Sociologists in the Street

October 21, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

My wife was reading Comfort Me With Apples, a memoir by foodie Ruth Reichl. “When she got to Paris, she stayed in an apartment on the rue Auguste Comte. Do you know where that is?”

Not only did I not know where, but much to my embarrassment as a sociologist, I didn’t even know that such a street existed. I checked the map and discovered that it runs along the south edge of the Jardin du Luxembourg.


I have walked through the Jardin a few times, butI never noticed a street sign with the name of the man who coined the term sociology. Of that I’m positive.

Here’s a photo taken in 1870, barely a decade after Comte died.


For a more recent and elegant view, go to Flickr (here -- I’m honoring the photo copyright and not reprinting it). Or go to Paris . . . after this retirement-age thing is settled).

The French name streets after sociologists (several other cities in France have rues Auguste Comte), philsophers, writers, composers, et. al. American tastes run to other areas. I grew up on MacArthur Drive, which came just after Eisenhower Drive and Wainwright Drive in our peaceful town.

I doubt that a US city will ever have a sociologist street. Just about every city in the US has a Park Street (or Park Place or, in the city where I live, Park Avenue), and I suppose we can take some secret pride in this, even though the link to sociology is coincidental.