<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (September 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> In sociology, social facts are values, cultural norms, and social structures that transcend the individual and can exercise social control . </P> <P> French sociologist Émile Durkheim defined the term, and argued that the discipline of Sociology should be understood as the empirical study of social facts . For Durkheim, social facts "...consist of manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him ." </P> <P> In The Rules of Sociological Method Durkheim laid out a theory of sociology as' the science of social facts' . He considered social facts to "consist of representations and actions" which meant that "they cannot be confused with organic phenomena, nor with physical phenomena, which have no existence save in and through the individual consciousness ." Durkheim says that a social fact is a thing that many people do very similarly because the socialized community that they belong to has influenced them to do these things . </P>

Who has propounded the idea that we can treat social facts as things