Those who interpret society using the lens of modernity are often alleged to have a grand explanation of social change, which supports an evolutionary view of history — a set path of ‘progress’. They are sometimes said, by critics such as Anthony Giddens, to be too deterministic and to ignore those things that fail to conform to their typology.
Many classical sociologists of the midand late nineteenth century supported this evolutionary view. Auguste Comte, for example, saw knowledge as developing in an evolutionary way and Karl Marx is often criticised for being an economic determinist — that is, explaining how history evolves through developments in class and the ownership and non-ownership of property.
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