<P> Sociology is distinguished from various general social studies courses, which bear little relation to sociological theory or to social - science research - methodology . The US National Science Foundation classifies sociology as a STEM field . </P> <P> Sociological reasoning predates the foundation of the discipline . Social analysis has origins in the common stock of Western knowledge and philosophy, and has been carried out from as far back as the time of ancient Greek philosopher Plato, if not before . The origin of the survey, i.e., the collection of information from a sample of individuals, can be traced back to at least the Domesday Book in 1086, while ancient philosophers such as Confucius wrote on the importance of social roles . There is evidence of early sociology in medieval Arab writings . Some sources consider Ibn Khaldun, a 14th - century Arab Islamic scholar from North Africa (Tunisia), to have been the first sociologist and father of sociology (see Branches of the early Islamic philosophy); his Muqaddimah was perhaps the first work to advance social - scientific reasoning on social cohesion and social conflict . </P> <P> The word sociology (or "sociologie") is derived from both Latin and Greek origins . The Latin word: socius, "companion"; the suffix - logy, "the study of" from Greek - λογία from λόγος, lógos, "word", "knowledge". It was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel - Joseph Sieyès (1748--1836) in an unpublished manuscript . Sociology was later defined independently by the French philosopher of science, Auguste Comte (1798--1857), in 1838 . Comte used this term to describe a new way of looking at society . Comte had earlier used the term "social physics", but that had subsequently been appropriated by others, most notably the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet . Comte endeavoured to unify history, psychology and economics through the scientific understanding of the social realm . Writing shortly after the malaise of the French Revolution, he proposed that social ills could be remedied through sociological positivism, an epistemological approach outlined in The Course in Positive Philosophy (1830--1842) and A General View of Positivism (1848). Comte believed a positivist stage would mark the final era, after conjectural theological and metaphysical phases, in the progression of human understanding . In observing the circular dependence of theory and observation in science, and having classified the sciences, Comte may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term . </P> <P> Comte gave a powerful impetus to the development of sociology, an impetus which bore fruit in the later decades of the nineteenth century . To say this is certainly not to claim that French sociologists such as Durkheim were devoted disciples of the high priest of positivism . But by insisting on the irreducibility of each of his basic sciences to the particular science of sciences which it presupposed in the hierarchy and by emphasizing the nature of sociology as the scientific study of social phenomena Comte put sociology on the map . To be sure, (its) beginnings can be traced back well beyond Montesquieu, for example, and to Condorcet, not to speak of Saint - Simon, Comte's immediate predecessor . But Comte's clear recognition of sociology as a particular science, with a character of its own, justified Durkheim in regarding him as the father or founder of this science, in spite of the fact that Durkheim did not accept the idea of the three states and criticized Comte's approach to sociology . </P>

Who gave sociology its name and promoted the scientific study of society
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