Life and Works of Auguste Comte
Methodology
The Law of Human Progress Positivism
Hierarchy of Sciences
Static and Dynamic Sociology
Conclusion
AUGUST COMTE(1798-1857)
LIFE AND WORKS OF AUGUST COMTE
Isidore Auguste Marie Francois Xavier Comte, popular Known as August Comte, was born on the 19th of January. 1798 at Mountpellier Catholic Family. Comte (1798-1857) was born in Montpellier, France. At the age of sixteen the man who was to become the founding father of sociology enrolled in the Cole Polytechnique, the most distinguished school in France at that time. Its professors, mostly scholars in mathematics and physics, had little interest in the study of human affairs and society. But the young, Comte had. Like many of the philosophers of his period, especially the social philosophers L.G. Boland and Joseph de Maître, he was startled by the destructive effects of the French Revolution, by the disorder created through the forcible destruction of social groups intermediate between the family and the state. Therefore the improvement of society early became Comte’s main preoccupation the very goal of his life. But he believed that to improve society one needed a theoretical science of society. Since this science was not available, he set about creating it.
In his opinion this new science depended on other sciences; therefore, he decided to study the whole series of theoretical sciences which he identified with positive philosophy. From the results of such study Comte sought to formulate a system of laws governing society so that he could postulate a cure for society on the basis of these Iaws. Comte’s achievements, even the formulation of his gigantic enterprise, were greatly stimulated by the fact that, at the age of nineteen and when still a student of the Cole Polytechnique, he became secretary to the Comte Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825). Though a member of the French aristocracy, Saint-Simon became one of the earliest and most prominent Utopian socialists, one of the social thinkers, perhaps social dreamers, who believed that the problems of the society of their time could be best solved by reorganizing economic production, thereby depriving the proprietary class of the means of production of economic freedom, a foremost value of the time. In a pamphlet published in 1813, Saint- Simon expressed these ideas:
“Morals and politics will become “positive sciences. The trend from many laws particular to individual sciences toward a single and all-embracing law will be completed. Science will become the new spiritual power. Society must, therefore, be reorganized and, in this way, humanity will enter the third great period of its history, the first, or preliminary, having ended with Socrates, and the second, or conjectural, having persisted until the time of Saint-Simon’s writings. From 1817 to 1823 Comte and Saint-Simon collaborated so closely that it is impossible to distinguish the contributions of the two. This collaboration is especially marked in the work Plan of the Scientific Operations Necessary for the Reorganization of Society. In later years Comte called this work “the great discovery of the year 1822.” In this publication the joint authors asserted that politics must become social physics, monarch of physiology; that each branch of knowledge must pass through three stages, the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive; and that the object of social physics was to discover the natural and immutable laws of progress which are as necessary as the law of gravity. Thus the program of a new science (later to be renamed sociology) was clearly stated and the leading proposition of Comte’s sociological theory was proclaimed the law of the three stages. Soon after that publication, Comte and Saint-Simon dissolved their partnership and began bitterly to attack each other. Comte never again found a stable and notes were gradually published between 1830 and 1042, forming his voluminous masterwork, Course of Positive Philosophy.In six volumes .While working on this project , Comte discovered the Principle of cerebral hygiene. This discovery in application to his life , meant that he stopped reading in order to keep his mind uncotaminated by the thoughts of others . In his later years , between 1851 and 1854,he wrote a treatise entitled system of positive politics in four volumes , in which he applied the findings of theoretical sociology to the solution of the social problems of his time . Thus be accomplished his initial goal, the improve ment of society, but in doing so he partly deviated from positivism and .made an attempt to construct a religion of humanity . Nevertheless one finds in the work a number of interesting and important addition to Comte ,s earlier Positive Philosophy.
