ABSTRACT
There are many versions of the history of sociology, but most concur in placing its birth in nineteenth century France. Claude Lévi-Strauss, writing in exile in America at the end of the Second World War, may have been exaggerating only slightly when he said that modem sociology was born for the purpose of rebuilding French society after the destruction wrought by the French Revolution of 1789 and the Prussian War of 1870-71. The two Frenchmen who did most to create the discipline were Auguste Comte (1798-1857) in the aftermath of the Revolution, and Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) after the Franco-Prussian War. Comte gave the subject its name and an ambitious prospectus; Durkheim gave it academic credibility and influence.
