How Was Sociology Invented?

"What I mean is that 'religion' was the way the classical sociologists like like Emil Durkheim, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber first managed to turn 'society' into something you could actually study. Durkheim's Elementary Forms defines religion as a system of beliefs and practices tied to sacred things, and what matters there is how those beliefs and rituals bind people together into a moral community-the church. For him, the believer isn't wrong to think he depends on a higher power."

"The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah's latest book, Captive Gods: Religion and the Rise of Social Science, is concerned with the origins of the social sciences. His main claim is that "it's through religion that society becomes a disciplinary object." What Appiah means by this is that the founders of the modern social sciences-notably Edward Burnett Tylor, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, George Simmel-used religion as a framework through which they established sociology as a discipline."

Classical sociologists used religion to make society an object suitable for systematic study. Durkheim defined religion as systems of beliefs and practices tied to sacred things and emphasized how rituals and beliefs bind people into moral communities like the church. Durkheim located the source of perceived higher powers in the social structure itself. Weber treated religious creeds and customs as key determinants of a civilization's historical trajectory. Simmel regarded God as a personification of society and a means of absolutizing social forces. These moves converted collective meanings and institutions into data for a disciplinary social science.

Read at The Nation