Auguste Comte
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Auguste Comte | |
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![]() Auguste Comte by Tony Touillon. | |
Born | |
Died | 5 September 1857 Paris, France | (aged 59)
Nationality | French |
Alma mater | École Polytechnique |
Spouse | Caroline Massin (m. 1825–1842) |
Notable ideas | Positivism, law of three stages, encyclopedic law, altruism |
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte (19 January 1798 – 5 September 1857), better known as Auguste Comte (French: [oɡyst kɔ̃t]), was a French philosopher. He was a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism. He is sometimes regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term.[4]
Influenced by the utopian socialist Henri Saint-Simon, Comte developed the positive philosophy in an attempt to remedy the social malaise of the French Revolution, calling for a new social doctrine based on the sciences. Comte was a major influence on 19th-century thought, influencing the work of social thinkers such as Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot.[5] His concept of sociologie and social evolutionism set the tone for early social theorists and anthropologists such as Harriet Martineau and Herbert Spencer, evolving into modern academic sociology presented by Émile Durkheim as practical and objective social research.
Comte's social theories could have culminated in the "Religion of Humanity", which might have influenced the development of religious humanist and secular humanist organizations in the 19th century. Comte may have coined the word altruisme (altruism).[6]
[7]== Life ==
Auguste Comte was born in Montpellier, Hérault on 19 January 1798. After attending the Lycée Joffre[8] and then the University of Montpellier, Comte was admitted to the École Polytechnique in Paris. The École Polytechnique was notable for its adherence to the French ideals of republicanism and progress. The École closed in 1816 for reorganization, however, and Comte continued his studies at the medical school at Montpellier. When the École Polytechnique reopened, he did not request readmission.
Following his return to Montpellier, Comte soon came to see unbridgeable differences with his Catholic and monarchist family and set off again for Paris, earning money by small jobs. In August 1817 he found an apartment at 36 rue Bonaparte in Paris' 6ème (where he lived until 1822) and later that year he became a student and secretary to Henri de Saint-Simon, who brought Comte into contact with intellectual society and greatly influenced his thought therefrom. During that time Comte published his first essays in the various publications headed by Saint-Simon, L'Industrie, Le Politique, and L'Organisateur (Charles Dunoyer and Charles Comte's Le Censeur Européen), although he would not publish under his own name until 1819's "La séparation générale entre les opinions et les désirs" ("The general separation of opinions and desires"). In 1824, Comte left Saint-Simon, again because of unbridgeable differences. Comte published a Plan de travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la société (1822) (Plan of scientific studies necessary for the reorganization of society). But he failed to get an academic post. His day-to-day life depended on sponsors and financial help from friends. Debates rage as to how much Comte appropriated the work of Saint-Simon.[1]
Comte married Caroline Massin in 1825. In 1826, he was taken to a mental health hospital, but left without being cured – only stabilized by French alienist Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol – so that he could work again on his plan (he would later attempt suicide in 1827 by jumping off the Pont des Arts). In the time between this and their divorce in 1842, he published the six volumes of his Cours.
Comte developed a close friendship with John Stuart Mill. From 1844, he fell deeply in love with the Catholic Clotilde de Vaux, although because she was not divorced from her first husband their love was never consummated. After her death in 1846 this love became quasi-religious, and Comte, working closely with Mill (who was refining his own such system) developed a new "Religion of Humanity". John Kells Ingram, an adherent of Comte, visited him in Paris in 1855.
He published four volumes of Système de politique positive (1851–1854). His final work, the first volume of "La Synthèse Subjective" ("The Subjective Synthesis"), was published in 1856.
Comte died in Paris on 5 September 1857 from stomach cancer and was buried in the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery, surrounded by cenotaphs in memory of his mother, Rosalie Boyer, and of Clotilde de Vaux. His apartment from 1841–1857 is now conserved as the Maison d'Auguste Comte and is located at 10 rue Monsieur-le-Prince, in Paris' 6th arrondissement.
