Some choices feel completely free — the name you pick, when you marry, what you eat. Yet zoom out to everyone who shares your social position and a pattern appears that no one planned. Learning to spot that hidden pattern — the social fact behind a “personal” choice — is the first skill of sociology.
Naming a baby
Social fact — Émile Durkheim (1895): a way of acting, thinking, or feeling that is external to the individual, general across the group, and quietly constrains us. It becomes visible only when we zoom out from the person to the pattern.— The Rules of Sociological Method
A choice that feels personalpick one, then see who else makes it
1 · Pick a choice that feels personal
2 · Whose choice? Set the social position
💡 Seeing the social means spotting the general in the particular: a choice that feels uniquely yours turns out to follow a stable rate once you count everyone in your social position. Durkheim showed even suicide — the most private act — obeys such rates.