Die Gesellschaft als Organismus? Über die Anfänge und Probleme der Soziologie im Austausch mit der Biologie

When sociology was founded as an independent discipline in the mid-19th century, it was under pressure to justify itself. The early sociologists oriented themselves towards biology, not only to benefit from the success of an empirically descriptive science but also because they identified structural and functional similarities between society and the biological or-ganism. This article aims to reconstruct historically and systematically the specific areas in which early sociology was inspired by biology and the problems it encountered as a result. In biology itself, there was a dispute about what exactly should be understood as an organ-ism and how holism and teleology, development and evolution, thermodynamics and func-tional relationships should be conceptualized. From the outset, working on these problems also drove a change in sociological theory. The work of Albert Schäffle and Othmar Spann will be discussed in particular. In this way, it can be shown in terms of the history of ideas that there are conceptual differences in how the (social) organism was perceived in 1870 and the perception of the same in 1920

History of science · Holism · Perception · Sociological theory · German Social Sciences and History · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy, Science, and History