Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play

Pierre Guilleaume Frédéric Le Play (* April 11, 1806 in La- Rivière -Saint -Sauveur, Calvados, † April 5, 1882 in Paris) was an engineer, economist, sociologist and social reformer. Le Play is considered an important French social theorist of the 19th century.

Biography

Le Play moved to the early death of his father, a customs officer, at the age of five years to the family of an uncle to Paris. In bourgeois surroundings, he was known by friends of the house with literature, politics and philosophy. After the death of his uncle in 1815, he returned to his mother in the humble, rural - dominated conservative ratios of Normandy back. 1818 to 1822 he attended a College in Le Havre, from which he graduated with the baccalaureate. After two years of service with an engineer, he decided also to take up this profession and attended from 1825 to 1827, the École polytechnique and then to 1829, the École des Mines in Paris.

With his philosophical teacher Jean Reynaud he went, mostly on foot, 1829 on a first trip to the German Rhine provinces, to Hanover, Braunschweig, Prussia and Belgium. He studied while the mine being first in the resin ( Clausthal ), and related social conditions and customs.

" In the face of the carnage of the July Revolution, I dedicated my life to the restoration of social peace in my country. I have never forgotten that oath, and I am now offering the public trials, which I 've started half a century ago in Lower Saxony in the Harz mountains. "

He was editor of the " Annales des Mines " and the " Statistique de l'industrie minérale ", also professor of metallurgy at a mining school ( 1840). He was six months a year traveling, studying the domestic and foreign mining engineering and the associated problems of trade, workers, mine owners and farmers. After the French July Revolution of 1830 inspired him above all the question of social peace and the task of examining Saint-Simon opinions about the industrial society empirically and, where appropriate, to refute evidence-based.

His first research trip convinced him of the importance of the primary collection of data on social conditions. The social statistics, which drew its abstract data sets from administrative sources, distrusted Le Play, which distinguished him from his contemporaries such as Adolphe Quételet. Part probably due to the influence of Catholic social teaching, and partly through his precise observations and case studies on the economic conditions in the working-class milieu, Le Play came to the conclusion that the survey unit should not be the individual but the family. In this sense, he then led by his later European studies.

In 1833 he visited Spain, in 1835 and 1846 re- Belgium, in 1836 and 1842 the UK; 1837 and 1844 Russia, 1845 Denmark, Sweden and Norway, 1844 and 1845 again Germany, 1846 Austria, Hungary and northern Italy.

The riots of 1848 confirmed Le Play in his scientific curiosity, he traveled in the following Switzerland, the Ottoman Empire, again the UK ( 1851), Germany and Austria (1853 ). Even after Russia his investigations led him back, now he already advised the Tsar Nicholas I in the mining and social reform.

Le Play was in contact with politicians and theorists such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Alphonse de Lamartine, Adolphe Thiers, Carnot and Louis Blanc. He was active in policy advice, especially under Napoleon III. , Who appointed him to the Senate. 1855 unfolded Le Play in his major work " Ouvrier européens " exemplified by the monographic presentation of 36 working families his ideas of an ideal social order and to the necessary social reforms. Methodically developed Le Play here early on a form of " participant observation ".

1855 Le Play, was appointed to the State Council also due to the success of the Paris World's Fair, the Commissioner General he had been. A year later he gave up his professorship to devote himself entirely to his studies and the project of social reform. In 1857 he founded the " Société internationale des Hautes Etudes d' économie sociale ", which he was general secretary until his death. The Company issued to a monograph, on the other hand she reached into the discussions about socially relevant issues such as apprenticeships or work a woman. Le Play represented in his works also the ideal of a paternalistic society, the nuclear family appeared to him as a problematic decay product. Similar to the householder would also have the employer for the welfare of its workers to take care; government intervention leaning Le Play from rather, the English model of subsidiary self-organization corresponded more to his ideal. In 1862 he again leads the French department of the Great Exhibition in London in 1867 as the Commissioner-General in Paris. The collapse of 1870/71 him his warnings seemed confirmed grew its influence in conservative circles. In 1881 he founded the magazine " La réforme sociale " ( forerunner of the " Etudes sociales "). Long years of his life he was also involved in the fight against the regime established by Napoleon Bonaparte inheritance, but without success.

Le Play had considerable influence on the French social research and social theory, the historian Taine praised his work, some North American social statisticians attacked her, also was reminded of the well-known sociologist Pitirim Sorokin at Le Play.

Quote

" Even less statisticians are happy been in such investigations that relate specifically to the inner nature of man, to the assessment of social relations, to the comparison of the moral and intellectual qualities and, more generally, to the elements that you must consider if one wants to determine the condition of the working population. The causes of this inability are clear: the official results, which extend to the whole of a country, refer to certain points which interested the state power as such, but abstract from all points, the only touch this question; they count neither on the specific nature of the individual, nor with the environment in which it lives; So the official figures neglect the essential facts which must comply with the science when it comes to conclusions that affect the individual lives or the various categories ... summarized, the method of statisticians is not the direct observation of facts; it is the more or less plausible summary and interpretation of facts, compiled from unrerschiedlichen angles, of most of which have nothing to do with scientific interests. "

Le Play and geology

Frédéric Le Play in 1837 accompanied the Count Anatole Demidoff di San Donato on a trip through southern Russia and the Crimea. In the 4th volume of the " Voyage dans la Russie et la méridionale Crimée " edited by Demidoff, Le Play published a work on the geology of the Caucasus foothills. In it, the led in the name Pontium, which even today as a regional chronostratigraphic stage of the Upper Miocene ( Neogene ) is used in the central Paratethys area. It was his only major work in the field of geology.