ABSTRACT
Positivism, the theory that social phenomena come about as the result of natural laws, also dominated sociology in the United States, where its origins go back into the eighteenth century to moral philosophy. Comte's conservatism was found useful in the polemical defence of slavery in the Southern states. The triumph of the North in the Civil War finally put an end to slavery in the United States, and cut the ground from under the feet of its apologists where moral philosophy became a 'Social science'. It concerned itself with alcoholism, immigration, criminality, poverty, and various economic questions; and developed primarily into a movement for social reform. Frank Lester Ward divides sociology into two parts: pure and applied; and after his first work, Dynamic Sociology, which is rather philosophical in trend, he devoted one book each to these two main aspects of sociology. The first, Pure Sociology, was published in 1903, and then in the following year came Applied Sociology.
