Social fact

The term "social fact" is used in two meanings. First of all, it is understood as events that occurred in the life of society under certain conditions and in specific historical circumstances. These events do not depend on whether their subjects observed cognitive activity. They are objective and do not depend on the researchers studying and interpreting them.

In a broader sense, this term is understood as events that occurred in a specific social situation and were included in the scientific knowledge of society, found in books, scientific works and other written documents.

Social facts are of two kinds:

• Directly physical actions of people;
• Products of people's activities (spiritual or material), verbal actions of a person: judgments, assessments, opinions, etc.

You can record a social fact by studying statistical data, conducting sociological surveys , etc. But with the help of these methods, only contemporary events can be studied. If they occurred in the distant past, then for their study and description it is necessary to analyze historical sources: tools of labor, dwellings, archaeological monuments, written sources (annals, legislative acts, various documents, books, newspapers, etc.). On these tracks it becomes possible to reconstruct and describe this or that social fact.

The life of society consists of many different events. Their selection and grouping depend on the purpose pursued by the specialist in the study. The economist will select certain events from the whole set of questions he will be interested in, the lawyer will choose other, the ethnographer will be an entirely different group.

The social fact is the basis that allows us to derive the laws of the development of society, to restore the past, to explore the present. Interpretation of events is carried out in several stages. First of all, the scientific basis is brought under them, that is, the fact itself is correlated with some scientific concept (for example, the overthrow of the king is attached to the notion of "political revolution"). Then all the facts connected with a concrete fact are investigated, its connections with other events are traced, so that the interpretation could be objective. Only an interpreted fact can be considered scientific.

E. Durkheim believed that social phenomena can not be reduced to individual states, they depend only on social facts that are objective, compulsory, external to the individual. They need to be considered, they exist regardless of the qualities and qualities of people.

According to Durkheim, social reality is part of the universal order, it is as real and sustainable as nature, therefore it develops according to its laws. Society is also an objective reality that differs from all its other kinds. It has autonomy from the natural and biopsychic essence (embodied in humans). Therefore, society and people act as a dichotomous couple embodying the heterogeneity of this reality. Consequently, a person is a dual entity (homo duplex), in which both social and individual components coexist. Primacy belongs to the essence of social. Hence the conclusion that a person arises from society, and not vice versa (society consists of people).

Social facts are in the society that creates them. They consist of ways of thinking and acting, capable of influencing consciousness, forcing people to do something in a certain way.

Durkheim singled out two types of social facts: morphological and spiritual. The former have a material substratum, the latter represent beliefs, customs, are social consciousness.