The Classification of the Sciences: To which are Added Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of M. Comte

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D. Appleton, 1864 - Classification of sciences - 48 pages
 

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Page 5 - Space is the abstract of all relations of co-existence. Time is the abstract of all relations of sequence. And dealing as they do entirely with relations of co-existence and sequence, in their general or special forms, Logic and Mathematics form a class of the Sciences more widely unlike the rest, than any of the rest can be from one another.
Page 37 - Ideas do not govern and overthrow the world : the world is governed or overthrown by feelings, to which ideas serve only as guides.
Page 38 - 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 40 - The rejection of his cardinal principles should, I think, alone suffice; but there are sundry other views of his, some of them largely characterizing his system, which I equally reject. Let us glance at them. How organic beings have originated, is an inquiry which M. Comte deprecates as a useless speculation: asserting, as he does, that species are immutable. M. Comte contends that of what is commonly known as mental science, all that most important part which consists of the subjective analysis...
Page 25 - The three groups of Sciences may be briefly defined as — laws of the forms', laws of the factors; laws of the products. And when thus defined, it becomes manifest that the groups are so radically unlike in their natures, that there can be no transitions Between them ; and that any Science belonging to one of the groups must be quite incongruous with the Sciences belonging to either of the other groups, if transferred. How fundamental are the differences between them, will be further seen on considering...
Page 35 - At first, and to the last, the conceived causal agencies of phenomena have a degree of generality corresponding to the width of the generalizations which experiences have determined ; and they change just as gradually as experiences accumulate. The integration of causal agencies, originally thought of as multitudinous and local, but finally believed to be one and universal, is a process which involves the passing through all intermediate steps between these extremes ; and any appearance of stages...

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