Launch of The Social Physicist

In the early 1800s, in a time before the current discipline of physics owned its name and before biology had fully embraced evolutionary dynamics as the fundamental processes of life forms, Auguste Comte proclaimed that there should be a new discipline, Social Physics, which would seek to discover the laws governing of operation of the socio-cultural universe, the evolution of this universe, and its application of to solving problems in the socio-cultural universe. Sadly, Comte had to abandon the label “social physics” for his new field of science due to a Belgian statistician claiming the label for his version of statistical analysis. Comte was thus forced adopt the Latin-Greek hybrid of most sciences and argue for a new science, Sociology. Today, he is often remembered for being the “founder of sociology” in most sociology textbooks.

Yet, Comte's vision for the development of sociology was an interesting blend of physics and biology from his time. The physics side of his advocacy was for sociology to develop “laws” modeled on Newton’s equations on gravity that explained the orbits of planets around the sun. Such laws were abstract and thought to be universal, operating in all times and places in the universe. Thus, if the social universe was to be explained by sociologists, it must also articulate abstract laws about the operative dynamics of this universe.

The biology side of Comte’s advocacy was for sociology to conceptualize societies and their ideas, or what today would be termed “culture,” should be analyzed in evolutionary terms. That is, societies and all of their internal structures and attendant cultures evolve and change over time, but not randomly, but in terms of forces that can be discovered and whose dynamics can be stated as laws driving the evolution of societies. His actual effort at finding these laws was, again sadly, not what he had championed, but for his time, he had the right idea of what sociology could and should be, even if he could not be the driving intellectual force.

My website and its blog are just beginning to be developed, although thought about developing these for some time, but just never gotten around to making the effort. Now, one of my granddaughters, Michelle Mueller, is setting this up since, at my stage of life and generation, I am clueless of how to construct a site such as this. Once up and running, my goal is to push for a “hard science of society” or the socio-cultural universe, where the goal is to develop abstract principles (laws) and models of how the social universe that humans have created operates but with an even more lofty goal, if that seems possible, than just explaining the social universe.

For Comte believed that knowledge of this sort—abstract laws about the social universe that are untainted by ideology and bias--can indeed be developed, and thereby, make sociology “the queen sciences.” Well, this sounds a bit over the top, especially since Comte himself failed to develop abstract laws that were untainted by his bias, but his failure only highlights the difficulties involved in developing abstract laws and models, much like Newton or Einstein, that explain the operative dynamics of the socio-cultural universe. Many sociologists laugh at such pretensions but the fact is that sociology is far more developed than most social sciences realize and, sadly, more than many social scientists want and desire—so great is general pessimism as well as their need to be social activists on the front lines of social movements (primarily from the save haven of academia). And so, while Comte may be often seen as a “fool,” he had the right idea but not the skill or knowledge to execute it, since there was no discipline of sociology before Comte and, in fact, for another 60 years after Comte made this bold statement.

Today, many have the skill and knowledge, but these committed scientists are now a diminishing minority in a discipline. Hence, in the present era when sociologists are highly politicized, Comte’s dream seems rather far away. But, if anyone is actually looking at scientific sociology, it is clear that much of Comte’s dream has been accomplished. Sociologists simply do not want to admit to this because it gets in the way of easy political statements about the oppression of this or that population. Such statements are not wrong; they are largely codrrect, but they have shifted the direction of sociology to ideological goals rather than scientific goals, at the very time when sociology is so close to realizing Comte’s dream.

For well over 50 years now, I have pushed for a true science of society—that is, for “social physics”—and watched a discipline move away from this goal into an increasingly politicized discipline that often is anti-science. I probably agree with the politics of most sociologists and, for sure, I have supported almost all the social movements that they embrace, but my view is that these are matters for each of us as citizens, indeed as decent human beings, not as sociologists. Our goal should be the understand the dynamics of the social universe so that these understandings can be used to make a better social world. Without hard science, activism is driven by emotions, bias, politics, utopian ideologies, and many other states of being that get in the way of doing good science. One does not need a PhD in sociology or any discipline to be an activist. Activism biases actions but, even when well intended, activism is the enemy of more dispassionate insight into how the social universe operates. We have plenty of activists in and outside of sociology, but we do not have enough scientists to develop the knowledge needed to make the world a better place to live.

These concerns are my motivation to develop a website and blog. I will post materials that fit my vision of what sociology should and can be, hoping that some might find them interesting and useful. I am not sure many will join me in my quest, but the internet makes posts on the internet somewhat immortal, floating in cyberspace. And so, even it I have few, or even no, followers today, perhaps long after my time, those who want to take a different course than activism, will find this small ship of a blog drifting through cyberspace. For I know this much: without a social physics, the changes that many seek (as do I) will not come about through pure politics and passion.

We have great understanding of how the social universe, and most sociologists today, fail to realize how far along we are in this quest, but too many reject science, per se, because it does not meet with emotion-driven beliefs that, as I think we may discover, are counterproductive to reaching the goals that so many seek.

And so, in the coming months, please check in to the website. I will start slowly but accelerate postings that make sociology relevant again to real world problems. Ironically, activist sociology driven by ideology and anger at certain conditions is much less relevant than science, which takes hard work to understand what can, and cannot, be accomplished given the fundamental nature of the social world. To push for utopias, for what is not possible, is to be as irrelevant and counter-productive as I think a scholar can be.

And website is launched. Look for my postings as The Social Physicist.