Thought
Comte's positivism
Comte first described the epistemological perspective of positivism in The Course in Positive Philosophy, a series of texts published between 1830 and 1842. These texts were followed by the 1848 work, A General View of Positivism (published in English in 1865). The first three volumes of the Course dealt chiefly with the physical sciences already in existence (mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology), whereas the latter two emphasised the inevitable coming of social science. Observing the circular dependence of theory and observation in science, and classifying the sciences in this way, Comte may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term.[9] Comte was also the first to distinguish natural philosophy from science explicitly. For him, the physical sciences had necessarily to arrive first, before humanity could adequately channel its efforts into the most challenging and complex "Queen science" of human society itself. His View of Positivism would therefore set out to define, in more detail, the empirical goals of sociological method.[citation needed]
Comte offered an account of social evolution, proposing that society undergoes three phases in its quest for the truth according to a general 'law of three stages'. The idea bears some similarity to Karl Marx's view that human society would progress toward a communist peak.[citation needed] This is perhaps unsurprising as both were profoundly influenced by the early utopian socialist, Henri de Saint-Simon, who was at one time Comte's teacher and mentor. Both Comte and Marx intended to develop, scientifically, a new secular ideology in the wake of European secularisation.[citation needed]
Comte's stages were (1) the theological stage, (2) the metaphysical stage, and (3) the positive stage.[10] (1) The Theological stage was seen from the perspective of 19th century France as preceding the Enlightenment, in which man's place in society and society's restrictions upon man were referenced to God. Man blindly believed in whatever he was taught by his ancestors. He believed in a supernatural power. Fetishism played a significant role during this time. (2) By the "Metaphysical" stage, Comte referred not to the Metaphysics of Aristotle or other ancient Greek philosophers. Rather, the idea was rooted in the problems of French society subsequent to the revolution of 1789. This Metaphysical stage involved the justification of universal rights as being on a vauntedly higher plane than the authority of any human ruler to countermand, although said rights were not referenced to the sacred beyond mere metaphor. This stage is known as the stage of investigation, because people started reasoning and questioning although no solid evidence was laid. The stage of investigation was the beginning of a world that questioned authority and religion. (3) In the Scientific stage, which came into being after the failure of the revolution and of Napoleon, people could find solutions to social problems and bring them into force despite the proclamations of human rights or prophecy of the will of God. Science started to answer questions in full stretch. In this regard he was similar to Karl Marx and Jeremy Bentham. For its time, this idea of a Scientific stage was considered up-to-date, although from a later standpoint it is too derivative of classical physics and academic history. Comte's law of three stages was one of the first theories of social evolutionism.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Comte%27s_Theory_of_Science.png/220px-Comte%27s_Theory_of_Science.png)
The other universal law he called the "encyclopedic law". By combining these laws, Comte developed a systematic and hierarchical classification of all sciences, including inorganic physics (astronomy, earth science and chemistry) and organic physics (biology and, for the first time, physique sociale, later renamed sociologie). Independently from Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès's introduction of the term in 1780, Comte re-invented "sociologie", and introduced the term as a neologism, in 1838. Comte had earlier used the term "social physics", but that term had been appropriated by others, notably Adolphe Quetelet.
"The most important thing to determine was the natural order in which the sciences stand — not how they can be made to stand, but how they must stand, irrespective of the wishes of any one....This Comte accomplished by taking as the criterion of the position of each the degree of what he called "positivity", which is simply the degree to which the phenomena can be exactly determined. This, as may be readily seen, is also a measure of their relative complexity, since the exactness of a science is in inverse proportion to its complexity. The degree of exactness or positivity is, moreover, that to which it can be subjected to mathematical demonstration, and therefore mathematics, which is not itself a concrete science, is the general gauge by which the position of every science is to be determined. Generalizing thus, Comte found that there were five great groups of phenomena of equal classificatory value but of successively decreasing positivity. To these he gave the names astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology."
