Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte, better known as Auguste Comte, 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...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionSociologist
Date of Birth17 February 1798
CountryFrance
science views scientific-method
Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.
moving mean order
The mathematical thermology created by Fourier may tempt us to hope that, as he has estimated the temperature of the space in which we move, me may in time ascertain the mean temperature of the heavenly bodies: but I regard this order of facts as for ever excluded from our recognition. We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere. We may therefore define Astronomy as the science by which we discover the laws of the geometrical and mechanical phenomena presented by the heavenly bodies.
tradition
The dead govern the living.
humanity made
Humanity is always made up of more dead than living.
knowledge-is-power
Foreknowledge is power.
math science
C'este donc par l'étude des mathématiques, et seulement par elle, que l'on peut se faire une idée juste et approfondie de ce que c'est qu'une science.
analysis mathematical rational
Mathematical Analysis is... the true rational basis of the whole system of our positive knowledge.
analysis aberration impossible
Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemical questions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to the spirit of chemistry.... if mathematical analysis should ever hold a prominent place in chemistry -- an aberration which is happily almost impossible -- it would occasion a rapid and widespread degeneration of that science.
would-be facts different
Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.
knows
To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.
community use treasure
Language forms a kind of wealth, which all can make use of at once without causing any diminution of the store, and which thus admits a complete community of enjoyment; for all, freely participating in the general treasure, unconsciously aid in its preservation.
views may next
After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.
real race life-is
The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.
philosophy views space
Monotheism occupies so large a space in the view of modern minds, that it is scarcely possible to form a just estimate of the preceding phases of the theological philosophy.