Before the Industrial Revolution, families existed on smaller farms and every single ablemember of the family worked

in order to support and sustain the family in the then economy.

Towns in this era were small and quite. There was also lower levels of living standards, and
also, as a result of poor sanitation people died earlier. In situations where families were large,
it was believed that more children meant more workers.
By 1880 Europe move into an era described as the classical age of the 19th century. In
England, industrialization and free trade had made the middle class described as Podsnaps in
1864, in the novel of, Our Mutual Friend.
It was observed that, Comte's intention was to create a natural science of society (sociology,
which had already been introduced in 1780 but with different meaning), which would both
explain the past development of mankind and also predict its future progression. In addition
to bringing up a science equipped at explaining the laws of motion that govern humanity over
time, Comte also tried to frame the conditions that account for social stability at any given
historical moment, as sociology was divided into two distinct parts, the study of social
dynamics and social statics.
According to Comte, social statics investigate the foundations of social stability. It studies the
balance of mutual relations of elements within a social whole. There must always be a
"spontaneous harmony between the whole and the parts of the social system."
Comte associated the study of social dynamics with human progress and evolution
At the heart of Comtes interest for resolving the crisis of early industrial society, which he
explained in his 1851 publication Systeme de politique ou traite de sociologie is the theory
of PositivePhilosophy.
Comte's well-known "law of the three stages" is an example of his search for invariant laws
governing the social world. Comte argued that the human mind, individual human beings, all
knowledge, and world history develop through three successive stages. The theological stage
is dominated by a search for the essential nature of things, and people come to believe that all
phenomena are created and influenced by gods and supernatural forces. Monotheism is the
ultimate belief of the theological stage. The metaphysical stage is a transitional stage in which
mysterious, abstract forces (e.g., nature) replace supernatural forces as the powers that
explain the workings of the world. The positivist stage is the last and highest stage in Comte's

work. In this stage, people search for invariant laws that govern all of the phenomena of the
world.
Another pillar of positive philosophy is the law of the classification of the sciences, which
examines each of the six fundamental sciences (mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry,
biology, sociology) and provides a way to do justice to the diversity of the sciences without
losing sight of their unity. It gives the order in which the sciences develop as for example,
astronomy requires mathematics, and chemistry requires physics. Each science therefore rests
upon the one that precedes it. By this, Comte puts it as, the higher depends on the lower, but
is not its result.
Comte argued that sociology could become a "social physics" that is, a social science on a par
with the most positivistic of sciences where he elaborated four methods of sociology. He
expressed the need to use the same methods that have been used so successfully in the natural
sciences by means of observation, experimentation, comparison, and historical research to
study society.
By observation, the observer knows what facts to look at by the guidance of a preliminary
theory, and therefore understands the significance of the data or facts being observed.
Experimentation is only partly applicable in the social sciences as direct experimentation is
not feasible in the human world. But experimentation takes place whenever the regular course
of the phenomenon is interfered with in any determinate manner.
Comparison being of central importance to sociologists, comparisons of human with animal
societies. Furthermore, comparisons within the human species are even more central to
sociology.
Although all three methods of science must be used in sociology, it relies significantly on the
historical method which involves the investigation of societies at different times. Here,
historical comparisons throughout the time in which humanity has evolved, as well as the
time differences is ascertained.