— Lester F. Ward, The Outlines of Sociology (1898)
This idea of a special science—not the humanities, not metaphysics—for the social was prominent in the 19th century and not unique to Comte. It has recently been discovered that the term "sociology" – a term considered coined by Comte – had already been introduced in 1780, albeit with a different meaning, by the French essayist Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836).[11] The ambitious—many would say grandiose—way that Comte conceived of this special science of the social, however, was unique. Comte saw this new science, sociology, as the last and greatest of all sciences, one which would include all other sciences and integrate and relate their findings into a cohesive whole. It has to be pointed out, however, that there was a seventh science, one even greater than sociology. Namely, Comte considered "Anthropology, or true science of Man [to be] the last gradation in the Grand Hierarchy of Abstract Science."[12]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/05/Flag_of_Brazil.svg/220px-Flag_of_Brazil.svg.png)
Comte's explanation of the Positive philosophy introduced the important relationship between theory, practice and human understanding of the world. On page 27 of the 1855 printing of Harriet Martineau's translation of The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, we see his observation that, "If it is true that every theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts can not be observed without the guidance of some theories. Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory and fruitless; we could not retain them: for the most part we could not even perceive them."[14]
Comte's emphasis on the interconnectedness of social elements was a forerunner of modern functionalism. Nevertheless, as with many others of Comte's time, certain elements of his work are now viewed as eccentric and unscientific, and his grand vision of sociology as the centerpiece of all the sciences has not come to fruition.
His emphasis on a quantitative, mathematical basis for decision-making remains with us today. It is a foundation of the modern notion of Positivism, modern quantitative statistical analysis, and business decision-making. His description of the continuing cyclical relationship between theory and practice is seen in modern business systems of Total Quality Management and Continuous Quality Improvement where advocates describe a continuous cycle of theory and practice through the four-part cycle of plan, do, check, and act. Despite his advocacy of quantitative analysis, Comte saw a limit in its ability to help explain social phenomena.
The early sociology of Herbert Spencer came about broadly as a reaction to Comte; writing after various developments in evolutionary biology, Spencer attempted to reformulate the discipline in what we might now describe as socially Darwinistic terms.
Comte's fame today owes in part to Émile Littré, who founded The Positivist Review in 1867. Debates continue to rage, however, as to how much Comte appropriated from the work of his mentor, Henri de Saint-Simon.
Comte influenced the Young Turks political movement.[15]
The religion of humanity
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/Templo_positivista.jpg/220px-Templo_positivista.jpg)
In later years, Comte developed the 'religion of humanity' for positivist societies in order to fulfil the cohesive function once held by traditional worship. In 1849, he proposed a calendar reform called the 'positivist calendar'. For close associate John Stuart Mill, it was possible to distinguish between a "good Comte" (the author of the Course in Positive Philosophy) and a "bad Comte" (the author of the secular-religious system).[9] The system was unsuccessful but met with the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) to influence the proliferation of various Secular Humanist organizations in the 19th century, especially through the work of secularists such as George Holyoake and Richard Congreve. Although Comte's English followers, including George Eliot and Harriet Martineau, for the most part rejected the full gloomy panoply of his system, they liked the idea of a religion of humanity and his injunction to "vivre pour autrui" ("live for others"), from which comes the word "altruism".[16]
Law of three stages
Comte was agitated by the fact that no one had synthesized physics, chemistry, and biology into a coherent system of ideas , so he began an attempt to reasonably deduce facts about the social world from the use of the sciences. Through his studies, he realized that the growth of the human mind progresses in stages, and so must societies. He claimed the history of society could be divided into three different stages: theological, metaphysical, and positive.
"The law is this: that each of our leading conceptions - each branch of our knowledge - passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive." — A. Comte[17]
- Theological Stage
- The first stage, the theological stage, relies on supernatural or religious explanations of the phenomena of human behavior because “the human mind, in its search for the primary and final causes of phenomena, explains the apparent anomalies in the universe as interventions of supernatural agents”.[18]
- Fetishism
- Polytheism
- Monotheism
- Metaphysical or Abstract Stage
- The second stage, the metaphysical stage, is merely a modification of the first because a supernatural cause is replaced by an “abstract entity”[19]; it is meant to be a transitional stage, where there is the belief that abstract forces control the behavior of human beings. Because it is a transitional stage between the theological stage and the positive stage, Comte deemed it the least important of the three stages and was only necessary because the human mind cannot make the jump from the theological to the positive stage on its own.
