Auguste Comte is the founder of Positivism. The key idea of Positivism was that science can be used to understand society and build a better world.
Comte argued that knowledge of society can only be acquired through scientific investigation, and and by observing the laws that govern social stability and social change.
He believed that Scientific understanding of these laws can bring about change and that this scientific knowledge could be used to bring about social progress.
Auguste Comte: HIstorical Context
By the end of the 18th century, increased industrialization had brought about radical changes to traditional society in Europe. At the same time, France was struggling to establish a new social order in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Some thinkers, such as Adam Smith, had sought to explain the rapidly changing face of society in economic terms; others, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, did so in terms of political philosophy. Adam Ferguson had described the social effects of modernization, but no one had yet offered an explanation of social progress to match the political and economic theories.
August Comte was born in 1798 in the midst of these social changes in Montpellier, France. His parents were Catholics and monarchists, but Auguste rejected religion and adopted republicanism. In 1817 he became an assistant to Henri de Saint-Simon, who greatly influenced his ideas of a scientific study of society. After disagreements, Comte left Saint-Simon in 1824, and began his Course in Positive Philosophy, supported by John Stuart Mill, among others.
Comte suffered during this time from mental disorders, and his marriage to Caroline Massin ended in divorce. He then fell madly in love with Clotilde de Vaux (who was separated from her husband), but their relationship was unconsummated; she died in 1846. Comte then devoted himself to writing and establishing a positivist “Religion of Humanity.”
The 1830 revolution in France coincided with the publication of Comte’s book on positivism and seemed to usher in the age of social progress that he had been hoping for.
He died in Paris in 1857.
KEY DATES
- 1813 French theorist Henri de Saint-Simon suggests the idea of a science of society.
- 1840s Karl Marx argues that economic issues are at the root of historical change.
- 1853 Harriet Martineau’s abridged translation The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte introduces Comte’s ideas to a wider public.
- 1865 British philosopher John Stuart Mill refers to Comte’s early sociological and later political ideas as “good Comte” and “bad Comte.”
- 1895 In The Rules of Sociological Method, Émile Durkheim seeks to establish a systematic sociology.
Key works
- 1830–42 Course in Positive Philosophy (six volumes)
- 1848 A General View of Positivism
- 1851–54 System of Positive Polity (four volumes)
The Foundations of Comte’s Positivism
Comte’s mentor, the social philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon, attempted to analyse the causes of social order, and how social order can be achieved. He suggested that there is a pattern to social progress, and that society goes through a number of different stages. But it was his protégé Auguste Comte who developed this idea into a comprehensive approach to the study of society on scientific principles, which he initially called “social physics” but later described as “sociology.”
The emergence of scientific method during the Enlightenment influenced Comte’s approach to philosophy. He made a detailed analysis of the natural sciences and their methodology, then proposed that all branches of knowledge should adopt scientific principles and base their theory on observation.
The central argument of Comte’s “positivism” philosophy is that valid knowledge of anything can only be derived from positive, scientific enquiry. He had seen the power of science to transform: scientific discoveries had provided the technological advances that brought about the Industrial Revolution and created the modern world he lived in.
The time had come, he said, for a social science that would not only give us an understanding of the mechanisms of social order and social change, but also provide us with the means of transforming society, in the same way that the physical sciences had helped to modify our physical environment.
Sociology: the Queen of the Sciences
Comte considered the study of human society, or sociology, to be the most challenging and complex, therefore it was the “Queen of sciences.”
Comte’s argument that the scientific study of society was the culmination of progress in our quest for knowledge was influenced by an idea proposed by Henri de Saint-Simon and is set out as the “law of three stages.” This states that our understanding of phenomena passes through three phases: a theological stage, in which a god or gods are cited as the cause of things; a metaphysical stage, in which explanation is in terms of abstract concepts; and a positive stage, in which knowledge is verified by scientific methods.
