Emile Durkheim's Rules Of Sociology Essay

In the nineteenth century modern science, which is based on scientific methods, took the place of the appeals to divine and religions. The rapid social change and the great success of natural scientific approaches encouraged people to explore the social world with more systematic, rational and empirical methods which results in the emergency of social science (Benton and Craib, 2001:22). Due to the lack of formalized rules for studying societies, sociologists developed a series of principles for research which could help them explore different social phenomena (Bilton et al, 2002:444). Emile Durkheim, whose conception of sociology was one of the earliest attempts to explain how the society could be studied scientifically, set out his methodological

This work represents the development of Durkheim’s thoughts and leads to his own interpretations and reflections of the key rules in his later studies of suicide and the division of labour. Science sometimes might not reach the level of absolute truth. What science could do is just improving the theories through continuous tests and make them more scientific. It is necessary for scientists to seek new evidence to challenge prior theories rather than confirming them. Through refining the understanding, the theories would develop and become more scientific. Although Durkheim’s ‘The Rules of Sociological Method’ is not a perfect guide to actual practice, it still provides new generation of sociologists with valuable sociological knowledge which they could learn