The birth and growth of social science

1. Socrates was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the
founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of
thought.
Plato was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He
founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the
Western world.
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece.
Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of philosophy, and the
Aristotelian tradition.

2. Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and
Catholic canon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its
center.
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian,
and author widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of all time and
among the most influential scientists. He was a key figure in the philosophical revolution known as
the Enlightenment.
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, PC, also known as Lord Verulam, was an English
philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. His
works are seen as contributing to the scientific method and remained influential through the later
stages of the scientific revolution.
René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and lay Catholic who invented
analytic geometry, linking the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra.

3. Georg Simmel was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic. Simmel was influential in the field
of sociology.
Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte was a French philosopher and writer who formulated
the doctrine of positivism. He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern
sense of the term.
Harriet Martineau was an English social theorist often seen as the first female sociologist. She wrote
from a sociological, holistic, religious and feminine angle, translated works by Auguste Comte, and,
rarely for a woman writer at the time, earned enough to support herself.

4. Karl Heinrich Marx FRSA was a German philosopher, critic of political economy, economist,
historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are
the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the three-volume Das Kapital
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline of
sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science,
alongside Max Weber and Karl Marx.
Maximilian Karl Emil Weber was a German sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economist
regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His
ideas profoundly influence social theory and research.

5. Franz Uri Boas was a German-born American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology
who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the
movements known as historical particularism and cultural relativism.
Bronisław Kasper Malinowski was a Polish-British anthropologist whose writings on ethnography,
social theory, and field research have exerted a lasting influence on the discipline of anthropology.
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, FBA was an English social anthropologist who developed the
theory of structural functionalism and coadaptation.

6. Walter Lippmann was an American writer, reporter and political commentator. With a career
spanning 60 years he is famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War.
Antonio de Morga Sánchez Garay was a Spanish soldier, lawyer and a high-ranking colonial official
for 43 years, in the Philippines, New Spain and Peru, where he was president of the Real Audiencia
for 20 years. He was also a historian.