- Positive stage
- The last stage – the positive stage – is when the mind stops searching for the cause of phenomenon and realizes that laws exist to govern human behavior, and that this stage can be explained rationally with the use of reason and observation, both of which are used to study the social world.[20]This stage relies on science, rational thought, and empirical laws. Comte believed that this study of sociology he created was “the science that [came] after all the others; and as the final science, it must assume the task of coordinating the development of the whole of knowledge”[21]because it organized all of human behavior.
Bibliography
- Comte, A.; A general view of positivism [Discours sur l'Esprit positif 1844] London, 1856 Internet Archive
- Comte, A.; Bridges, J.H. (tr.); A General View of Positivism; Trubner and Co., 1865 (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00064-2)
- Comte, A.; Congrev, R. (tr.); The Catechism of Positive Religion; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1891 (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00087-1)
- Comte, A; Martineau, H. (tr.); The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte; 2 volumes; Chapman, 1853 (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00118-2) (but note that C.U.P. say "Martineau's abridged and more easily digestible version of Comte's work was intended to be readily accessible to a wide general readership, particularly those she felt to be morally and intellectually adrift", so this is not really Comte's own writings)
- Comte, A.; Jones, H.S. (ed.); Comte: Early Political Writings; Cambridge University Press, 1998; ISBN 978-0-521-46923-4
- Comte, A.; System of Positive Polity; various publishers
- Comte, A.; Cours de Philosophie Positive, Tome II; Bachelier, Paris, 1835, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31882/31882-h/31882-h.htm; scans of the six volumes are at Projet Gallica
When Ernest Renan published his Essais philosophiques, he clearly stated in their preface that all of them were the result of dialogues between his friend Comte and him, with an impossibility to remember who of them said, developed or modified what.
Notes
- ^ a b Pickering (2006), p. 192ff.
- ^ Pickering (2009b), pp. 216 and 304.
- ^ Sutton, Michael (1982). Nationalism, Positivism, and Catholicism. The Politics of Charles Maurras and French Catholics 1890–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521228689. esp. Chapters 1 and 2
- ^ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/#Con
- ^ http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture25a.html#course
- ^ "altruism (n .)". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 21 August 2013.
- ^ Bold text
- ^ "Rencontre avec Annie Petit "Auguste Comte"". Montpellier Agglomeration. 19 October 2007. Retrieved 15 October 2008.
Né à Montpellier, brillant élève du Lycée Joffre..." Translation: "Born in Montpellier, shining student of the Lycée Joffre...
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- ^ a b http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/ Stanford Encyclopaedia: Auguste Comte
- ^ Giddens, Positivism and Sociology, 1
- ^ Des Manuscrits de Sieyès. 1773–1799, Volumes I and II, published by Christine Fauré, Jacques Guilhaumou, Jacques Vallier et Françoise Weil, Paris, Champion, 1999 and 2007. See also Jacques Guilhaumou, Sieyès et le non-dit de la sociologie: du mot à la chose, in Revue d'histoire des sciences humaines, Numéro 15, novembre 2006 : Naissances de la science sociale.
