1. Sociology before sociology
Terminologically, sociology began in France in the late 1830s with Auguste Comte (see 2. below). In that period, it was not yet an independent scholarly discipline; conceptually, it should be seen in the context of the then-prominent terms social science, French science sociale, German Social-Wissenschaft and Gesellschafts-Wissenschaft [20]. In the course of the 19th century, the terminolo…