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
kings humanity atheism
To reorganize society without God or King, by the systematic culture of Humanity.
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.
science views scientific-method
Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.
knows
To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.
humanity made
Humanity is always made up of more dead than living.
women humanity elements
Woman is the most moral element in all humanity.
ideas world chaos
Ideas govern the world, or throw it into chaos.
would-be facts different
Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.
real would-be looks
All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon's time, that there can be no real knowledge but that which is based on observed facts. This is incontestable, in our present advanced stage; but, if we look back to the primitive stage of human knowledge, we shall see that it must have been otherwise then. If it is true that every theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts cannot be observed without the guidance of some theory. 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.
knowledge law three
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.
childhood illusion
Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.
three abstract metaphysical
Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.
order goal progress
The sacred formula of positivism: love as a principle, the order as a foundation, and progress as a goal.
atheism destroyed replaced
Nothing is destroyed until it is replaced.