Comte Auguste (1798–1857), French philosopher and sociologist, the founder of positivism. He was educated in Paris at l’École Polytechnique, where he briefly taught mathematics. He suffered from a mental illness that occasionally interrupted his work. In conformity with empiricism, Comte held that knowledge of the world arises from observation. He went beyond many empiricists, however, in denying the possibility of knowledge of unobservable physical objects. He conceived of positivism as a method of study based on observation and restricted to the observable. He applied positivism chiefly to science. He claimed that the goal of science is prediction, to be accomplished using laws of succession. Explanation insofar as attainable has the same structure as prediction. It subsumes events under laws of succession; it is not causal. Influenced by Kant, he held that the causes of phenomena and the nature of things-in-themselves are not knowable. He criticized metaphysics for ungrounded speculation about such matters; he accused it of not keeping imagination subordinate to observation. He advanced positivism for all the sciences but held that each science has additional special methods, and has laws not derivable by human intelligence from laws of other sciences. He corresponded extensively with J. S. Mill, who encouraged his work and discussed it in Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865). Twentieth-century logical positivism was inspired by Comte’s ideas.
Comte was a founder of sociology, which he also called social physics. He divided the science into two branches – statics and dynamics dealing respectively with social organization and social development. He advocated a historical method of study for both branches. As a law of social development, he proposed that all societies pass through three intellectual stages, first interpreting phenomena theologically, then metaphysically, and finally positivistically. The general idea that societies develop according to laws of nature was adopted by Marx.
Comte’s most important work is his six-volume Cours de philosophie positive (Course in Positive Philosophy, 1830–42). It is an encyclopedic treatment of the sciences that expounds positivism and culminates in the introduction of sociology.
See also EMPIRICISM , LOGICAL POSITIVIS. P.We.