社会学的历史其实是很悠长。因为社会学是对人类社会作整体研究的社会科学，其理念是思想家探讨社会的本质、规律及演变。

社会学的推理可以追溯到古希腊时代。伊·卡尔敦，作为一名14世纪的历史学家，他那七册普遍历史分析在社会哲学中为社会凝聚力及社会冲突制订理论。

“社会学”一词是由孔德(Auguste Comte)首创的，他试图使用一种自然科学的方法来统一所有的人文学科——包括历史、心理和经济学，从而创建经得起科学规则考验的学科，原本他用“社会物理学”来称呼这个新的学科。他的贡献主要是他使得社会科学终于脱离了人文领域。他的社会学理念是典型18世纪的：他相信所有人类活动都会一致地经历截然不同的历史阶段，如果一个社会可以抓着这个阶段，它就可以为社会病开出有效的药方。

Sociology as a scholarly discipline emerged primarily out of enlightenment thought, shortly after the French Revolution, as a positivist science of society. Its genesis owed to various key movements in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of knowledge. Social analysis in a broader sense, however, has origins in the common stock of philosophy and necessarily pre-dates the field. Modern academic sociology arose as a reaction to modernity, capitalism, urbanization, rationalization, secularization, colonization and imperialism. Late 19th century sociology demonstrated a particularly strong interest in the emergence of the modern nation state; its constituent institutions, its units of socialization, and its means of surveillance. An emphasis on the concept of modernity, rather than the Enlightenment, often distinguishes sociological discourse from that of classical political philosophy.