Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte was a very important man in the field of sociology. He was a French philosopher considered the founding father of sociology. He is also credited with founding the field of positivism. Sociology is a social science that studies human societies, their interactions and the processes that preserve and modify them. It does so by examining the dynamics of the constituent parts of societies such as institutions, communities, populations, and gender, racial, or age groups. Sociology also studies social status or stratification, social movements and social change, as well as social disorder in the form of crime, deviance, and revolution. Positivism is any system that limits itself to the data of experience and excludes a priori or metaphysical speculation. Some of Comte's most popular works include the Course on Positive Philosophy, the System of Positive Politics or Treatise on Sociology, The Establishment of the Religion of Mankind, and the Early Writings (Auguste Comte). Comte was born in the south of France in a town called Montpellier on January 19, 1788. He was the eldest of four children. His father Louis-Auguste Comte was a tax official and his mother, Félicité-Rosalie Boyer, was twelve years older than his father. His parents were both Roman Catholic and Royalists. He attended the Citadel of Montpellier and the University of Montpellier. Comte also attended the École Polytechnique. While attending the Citadel of Montpellier, he abandoned his parents' beliefs and took up the beliefs of a movement called republicanism. "From 1818 to 1824 he contributed to the publications of Saint-Simon, and the direction of much of Comte's future work may be attributed to this association... middle of the paper... the natural sciences depended on each other , to show that they were made of the same cloth. He divided the study of sociology into two parts. The first part concerned social dynamics in the laws that govern the transition of a society from one condition to another than in the characteristics found in all human societies. Works cited Auguste Comte (2013). n.d.) Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/Everett, G. (n.d.). The positive philosophy of Auguste Comte. Philosophers of the world and their works, 1-4. Wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Comte