Sociaal evolutionisme in de vormende jaren van de sociologie, in het bijzonder in Nederland

Samenvatting

Social Evolutionism during the Formative Years of Sociology in the Netherlands. Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte, who coined the word sociology. The most important thinker, however, is the founding father of sociology, Herbert Spencer, whose subtle social evolutionism was closely related to the ideas that Charles Darwin proposed in biology in the same period. The turn-of-the-century Marxists who propagated "scientific socialism" were in many cases as devoted to Spencer as they were to orthodox Marxism. In the Netherlands, the first defenders of sociology as an academic discipline were all social evolutionists. It is remarkable, given these beginnings of the sociological enterprise, that sociologists in the 20th century distanced themselves rapidly from social evolutionism, although a recent resurgence in interest can be discerned. 33 References. Adapted from the source document.