The term "social fact" is used in two meanings. First of all, it is understood as events that occurred in the life of society under certain conditions and in specific historical circumstances. These events do not depend on whether their subjects of cognitive activity observed. They are objective and do not depend on researchers studying and interpreting them.
In a broader sense, this term refers to events that occurred in a particular social situation and were included in scientific knowledge about society, as reflected in books, scientific papers and other written documents.
Social facts come in two forms:
- direct physical actions of people;
- products of people's activities (spiritual or material), verbal actions of a person: judgments, assessments, opinions, etc.
It is possible to fix a social fact by studying statistical data, conducting sociological polls , etc. But with the help of these methods, only contemporary events can be studied by the researcher. If they happened in the distant past, then to study and describe them, an analysis of historical sources is required: tools, dwellings, archaeological sites, written sources (annals, laws, various documents, books, newspapers, etc.). Following these traces, it becomes possible to restore and describe a particular social fact.
The life of society consists of many different events. Their selection and grouping depend on the purpose that the specialist pursues in studying. To study the issues of interest to him, an economist will select some events from the totality, a lawyer - others, an ethnographer - a completely different group of them.
Social fact - this is the basis that allows you to derive patterns of development of society, restore the past, explore the present. Interpretation of events is carried out in several stages. First of all, a scientific base is brought under them, that is, the fact itself is correlated with some scientific concept (for example, the overthrow of the king is tied to the concept of "political revolution"). Then all the circumstances associated with a particular fact are examined, its connections with other events are traced so that the interpretation can be objective. Only an interpreted fact can be considered scientific.
E. Durkheim believed that social phenomena cannot be reduced to individual states, they depend only on social facts that are objective, compulsory, external to the individual. They must be reckoned with, they exist regardless of the properties and qualities of people.
According to Durkheim, social reality is part of the universal order, it is as real and stable as nature, therefore it develops according to its own laws. Society is also an objective reality that is different from all its other types. It has autonomy from a natural and biopsychic entity (embodied in humans). Therefore, society and people act as dichotomous couples who embody the heterogeneity of this reality. Therefore, a person is a dual entity (homo duplex), in which both social and individual components coexist. The primate in this case belongs to the essence of social. Hence the conclusion that a person arises from society, and not vice versa (society consists of people).
Social facts lie in the society that creates them. They consist in ways of thinking and actions, are capable of influencing consciousness, forcing people to do something in a certain way.
Durkheim identified two types of social facts: morphological and spiritual. The former have a material substrate, the latter are beliefs, customs, are social consciousness.