ABSTRACT
As we said in the first chapter, although humans have always lived in social groups with defined rules, roles, and institutions, “society” was one of the last things to be discovered by scholars and scientists. This is particularly surprising because “society” would seem to be central to social thought. Some of the questions that would eventually fall within the domain of sociology were previously asked, to be sure, although they were posed by philosophy, theology, or other disciplines like political science or eco - nomics and therefore were not posed in a distinctly “sociological” way. And thoughts and speculations about society were not accompanied by empirical and statistical investigations into social organization and social behavior.
