Course in Positive Philosophy

Introduction

Comte began the course in 1826 as private lectures in his apartment, interrupted it after a breakdown and published it as six volumes between 1830 and 1842. The volumes follow his hierarchy of the sciences: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and finally “social physics”, for which the fourth volume coined the word “sociologie”. Each science is shown passing through the theological and metaphysical stages to the positive one. Harriet Martineau published a condensed English translation in 1853, and John Stuart Mill discussed the work in “Auguste Comte and Positivism” (1865).

Connections

Taken up in

• A System of Logic1843 · John Stuart Mill
• The Equality of the Human Races1885 · Anténor Firmin
• The Division of Labour in Society1893 · Émile Durkheim
• The Rules of Sociological Method1895 · Émile Durkheim

Criticized in

• The Principles of Sociology1876 · Herbert Spencer
• Introduction to the Human Sciences1883 · Wilhelm Dilthey
• The Normal and the Pathological1943 · Georges Canguilhem