Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter One Auguste Comte and the Second Scientific Revolution
- Chapter Two “Structure” and “Genesis,” and Comte's Conception of Social Science
- Chapter Three The Social and the Political in the Work of Auguste Comte
- Chapter Four The Counterrevolutionary Comte: Theorist of the Two Powers and Enthusiastic Medievalist
- Chapter Five The “Great Crisis”: Comte, Nietzsche and the Religion Question
- Chapter Six “Les ar-z et les sciences”: Aesthetic Theory and Aesthetic Politics in Comte's Late Work
- Chapter Seven Comte's Civic Comedy: Secular Religion and Modern Morality in the Age of Classical Sociology
- Chapter Eight Auguste Comte and the Curious Case of English Women
- Chapter Nine Comte and His Liberal Critics: From Spencer to Hayek
- Chapter Ten Living after Positivism, but Not without It
- Appendix A Calendrier positiviste, ou tableau concret de la preparation humaine; and Culte abstrait de l'Humanité ou célebration systématique de la sociabilité finale
- Appendix B Classification positive des dix- huit fonctions du cerveau, ou tableau systématique de l’àme
- Appendix C Hiérarchie théorique des conceptions humaines, ou tableau synthétiques de l'ordre universel
- Appendix D Tableau des quinze grandes lois de philosophie première, ou principes universels sur lesquels repose le dogme positif
- Appendix E Positivist Library in the Nineteenth Century
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter One Auguste Comte and the Second Scientific Revolution
- Chapter Two “Structure” and “Genesis,” and Comte's Conception of Social Science
- Chapter Three The Social and the Political in the Work of Auguste Comte
- Chapter Four The Counterrevolutionary Comte: Theorist of the Two Powers and Enthusiastic Medievalist
- Chapter Five The “Great Crisis”: Comte, Nietzsche and the Religion Question
- Chapter Six “Les ar-z et les sciences”: Aesthetic Theory and Aesthetic Politics in Comte's Late Work
- Chapter Seven Comte's Civic Comedy: Secular Religion and Modern Morality in the Age of Classical Sociology
- Chapter Eight Auguste Comte and the Curious Case of English Women
- Chapter Nine Comte and His Liberal Critics: From Spencer to Hayek
- Chapter Ten Living after Positivism, but Not without It
- Appendix A Calendrier positiviste, ou tableau concret de la preparation humaine; and Culte abstrait de l'Humanité ou célebration systématique de la sociabilité finale
- Appendix B Classification positive des dix- huit fonctions du cerveau, ou tableau systématique de l’àme
- Appendix C Hiérarchie théorique des conceptions humaines, ou tableau synthétiques de l'ordre universel
- Appendix D Tableau des quinze grandes lois de philosophie première, ou principes universels sur lesquels repose le dogme positif
- Appendix E Positivist Library in the Nineteenth Century
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
Alfred North Whitehead famously remarked, “A science that hesitates to forget its founders is lost.” Whether sociology is a science, and in what sense, used to be hotly debated. Today, perhaps, it has ceased to matter. Sociology has become too multi- tendency, too divided into specialisms and too overtaken by a general interdisciplinary movement to have any single epistemological stance. It would in any case be hard to argue that it ever could be the kind of science that Whitehead had in mind: one marked, that is, by an accumulating body of discoveries and laws that could be passed on in abstraction from the history that produced them. Indeed, the dictum could be reversed. If sociology forgets its founders, it not only cuts itself off from a rich store of concepts, interpretations and paradigms that can be continually mined for insight and creative re- combinations; it also forgets the large- scale questions with which they were engaged, and shrinks its own ambitions. Be that as it may, few modern thinkers have been more forgotten, or had vaster horizons, than the one who lived in what is now a small musée in Paris at 10 Monsieur- le- prince.
Auguste Comte, the grand systematizer of positivism and, in later years, selfproclaimed Grand- prêtre de l'Humanité, coined the term sociology and was the first to attempt to establish a systematic science of society. A controversial but highly influential nineteenth- century figure, his ideas left their imprint on an extraordinary range of thinkers, writers and tendencies.2 These included John Stuart Mill, Emile Littré, Herbert Spencer, Lucien Lévy- Bruhl, George Eliot, Ernest Renan, Charles Maurras, Lester Ward and Emile Durkheim. Comte's work gave impetus to the establishment of sociology as an academic discipline in France, Germany and the United States. His philosophy of the sciences attracted the praise of many leading scientists of the day. He did much to organize biology into a coherent field (Canguilhem 1994: 237– 61). His Religion of Humanity established branches in several European and New World countries (Wartelle 2001) and was a major ingredient in the “invention of altruism” in Victorian England (Dixon 2008).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Anthem Companion to Auguste Comte , pp. 1 - 22Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2017