Excerpt from Social Thought Among the Early Greeks The social thoughts of a person consist of his ideas about social phenomena. In order to think about social phenomena it is not necessary to be conscious of any fundamental axis of inquiry, any methods, any concepts, or any frame of reference - these are what distinguish a science and a discipline from random thought. Hence, before we can speak of sociological thought we must know what concepts and methods of sociology are present in a social thinking. Sociology, to distinguish it from social thought, consists of a body of knowledge, employ ing various methods and concepts, which seeks to determine the facts of human behavior by virtue of the fact that man lives in groups. It studies human relations in so far as they can be interpreted on the premise of group life. Thus, while sociological thought (as well as political thought, economic thought, and so on) is part of social thought, social thought is not necessarily sociological thought. Not all sociologists accept this difference. Some identify sociology with social thought; others do not. This moot ques tion has caused differences of opinion as to the origins of soci ology. On that account, numerous sociologists hold a variety of diverse views in regard to the beginnings of sociology as an intellectual discipline. We might classify these conceptions of the origins of sociology into the following groups: (i) the theory that sociology dates back to ancient times and to the Greeks in particular (this view is upheld by Spann, Bogardus. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.