- ^ 1874 translation of System of Positive Polity, Vol. II, pages 356–347, cited in Urbanowicz, Charles F. 1992. Four-Field Commentary, Anthropology Newsletter, Volume 33, Number 9, page 3
- ^ BRAZIL: Order and Progress, Ronald Hilton, World Association of International Studies Forum Q&A, 4/27/03
- ^ Comte, A. b (1974 reprint). The positive philosophy of Auguste Comte freely translated and condensed by Harriet Martineau. New York: AMS Press. (Original work published in 1855, New York: Calvin Blanchard, p. 27.b)
- ^ http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~fisher/hst373/readings/hanioglu.html
- ^ "Comte's secular religion is no vague effusion of humanistic piety, but a complete system of belief and ritual, with liturgy and sacraments, priesthood and pontiff, all organized around the public veneration of Humanity, the Nouveau Grand-Être Suprême (New Supreme Great Being), later to be supplemented in a positivist trinity by the Grand Fétish (the Earth) and the Grand Milieu (Destiny)" According to Davies (p. 28-29), Comte's austere and "slightly dispiriting" philosophy of humanity viewed as alone in an indifferent universe (which can only be explained by "positive" science) and with nowhere to turn but to each other, was even more influential in Victorian England than the theories of Charles Darwin or Karl Marx.
- ^ From The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (trans. Harriet Martineau; London, 1853), Vol. I, pp. 1
- ^ Bourdeau, Michel. Auguste Comte. Stanford University. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/ [April 28, 2016].
- ^ Bourdeau, Michel. Auguste Comte. Stanford University. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/ [April 28, 2016].
- ^ Delaney, Tim. Auguste Comte. Council for Secular Humanism, 2003.
- ^ Bourdeau, Michel. Auguste Comte. Stanford University. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/ [April 28, 2016].
Sources
- Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte, Volume 1: An Intellectual Biography, Cambridge University Press (1993), Paperback, 2006.
- Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte, Volume 2: An Intellectual Biography, Cambridge University Press, 2009a.
- Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte, Volume 3: An Intellectual Biography, Cambridge University Press, 2009b.
Further reading
- Henri Gouhier, La vie d'Auguste Comte, Gallimard, 1931
- Jean Delvolvé, Réflexions sur la pensée comtienne, Félix Alcan, 1932
- John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism,[1] Trübner, 1865
- Laurent Fedi, Comte, Les Belles Lettres, 2000, réédition 2005
- Laurent Fedi, L'organicisme de Comte, in Auguste Comte aujourd'hui, M. Bourdeau, J.-F. Braunstein, A. Petit (dir), Kimé, 2003, pp. 111–132
- Laurent Fedi, Auguste Comte, la disjonction de l'idéologie et de l'État, Cahiers philosophiques, n°94, 2003, pp. 99–110
- Laurent Fedi, Le monde clos contre l'univers infini : Auguste Comte et les enjeux humains de l'astronomie, La Mazarine, n°13, juin 2000, pp. 12–15
- Laurent Fedi, La contestation du miracle grec chez Auguste Comte, in L'Antiquité grecque au XIXè siècle : un exemplum contesté ?, C. Avlami (dir.), L'Harmattan, 2000, pp. 157–192
- Laurent Fedi, Auguste Comte et la technique, Revue d'histoire des sciences 53/2, 1999, pp. 265–293
- Henri Gouhier, La jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation du positivisme, tome 1 : sous le signe de la liberté, Vrin, 1932
- Henri Gouhier, La jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation du positivisme, tome 2 : Saint-Simon jusqu'à la restauration, Vrin
- Henri Gouhier, La jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation du positivisme, tome 3 : Auguste Comte et Saint-Simon, Vrin, 1941
- Henri Gouhier, Oeuvres choisies avec introduction et notes, Aubier, 1941
- Georges Canguilhem, « Histoire des religions et histoire des sciences dans la théorie du fétichisme chez Auguste Comte », Études d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences, Vrin, 1968
- H.S. Jones, ed., Comte: Early Political Writings, Cambridge University Press, 1998
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Auguste Comte et la théorie sociale du positivisme, Seghers, 1972
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Auguste Comte, la science sociale, Gallimard, 1972
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Le projet anthropologique d'Auguste Comte, SEDES, 1980, réédition L'Harmattan, 1999
