William Isaac Thomas is a sociologist American born in the United States the August 13rd 1863 and deceased the December 5th 1947.

If Albion Small were the first director of the department of sociology of the university of Chicago, Thomas was the sociologist whose analyzes marked the birth of what one usually calls the École of Chicago. Author, with Florian Znaniecki, of an imposing study on Polish immigration, it is also known to have formulated the " theorem of Thomas". Following the example school pragmatist of John Dewey, William James and George Herbert Mead, Thomas will be brought to give a paramount importance to the Subjectivité of the individuals. Sociologist engaged in social reformism, his points of view on the crime and sexuality passed at the time for iconoclasts. Its career was marked by an arrest for " interstate immoral transport off females for purposes" (transport of immoral women with fes fine) by the FBI, which obliged it to leave Chicago. It completed its career in New York.

Polish peasants

Interested by the Country S Polish, Thomas recruits Florian Znaniecki, a young person Philosophe Polish, to help it to conclude its research. Znaniecki will follow Thomas and with Chicago in 1914 will join it. Both started a considerable work which will study the Immigrating S Polish with the the United States as well as the Paysan S in Poland. Just like the anthropologist Franz Boas, Thomas rejects the biological explanations which were then used to explain the social success. This one is related on the values and the attitudes. The values are the objective elements Culture ls of the social life whereas the attitudes are subjective characteristics individuals.

In their work on the Polish Immigration , Thomas and Znaniecki note the existence of three general attitudes vis-a-vis the new living conditions. Firstly, the Philistine is a conformist subjected to the social Tradition. Secondly, the gipsy has a unstable character. Thirdly, the creative considered and is opened with the change. For Thomas and Znaniecki, the assimilation is thus desirable and its opposite, it is the Démoralisation.

The theorem of Thomas (1928)

The theorem of Thomas returns account owing to the fact that the behaviors of the individuals are explained by their perception of reality and not by reality itself. He was formulated with various recoveries by the American sociologist William Isaac Thomas. Its most famous form is: " Yew men define situations ace real, they are real in their consequences". If the men define situations as real, then they are real in their consequences.

Definition of the situation to the theorem of Thomas

In 1923, Thomas presents in " the unadjusted girl" , concept of definition of the situation. The definition of the situation is according to him the moment preliminary to the action during which the individual examines the situation to which it faces and thinks so that it wishes to make. Contrary to the model behaviorist, he affirms thus that the action is not the automatic answer to a stimulus, but which it results from a particular point of view on a given situation. Thomas considers in particular that the individuals tend to define the situation in way hedonist (seeking the pleasure initially), while the company them enjoint to define it in a utility way (placing safety with foreground).

In 1928, Thomas enriches his analysis in " The Child in America". Since the definition of the situation which a produced individual constitutes a precondition to his action, then to seize the individual behaviors one should not refer to reality but to the way in which the individuals perceive it. This proposal, sometimes perceived like a tautology, will have a large posterity in Sociologie. It expresses the importance which must be granted in the sociological explanation with the representations, even false, which takes a greatter importance than reality " objective".

Example of the theorem of Thomas: " If I think that Mr. X is a man full with wisdom, I would listen to his words with attention, even if he asks me sel." Although the words of Mr. X are in fact commonplace, I behave in accordance with my definition of the situation: Mr. X is wise of which the words always should be listened to attentively.

Thomas gave of it - among others - the following example: " It is also very important for us to become aware that we do not control our lives, we do not make our decisions, we achieve our goals in the daily life neither by means of statistical calculations nor by scientific methods. We live on assumptions. I am, for example, your guest. You do not know, you cannot pose in a scientific way which I do not have the intention to steal your money or your small spoons. But by assumption, I do not have of it the intention and treat me in invité."

Posterity of the theorem of Thomas

Thomas did not assert the production of a theorem. It is Robert King Merton, in elements of theory and sociological method, which baptized " théoème of thomas" the idea that the representations of the individuals had an influence on reality. He deduced from them two concepts, those of prophecy autoréalisatrice and self-destroying prophecy.

• prophecy car-director is a fact which, although not having to be carried out, becomes true because the individuals believe that it will occur.

Merton quotes the case of a bank which one tells that it is in bankruptcy and who sees all his creditors then claiming their money. The bank is found of this fact in bankruptcy.

• On the contrary, self-destroying prophecy was to be carried out but is not carried out because the belief of the individuals lead them to modify their behavior.

A student shining obtains all the year of good appreciations. Convinced that it will obtain its diploma with facility, it ceases any effort and fails finally. If it had continued to work as it did it before being convinced of its success, it would have easily passed.

With the difference in the theorem of Thomas, they are not here any more the consequences of a fact, but the fact itself which becomes true or false (if one takes the example used to illustrate the theorem of Thomas, the fact that I believe that Mr. X is a wise man does not make his words wise). Contrary to the theorem of Thomas, the concepts of prophecy autoréalisatrices and self-destroying thus have only one descriptive value. One cannot know, a priori, if a belief will be carried out. One can simply, a posteriori, locate " prophecies car-réalisatrices" , of the " prophecies car-destructrices" and of prophecies not having had such effects. On the other hand, the theorem of Thomas perhaps considered as a scientific law: the individual behaviors cannot be explained starting from reality but in the way in which it is defined by the individuals.

Without a filiation being always asserted, of many sociological theories (the Interactionnisme symbolic system of Blumer, dramaturgic approach of Goffman, the constructivism of Berger and Luckmann or the effect pygmalion of Rosenthal) are in parts inspired of the theorem of Thomas.

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