Emile Durkheims Life - Essay Example

One of the famous three who helped pioneer into the field of sociology, Émile Durkheim was one of those who helped develop the field with specific interest on the organizational behavior of psychology. Durkheim was the first French sociologist and was born on April 15, 1858. His family was a rather prominent one in the Jewish community with his male lineage being rabbis. He deviated from this path and became interested in the social sciences. Durkheim found a majority of the humanities in French academia to be uninteresting; therefore he focused on the areas of psychology, philosophy, ethics, and finally sociology.

With the rise of the industrial era and an increase in the segmentation of jobs, he worried that society was changing as the economy was destroying the collective unconsciousness. Instead, it was being replaced upon the reliability and interconnectedness of economic principles. Being one of sociology’s principal founders, Durkheim played an important role in establishing sociology as a scientific field, rather than just as an abstract humanitarian course. This was achieved because of the emphasis he placed on taking the scientific method and applying it to society so that the research and discipline in the field would proliferate.

He died on November 15, 1917.