The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte |
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abstract sciences Adam Smith Aristotle astronomy AUGUSTE COMTE believe cause character chemistry classification complete Comte's opinion conceived conception concrete sciences consists cultivated deems degree depend Descartes direct divine doctrine duty Electrology equally existence facts feelings give Grand Etre Herbert Spencer human nature idea important individual inductive intel intellectual intelligence invariable laws knowledge l'Humanité labor later less Littré logical luminiferous ether mankind means mental metaphysical mode mind mode of thought Monotheism moral motion necessary object organized phenomena Philosophie Positive physical political Politique Positive Polytheism Posi Positive Philosophy positive science Positivism Positivist possible practical present prime number principle progress Protestantism reason regards religion require rule says scientific sentiments Sir William Hamilton social society Sociology speculations Spencer Spiritual Power stage sufficient systematization theocracy theological mode theory Thermology thing thinkers thinks tion tive treatise true truths unity universal whole
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Page 8 - The constant resemblances which link phenomena together, and the constant sequences which unite them as antecedent and consequent, are termed their laws. The laws of phenomena are all we know respecting them. Their essential nature and their ultimate causes, either efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable to us.
Page 16 - Positive philosophy maintains that, within the existing order of the Universe, or rather of the part of it known to us, the direct determining cause of every phenomenon is not supernatural but natural. It is compatible with this to believe that the universe was created and even that it is continuously governed by an Intelligence, provided we admit that the intelligent Governor adheres to fixed laws, which are only modified or counteracted by other laws of the same dispensation, and are never either...
Page 67 - Mr. Spencer is one of the most vigorous as well as boldest thinkers that English speculation has yet produced.
Page 31 - ... of the hunting, the nomad, and the agricultural state could be refuted by the fact that there are still hunters and nomads. That the three states were contemporaneous, that they all began before authentic history, and still coexist, is M. Comte's express statement: as well as that the advent of the two later modes of thought was the very cause which disorganized and is gradually destroying the primitive one. The Theological mode of explaining phenomena was once universal, with the exception,...
Page 60 - ... impression in the memory is still fresh. Unless in one of these ways, we could not have acquired the knowledge which nobody denies us to have, of what passes in our minds. M. Comte would scarcely have affirmed that we are not aware of our own intellectual operations. We know of our observings and our reasonings, either at the very time, or by memory the moment after; in either case, by direct knowledge, and not (like things done by us in a state of somnambulism) merely by their results. This...
Page 128 - May it not be the fact that mankind, who after all are made up of single human beings, obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the rules and conditions required by the good of the rest, than when each makes the good of the rest his only object...
Page 121 - ... sentiment connected with this creed, or capable of being invoked by it, sufficiently powerful to give it, in fact, the authority over human conduct to which it lays claim in theory. It is a great advantage (though not absolutely indispensable) that this sentiment should crystallize, as it were, round a concrete object ; if possible a really existing one, though, in all the more important cases, only ideally present. Such an object Theism and Christianity offer to the believer ; but the condition...
Page 95 - ... have produced. Ideas wholly foreign to this social state cannot be evolved, and if introduced from without, cannot get accepted - or, if accepted, die out when the temporary phase of feeling which caused their acceptance, ends.
Page 50 - ... the conditions of human knowledge. The philosophy of a Science thus comes to mean the science itself, considered not as to its results, the truths which it ascertains, but as to the processes by which the mind attains them, the marks by which it recognizes them, and the co-ordinating and methodizing of them with a view to the greatest clearness of conception and the fullest and readiest availibility for use : in one word, the logic of the science.
Page 77 - The first question is that of the Method proper to the study. His view of this is highly instructive. The Method proper to the Science of Society ! must be, in substance, the same as in all other sciences ; the interrogation and interpretation of experience, by the twofold process of Induction and Deduction.