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Auguste Comte

Posted on: Tuesday, 11 November 2003, 06:00 CST

Proponent of positivism and evolutionary thought

Auguste Comte was born January 19, 1798, in the southern French city of Montpellier during the height of chaos and instability in France. He lived for fifty-nine years. Math teacher and former Protestant pastor Daniel Encontre was the only teacher who impressed him during his formal education. It was perhaps Encontre who stimulated the intellect of the young Comte and inspired his wide- ranging pursuit of interests. Comte's knowledge of mathematics would help him in his latter years, when he attempted to establish the validity of "laws" governing society. Comte was an extraordinary student, excelling primarily in math and physics. He was able to demonstrate unusual feats of memory, such as reading a page of text and immediately reciting it backwards.

Comte is known as the "founder" of sociology. In the fourth volume of the Course of Positive Philosophy, Comte in 1854 proposed the word sociology for his new positivist science. The word sociology is a hybrid term compounded of Latin and Greek parts. It was Comte's second choice; he had preferred to call his new social science "social physics," but discovered that the Belgian social statistician Adolphe Quetelet had "stolen" that term from him. The term social physics makes it clear that Comte wanted to model sociology after the "hard sciences."

Comte felt strongly that science must free itself from the grip of theology and religious dogma. Above all, the reorganization of society required intellectual reform. It would involve replacing Catholicism with his positive philosophy. Comte believed that, although many individual sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology had been developing at a steady pace, no one had yet synthesized the basic principles of these sciences into a coherent system of ideas. Comte envisioned a system that was built on an intellectual and moral basis and allowed for science to intervene on behalf of the betterment of society.

There are social thinkers who believe that the social world can be studied in the same manner as the natural sciences. They believe in the existence of natural laws. This approach is generally referred to as "positivism." Social positivists seek to discover social laws that will enable them to predict social behavior. Through observation of behavior, certain social relationships and arrangements should become identifiable; these observations could be explained as "facts" and in causal terms, without the interference of the researchers' value judgments. Therefore, positivism claims to be the most scientific and objective research tradition in sociology.

Comte is remembered to this day in sociology for his championing of positivism. Comte's idea of positivism is based on the premise that everything in society is observable and subject to patterns or laws. These laws could help to explain human behavior. Comte did not mean that human behavior would always be subjected to these "laws"; rather, he saw positivism as a way of explaining phenomena apart from supernatural or speculative causes. Laws of human behavior could only be based on empirical data. Thus, positivism was based on research guided by theory, a premise that remains the cornerstone of sociology today. Comte believed that positivism would create sound theories based on sufficient factual evidence and historical comparisons to predict future events. The discovery of the basic laws of human behavior would allow for deliberate courses of action on the part of both individuals and society. Decision making guided by science would, indeed, be positive.

In the summer of 1817, Auguste Comte was introduced to French utopian socialist Claude-Henri Saint-Simon, then the director of the periodical Industri. Comte became Saint-Simon's secretary, or, more accurately, his protege. The two social thinkers would collaborate on a number of works, until Comte broke from the master over a quarrel involving publication rights and intellectual issues. Despite this rift, Comte was clearly influenced by Saint-Simon.

Saint-Simon had stated that changes in social organization take place (and are necessary) because of the development of human intelligence. According to him there was a direct relation between ideas and social organization-the former influenced the latter. He suggested that any scientific study has to look at the moral ideas of a period, because at any particular time in history the form of organization of a society is a direct reflection of the prevailing social code. Saint-Simon claimed that there were three different moral ideas in Western Europe, and each was separated from the others by a transition-during that period one moral system declines and another replaces it. The process of replacement-transition results from accumulated scientific knowledge, which changes the philosophical outlook of the society. For Saint-Simon the three moral systems were:

1. Supernatural-Polytheistic Morals: Greece and Rome.

2. Christian Theism: Socratic science, feudalism, and the Middle Ages.

3. Positivism: Industrial society.

Saint-Simon's three moral systems would have a direct influence on Comte's "Law of Three Stages."

