II Comprehension check

1. What have people attempted to understand from early in recorded history?

2. What philosophers pondered the nature of society?

3. When and where did sociology begin?

4. What was its rise associated with?

5. What were Sociology’s early founders interested in?

6. What does sociology focus on?

7. Why did people in eighteenth-century Europe reject traditional theological explanations for the social changes in the society?

8. What did physical sciences help us to understand?

9. What did the first sociologists try to explain?

10. What is studied as the sociology of knowledge itself?

11. How can we view social theories?

12. What influences the way people view the world?

III Look through the texts again and find the words that mean:

1. Knowledge about the world especially based on physical examination and testing and on facts that can be proved.

2. People in general considered in relations to the structure of laws, organizations that makes it possible for them to live together

3. The situation, place or physical matter from which something begins.

4. Knowledge or understanding of a particular subject or situation.

5. Someone’s idea of how something is or should be done.

6. The ability to understand and realize what people or situation are really like.

7. Someone who gives ideas to something, that a lot of people are also involved in.

IV Translate from Russian into English:

1. Термин «социология» происходит от латинского «societas» – «общество» и греческого «logos» – «учение», обозначая «учение об обществе».

2. Объектом социологии является общество.

3. Предмет социологии – это социальная жизнь общества.

4. В сравнении с математикой, физикой и химией законы социологии носят вероятностный характер. Они могут произойти или не произойти, т.к. полностью зависят от воли и действий людей.

5. Ключевым понятием социологии является взаимоизменение.

6. Роль социологии возрастает в кризисных ситуациях, когда важно учесть общественное мнение.