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, L'anthropologie positiviste d'Auguste Comte, Lib. Honoré Champion, 1980
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Entre le signe et l'histoire. L'anthropologie positiviste d'Auguste Comte, Klincksieck, 1982, réédition L'Harmattan,1999
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Le positivisme, Coll."Que sais-je?", PUF, 1982
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Le concept de science positive. Ses tenants et ses aboutissants dans les structures anthropologiques du positivisme, Méridiens Klincksieck, 1983
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Le positivisme d'Auguste Comte, L'Harmattan, 2006
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Auguste Comte et la science politique, in Auguste Comte, Plan des travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiserla société, L'Harmattan, 2001
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Auguste Comte et l'histoire générale, in Auguste Comte, Sommaire appréciation de l'ensemble du passé moderne, L'Harmattan, 2006
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Auguste Comte et la science politique, L'Harmattan, 2007
- Angèle Kremer-Marietti, Le kaléidoscope épistémologique d'Auguste Comte. Sentiments Images Signes, L'Harmattan, 2007
- Realino Marra, La proprietà in Auguste Comte. Dall'ordine fisico alla circolazione morale della ricchezza, in «Sociologia del diritto», XII-2, 1985, pp. 21–53
- Pierre Macherey, Comte. La philosophie et les sciences, PUF, 1989
- Thomas Meaney, The Religion of Science and Its High Priest[1], The New York Review of Books, 2012
- Jacques Muglioni, Auguste Comte: un philosophe pour notre temps, Kimé, Paris, 1995
- Gertrud Lenzer, Auguste Comte: Essential Writings (1975), New York Harper, Paperback, 1997
- Raquel Capurro, Le positivisme est un culte des morts: Auguste Comte, Epel, 1999 (traduit en français en 2001) : l'étude la plus récente sur la vie d'Auguste Comte, la vision sans complaisance d'une psychanalyste de l'école de Lacan
- Auguste Comte, Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (1855), translated by Harriet Martineau, Kessinger Publishing, Paperback, 2003; also available from the McMaster Archive for the History of Economic Thought: Volume One, Volume Two, Volume Three
- Pierre Laffitte (1823–1903): Autour d'un centenaire, in Revue des Sciences et des Techniques en perspective, 2ème série, vol. 8, n°2, 2004, Brepols Publishers, 2005
- Zeïneb Ben Saïd Cherni, Auguste Comte, postérité épistémologique et ralliement des nations, L'Harmattan, 2005
- Wolf Lepenies, Auguste Comte: die Macht der Zeichen, Carl Hanser, Munich, 2010
- Oséias Faustino Valentim, O Brasil e o Positivismo, Publit, Rio de Janeiro, 2010. ISBN 978-85-7773-331-6.
External links
- Works by Auguste Comte at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Auguste Comte at the Internet Archive
- Auguste Comte: Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
- Review materials for studying Auguste Comte
- J.H. Bridges, The Seven New Thoughts of the Positive Polity 1915
- Henri Gouhier, "Final Chapter – Life in the anticipation of the Grave", from The Life of Auguste Comte (1931). On Comte's last years, practicing his own religion.
- Auguste Comte quotes
- Auguste Comte at Find a Grave
- Positivist Church of Brazil
- The Three Cs and the Notion of Progress: Copernicus, Condorcet, Comte by Caspar J M Hewett
- Sociological theory basing on theory of Comte
- The positive philosophy, Auguste Comte / freely translated and selected by Harriet Martineau, Cornell University Library Historical Monographs Collection - downloadable version. {Reprinted by} Cornell University Library Digital Collections
- Some selections from first lecture of Course of Positive Philosophy
- Auguste Comte – High Priest of Positivism by Caspar Hewett
- Maison d'Auguste Comte
- Use dmy dates from July 2012
- Auguste Comte
- 1798 births
- 1857 deaths
- People from Montpellier
- 19th-century French writers
- 19th-century philosophers
- 19th-century economists
- French agnostics
- French philosophers
- French sociologists
- Men sociologists
- École Polytechnique alumni
- Saint-Simonists
- Philosophers of science
- Theories of history
- Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
- Positivists
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- Philosophers of social science