the confusion the individual and, often, the group has towards these complex processes happening without being aware of them occurring. Emile Durkheim treats social facts separately from psychological and biological facts because he argues that “things” are irreducible to these two fields of study. According to Durkheim, “A thing is any object of knowledge which is not naturally controlled by the intellect, which cannot be adequately grasped by a straightforward process of mental activity.” “Things” are non-material, real, objective, and changeable, which is very similar to the definition of the word “Science”. Laws, customs, religions, and many other institutions and social processes construct “things”. However, “things” differ from ideas because the intellect controls ideas. Durkheim posits that “things” are “object of knowledge not controlled by the intellect.” Here, the sociologist argues that social facts have an objective reality that arise from people, but they have their own life and cannot be changed by the mere will of an individual. The group can affect social facts even though they are ignorant of the nature of their existence. By saying that, Durkheim means that the living population is not the origin of the social facts because they are embedded in