On 5th September, 1857, this great social thinker died. John Stuart Mill regarded Comte as among the first of European thinkers, and by his institution of a new docial science, in some respects, the first. Mill admits that his own “System of Logic” owes many valuale thoughts to Comte, and a radical improvement in the conceptions of logical method incorporated in that work is derived from the Positive Philosophey. Harriet Martineau summarized Comte’s career as followd: “There can be no question but that his whole career was one of the most intense concentration of mind, gigantic industry, rigid economy. And singular punctuality and exactnessin all his habits. Comte’s thinking can be seen in the French scientific movement of the last half of the 19th century that was also represented by thinkers such as ,Taine,Renan,Berthelot and outstanding English thinker J.S.Mill.
Important Sociological Works
– Positive Philosophy
– Positive Politics
– Religion of Humanity
METHODOLOGY
Comte’s methodology is very much related to the method of natural sciences. According to him, societies should be studied using the same methods as in the natural sciences and this approach is known as POSITIVISM. He is generally accepted as the founder father of Sociology as a discipline. He had initially used the term social physics for the study of society. but finally, he changed it into sociology because he found that a Belgian Scientist, Adolphe Quetelet, has used the same term to describe simple statistics. In fact,. The society of human beings, Aguste Comte, must be studied in the same scientific manner as the world of nature.
The progress of natural science in establishing various laws such as Newton’s law of gravity, Copernicus’s law of planet led him to believe that even in society we can discover social laws. According to positivism “if sociology is to study and acquire knowledge of social life, it must be a science and must follow the standard method of the science.” Sociology, hence, must use the ‘positivist’ method to discover social law. “the idea of treating social science”, Comte explained in system of positive polity. “as an application of mathematics in order to give it a positive character had its source in the metaphysical that outside of mathematics there can be no real certainty.” Therefore, Auguste Comte was considered as the forefronter of the development of positivistic sociology. Comte’s science of society, i.e., Sociology is equated with the approaches and methods of natural sciences. “Positivism consists in observing phenomena, in analysing them, in discovering the low governing the relation among them.”
In the positivistic study of sociology, Comte used three methods of inquiry that have been used in the natural science:
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Observation,
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Experimentation and
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Comparison.
These methods of science, i.e., observation, experimentation and comparison, must be used in combination with historical method. “the historical comparison of the consecutive states of humanity is not only the chief scientific device of the new political philosophy…it constitutes the sub-stratum of the science in whatever is essential to it.”38 In fact, historical method is used to search the general laws of the successive transformation of humanity through fixed stages of historical periods.
Observation is the first method of inquiry in Comte’s methodology of science. Observation involved for the guidance of preparatory theory. “No social fact have any scientific meaning till it is connected with some other social” by a preliminary theory. Hence, observation can come into its own only when it is subordinated to the statical and dynamic law of phenomena. This scientific method of observation is applicable in the case of social science in general and sociology in particular. It is gained by a theory of social phenomena.
The second scientific method of inquiry, experimentation, is partly applicable to the social science. Direct experimentation is not feasible in the human world. But “Experimentation takes place whenever the regular course of the phenomena is interfered with in any determinate manner…pathological cases are the true scientific equivalent of pure experimentation.” Experimentation in sociology, according to Comte means controlled observation, in which the careful scrutiny of “pathological cases” give privileged access to an understanding of the normal.
The third scientific method of investigation, comparison, has got central importance for the sociologist. Comparison involved between human and animal, society and society, like and unlike etc. Sociology is, says Comte, “A comparison of the different co-existing states of human society on the various parts of the earth’s surface these states being completely independent of each other. By this method, the different stages of evolution may all be observed at once”. In this context, the notion of comparative method is essential to study various types of societies. Hence, historical comparisons throughout the time in which humanity has evolved are the very core of sociological inquiry.
In brief, sociological method, for Comte, assured the scientific quality of “social physics” that involved not only observation, experimentation and comparison but also the historical method. Comte argued the utility and usefulness of these natural methods in sociology as follow: “We shall find that there is no chance of order and agreement but in subjecting social phenomena, like all others, to invariable natural laws, which shall, as a whole, prescribe for each period, with entire certainty, the limits and character of social action.”