A NEW DISCIPLINE

Comte's first major publication was A Prospectus of the Scientific Operations Required for the Reorganization of Society. It is here that he describes the plan for an empirical science of society by introducing his evolutionary theory of "The Law of Three Stages." It involves the notion that the history of societies can be divided rather neatly into three distinct periods and that each kind of society is produced and supported by a different form of thought or philosophy. Since the society of his day was experiencing a period of crisis and great disorganization, he set out to discover the reasons for this phenomenon. He concluded that European societies were in the midst of a difficult transition from one stage to the next.

For Comte, evolution or progress was a matter of the growth of the human mind. The human mind evolved through a series of stages, and so, too, must society, he proposed. The transition is always difficult, filled with periods of great disorganization and reorganization based on the newly emerging form of thought. Comte argued that an empirical study of historical processes, particularly of the progress of the various interrelated sciences, reveals a law of three stages that govern human development. He analyzed these stages in his major work, the six-volume Course of Positive Philosophy (1830-1842). The three different stages are:

1. Theological. This stage relies on supernatural or religious explanations to explain what people otherwise could not. Intellectual efforts were hampered by the assumption that all phenomena are produced by "supernatural beings." The highest point of this stage is the idea of a single God replacing the former proliferation of gods.

2. Metaphysical. This stage is a mere modification of the first stage, and was a time of philosophical thought with a heavy reliance on the belief that abstract, oven mysterious forces controlled behavior. Comte deemed this as the least important of the three stages as it was merely a transitional stage. It was necessary because an immediate jump from the theological to the positivist stage would be too much for humans to handle.

3. Positive. In this final stage (which began in the 1800s) of societal development, there comes the realization that laws exist. Through the use of reason and observation to study the social world, human behavior can be explained rationally. This stage is highlighted by a reliance on science, rational thought, empirical laws, and observation. The insistent search for absolutes, origins, and purpose is refocused into the study of empirical laws. Industrialization and scientific moral guidelines of reasoning and facts dominate the scientific positivistic stage.

Acceptance of Comte's positivistic views entails acknowledging that there is an existing order of the universe that unfolds in progressive stages. Comte believed that the cause of every phenomenon was not super-natural but natural. Although Comte recognized an inevitable succession through these three stages, he acknowledged that at any given point in time all three might exist. Comte envisioned a future world where positivism dominated and theological and metaphysical thinking would be eliminated. Comte believed that each of the stages was correlated with certain political developments. The theological stage is reflected in such notions as the "divine right of kings." The metaphysical stage involves such concepts as the social contract, the equality of all persons, and popular sovereignty. The positivist stage entails a scientific or "sociological" approach to political organization.

COMTE'S LEGACY

Auguste Comte made a number of lasting contributions to social thought. Many of his ideas are used in contemporary sociology and will continue to find validity in the future. His idea of a social science grounded by empirical positivism remains the cornerstone of social sciences today. His "Law of Three Stages" reflects an evolutionary framework of a progressive society.

Comte possessed a great scientific mind that ultimately was clouded by his own bizarre ideas of "cerebral hygiene" (in his later years, Comte refused to read the works of others beca\use he did not want his mind corrupted by their ideas) and his self-appointment as the "High Priest of the Religion of Humanity" (i.e., positivism as a religion). Comte was a strong proponent of using science to establish "truths" or "laws" relevant to the social world. He borrowed from the established "hard" sciences the idea of combining theory and methods to establish the validity of sociology. Unfortunately, his refusal to read the new and developing literature of science eventually left him hopelessly out-or-touch with social reality. Furthermore, his attempt to establish a scientific church alienated him from the scientific community as well as the established Church. Despite these shortcomings, Comte inspired the scientific study of society-sociology.

Recommended Reading

Auguste Comte, System of Positive Polity, vol. 2 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1852).

Auguste Comte, System of Positive Polity, vol. 4 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1854).

Auguste Comte, Positive Philosophy, trans. Harriet Martineau (London: Bell, 1896).

Lewis Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, 1977).

John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism (London: Trubner & Row, 1873).

Robert Scharff, Comte After Positivism (New York: Cambridge, 1995).

George Simpson, Auguste Comte: Sire of Sociology (New York: Crowell, 1969).

Kenneth Thompson, Auguste Comte: The Foundation of Sociology (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1975).

Tim Delaney teaches sociology at the State University of New York at Oswego. He is the author of Classical Social Theory: Investigation and Application (Prentice Hall, 2003), which has a chapter on Auguste Comte.

Copyright Council for Secular Humanism Oct/Nov 2003

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