The birth of sociology was itself the result of powerful social forces. Striking changes took place in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Three kinds of change were especially important in the development of sociology: the rise of a factory-based industrial economy, the explosive growth of cities, and new ideas about democracy and political rights.

• During the Middle Ages in Europe, most people plowed fields near their homes or worked in small-scale manufacturing. By the end of the eighteenth century, inventors used new sources of energy—the power of moving water and then steam—to operate large machines in mills and factories. Instead of laboring at home or in small groups, workers became part of a large and anonymous labor force, under the control of strangers who owned the factories. This change in the system of production took people out of their homes, weakening the traditions that had guided community life for centuries.
• Across Europe, landowners took part in what historians call the enclosure movement—they fenced off more and more farmland to create grazing areas for sheep, the source of wool for the thriving textile mills. Without land, countless tenant farmers had little choice but to head to the cities in search of work in the new factories. As cities grew larger, these urban migrants faced many social problems, including pollution, crime, and homelessness. Moving through streets crowded with strangers, they faced a new and impersonal social world.
• Political Change Europeans in the Middle Ages viewed society as an expression of God’s will: From the royalty to the serfs, each person up and down the social ladder played a part in the holy plan. This was the theological view of society.
• In the writings of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704), and Adam Smith (1723–1790), we see a shift in focus from a moral obligation to God and king to the pursuit of self-interest. In the new political climate, philosophers spoke of personal liberty and individual rights. Echoing these sentiments, our own Declaration of Independence states that every person has “certain unalienable rights,” including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
• The French Revolution, which began in 1789, was an even greater break with political and social tradition. The French social analyst Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) thought the changes in society brought about by the French Revolution were so great that they amounted to “nothing short of the regeneration of the whole human race”.
• Huge factories, exploding cities, a new spirit of individualism—these changes combined to make people more aware of their surroundings. The new discipline of sociology was born in England, France, and Germany—precisely where the changes were greatest.
• And so it was that the French social thinker Auguste Comte (1798–1857) coined the term sociology in 1838 to describe a new way of looking at society. This makes sociology one of the youngest academic disciplines— far newer than history, physics, or economics, for example.

The emergence of sociology as a distinct discipline can thus be attributed to the interplay of intellectual ideas, material developments, and social changes that characterized the modern era. Key intellectual ideas, such as the Enlightenment, positivism, and Marxism, provided the theoretical foundations for the study of society, while material developments, such as industrialization and urbanization, created the social context in which sociology could develop. Finally, social developments, such as the French Revolution and the growth of democracy, demonstrated the importance of understanding social forces and the potential for social change. Together, these factors contributed to the establishment of sociology as a discipline dedicated to the scientific study of human society and the pursuit of social progress.