Émile Durkheim: Quotes about science

Émile Durkheim was French sociologist (1858-1917). Explore interesting quotes on science.
Émile Durkheim: 86   quotes 19   likes

“But the division of labor is not peculiar to the economic world; we can observe its growing influence in the most varied fields of society. The political, administrative, and judicial functions are growing more and more specialized. It is the same with the aesthetic and scientific functions. It is long since philosophy reigned as the science unique; it has been broken into a multitude of special disciplines each of which has its object, method, and thought. “Men working in the sciences have become increasingly more specialized.”

Émile Durkheim

Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 40

Men , World , Science

“In the name of the dogma of struggle for existence and natural selection, they paint for us in the saddest colors this primitive humanity whose hunger and thirst, always badly satisfied, were their only passions; those sombre times when men had no other care and no other occupation than to quarrel with one another over their miserable nourishment. To react against those retrospective reveries of the philosophy of the eighteenth century and also against certain religious doctrines, to show with some force that the paradise lost is not behind us and that there is in our past nothing to regret, they believe we ought to make it dreary and belittle it systematically. Nothing is less scientific than this prejudice in the opposite direction. If the hypotheses of Darwin have a moral use, it is with more reserve and measure than in other sciences. They overlook the essential element of moral life, that is, the moderating influence that society exercises over its members, which tempers and neutralizes the brutal action of the struggle for existence and selection. Wherever there are societies, there is altruism, because there is solidarity.”

Émile Durkheim

Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 153

Life , Men , Hunger , Color

“The division of labour is not of recent origin, but it was only at the end of the eighteenth century that social cognizance was taken of the principle. though, until then, unwitting submission had been rendered to it. To be sure, several thinkers from earliest times saw its importance; but Adam Smith was the first to attempt a theory of it. Moreover, he adopted this phrase that social science later lent to biology.”

Émile Durkheim

Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 39; Lead paragraph

Science , Time

“Methodological rules are for science what rules of law and custom are for conduct.”

Émile Durkheim

Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 364

Law , Science

“Men already had ideas on law, morality, the family, the state, and society itself before the advent of social science, for these ideas were necessary conditions of his life”

Émile Durkheim

Source: Rules of Sociological Method, 1895, p. 14

Life , Men , Family , Law