Order and progress

social statics – the requirements for social order.........the laws of the development and change of social systems.Order and progress are the static and dynamic aspects of a society.

Auguste Comte developed social physics, or what in 1839 he called sociology. The use of the term social physics made it clear that Comte sought to model sociology after the hard sciences. This new science, which in his view would ultimately become the dominant science, was to be concerned with both social statics and social dynamics. Although both involved the search for laws of social life, he felt that social dynamics was more important than social statics. This focus on change reflected his interest in social reform, particularly reform of the ills created by French Revolution and Enlightenment. Comte did not urge revolutionary change, because he felt the natural evolution of society would make things better. Reforms were needed only to assist the process a bit.

Comte’s views concerning human, society, interpretations of human society was closely associated with scientific realism rather than empiricism. Comte sought to explain the instability of Europe as the product of the interrupted and incomplete transition between the social structure of the ‘Theological’ or ‘Military’ and those of a ‘Scientific’ industrial type. His theory of social statics and social dynamics is an evitable consequence of the ideas and views, conceptions as formulated by him.

The term social statics and social dynamics correspond the idea, analogous to natural science. Both the words statics and dynamics convey mathematical concepts and ideas and applied in the sphere of sociological thinking or more particularly thinking about human sociology. In his quotation “Course in Positivist Philosophy” he identified the specific objects of the sociological enquiry as economic life, ruling class, forms of individuality, family structure, the division of labour, language, religion. He organized his discussion of this topic in terms of a highly influential distinction between social statics – the requirements for social order and the conditions of existence and laws of the functioning of a social system, whereas social dynamics – the determinants of social change, that is the laws of the development and change of social systems.

According to Comte, as in biology it is useful to separate anatomy from physiology it is desirable to make a distinction in sociology between two classes of facts but between two aspects of same theory. It corresponds with the double conception of order and progress; order consists in a permanent harmony among the conditions of social existence and progress consists in social development. Order and progress – Statics and Dynamics are always co-relative to each other.

Order and progress are the static and dynamic aspects of a society. Order refers to the harmony which prevails among the various conditions of existence, while progress refers to the society's orderly development according to natural social laws. Thus the two principles, previously mutually antagonistic, are reconciled. It is natural and normal for the elements of the social system, the institutions of society, to be interdependent and interrelated. Therefore, even for analytical purposes social elements should not be contemplated separately as if they had an independent existence. 

All the parts of the system make up an harmonious whole, which, by definition, is divested of all-conflictive, contradictory, and antagonistic elements. He enunciates as a scientific principle "that there must always be a spontaneous harmony between the whole- and the parts of the social system," and he insists that harmony will establish itself through radical consensus, the only condition proper to the social organism. Emphasis is always on adjustment to the "natural" social laws, quite deliberately opposed to Enlightenment principles where the emphasis is on changing the social system to allow for the infinite perfection of man. 

Again and again Comte stresses that the scientific method requires that society be studied as a whole and not separated into its component parts. It is as if he fears that the logical analysis of a society's institutions will inevitably lead to its actual dissolution; an analytical view of society, in which essential relationships are critically scrutinized, will revive the very same critical, negative, and revolutionary philosophy that positivism was to replace once and for all.

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You can visit some significant Theories by some Great Theorists:
Voluntaristic Theory of Action (Voluntaristic Action), Generalized Media of Exchange, Four-Function Paradigm (AGIL Model in Systemic Model), Cynicism (Circulation of Elites), Hierarchy of the Sciences (The Classification of the Science), The Philosophy of Money, Organicism, The Laws of Three Stages

Reference:

• Igor Kon, A History of Classical Sociology,
• George Ritzer, Sociological Theory,
• Lewis A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought.

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Related Questions:

Understanding the interrelation among the order and progress as presented by  Auguste Comte.

Brief definition of Social Statics and Social Dynamics.

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