Comte’s grand theory of social evolution became an analysis of social progress too — an alternative to the merely descriptive ideas of the historical stages of hunter-gatherer, agrarian, and industrial-commercial. Society in France, Comte suggested, was rooted in the theological stage until the Enlightenment, when social order was based on rules that were ultimately religious in origin. Following the revolution in 1789, French society entered a metaphysical stage, becoming ordered according to secular principles and ideals, especially the rights to liberty and equality. Comte believed that, recognizing the shortcomings of post-revolutionary society, it now had the possibility of entering the positive stage, in which social order could be determined scientifically.
Three Stages of Human Progress
Comte identified three stages of progress in human understanding of the world. The theological stage came to an end with the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century. Focus then shifted from the divine to the human in a metaphysical stage of rational thought, from which evolved a final stage in which science provides the explanations.
A science of society
Comte proposed a framework for the new science of sociology, based on the existing “hard” sciences. He organized a hierarchy of sciences, arranged logically so that each science contributes to those following it but not to those preceding it. Beginning with mathematics, the hierarchy ranged through astronomy, physics, and chemistry, to biology. The apex of this ascending order of “positivity” was sociology. For this reason, Comte felt it was necessary to have a thorough grasp of the other sciences and their methods before attempting to apply these to the study of society.
Paramount was the principle of verifiability from observation: theories supported by the evidence of facts. But Comte also recognized that it is necessary to have a hypothesis to guide the direction of scientific enquiry, and to determine the scope of observation.
Although Comte was not the first to attempt an analysis of human society, he was a pioneer in establishing that it is capable of being studied scientifically. In addition, his positivist philosophy offered both an explanation of secular industrial society and the means of achieving social reform. He believed that just as the forces that determine social change can be studied, so too can social stability.
Positivist Sociology: From theory to practice
Comte formed his ideas during the chaos that followed the French Revolution, and set them out in his six-volume Course in Positive Philosophy, the first volume of which appeared the same year that France experienced a second revolution in July 1830.
After the overthrow and restoration of monarchy, opinion in France was divided between those who wanted order and those who demanded progress. Comte believed his positivism offered a third way, a rational rather than ideological basis for action based on an objective study of society.
His theories gained him as many critics as admirers in his native land, and he found more ready acceptance in Britain.
Some of his greatest supporters were in Britain, including liberal intellectual John Stuart Mill, who provided him with financial support to enable him to continue with his project, and Harriet Martineau, who translated an edited version of his work into English.
Unfortunately, the reputation Comte had built up was tarnished by his later work, in which he described how positivism could be applied in a political system. An unhappy personal life (a marriage break-up, depression, and a tragic affair) is often cited as causing a change in his thinking: from an objective scientific approach that examines society to a subjective and quasi-religious exposition of how it should be.
The shift in Comte’s work from theory to how it could be put into practice lost him many followers. Mill and other British thinkers saw his prescriptive application of positivism as almost dictatorial, and the system of government he advocated as infringing liberty.
By this time, an alternative approach to the scientific study of society had emerged. Against the same backdrop of social turmoil, Karl Marx offered an analysis of social progress, based on a science of economics, and a model for change based on political action rather than rationalism.
It is not difficult to see why, in a period driven by revolutions, Comte’s vision of harmony was eclipsed by the dynamism of socialism and capitalism. Nevertheless, it was Comte, and to a lesser extent his mentor Saint-Simon, who first proposed the idea of sociology as a discipline based on scientific principles rather than mere theorizing. In particular he established the basis for methods of observation and theory for the social sciences that was taken directly from the physical sciences.
Later sociologists, notably Émile Durkheim, disagreed with the detail of his positivism, and the application of it, Comte provided a solid, and still foundational, framework. Although today Comte’s dream of sociology as the “Queen of sciences” may seem naive, the objectivity he advocated remains a guiding principle.
Signposting and Sourcees
This material is mainly relevant to the theory and methods aspect of Sociology.