AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857)

 

AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857)

 

Auguste Marie Francois Xavier Comte the founding father of sociology was born at Montpellier, France in 1798 during the ferment of the French Revolution

Educated at prestigious Ecole Polytechnique.

At Ecole Polytechnique he came under the influence of traditional social philosophers like L.G. Bonald and Joseph de Maistre (borrowed the notion of an order governing the evolution of human society)

Close friend and disciple of Saint Simon. Both wrote about law of three stages through which each branch of knowledge must pass. They said that the object of social physics and positive science of society later renamed as “Sociology” is to discover the natural and immutable laws of progress. These laws are as important to the science of society as the laws of Gravity, discovered by Newton, are to the natural sciences

Later on the intellectual alliance between Saint Simon and Auguste Comte did not last long and in fact ended in a bitter quarrel.

J.S. Mill was his close admirer

Fourier comes to listen his lectures.

However, till his end Auguste Comte’s work were not recognized in France. Only after his death in 1857 he became popular first in England and then in France and Germany.

CONTEXT

During the early 19^th century the intellectual climate in France was favourable to the development of new critical and rational ideas.

Achievements in Natural sciences and Mathematics were a matter of pride.

Auguste Comte being a product of his time was affected by social destruction brought by the French Revolution.

His fundamental and lifelong preoccupation was how to replace disorder by order; how to bring about a total reconstruction of society.

He saw the French Revolution as a crucial turning point in the history of human affairs. The ancient regime was gone. Society was unable to cope with the new scientific developments in scientific knowledge and industrialization.

A new order of social institutions in keeping with the changes taking place had not yet taken a firm hold. Amidst this confused state people too were in a state of flux. Their thought was disoriented.

There were great difference between belief and knowledge. In other words the traditional value system was disturbed and the cultural values and goals of people lacked coherence, confidence and worthwhile objectives. The people were therefore in a state of confusion. A new policy of a new order of feeling, thought and action was necessary for the new, complex, industrial society.

But this reconstruction needed a reliable basis of knowledge but what would this body of knowledge be built upon?

According to Comte people they have to take initiative and found a science which would provide them with an alternative world view.

SOCIOLOGY

According to Auguste Comte, sociology is the abstract theoretical science of social phenomena. He had initially called it social physics but later he reluctantly changed its name. He changed it’s because he found that a Belgian scientist Adolphe Quetlet had used this term to describe simple statistics.  Thus Auguste Comte was compelled to use the word Sociology, a combination of Latin and Greek word which denotes the study of sociology on a highly generalized or abstract level.

CENTRAL IDEAS

Auguste Comte was not only talking about sociology as a science of society but also believed that it must be used for recognizing society he wanted to develop of a naturalistic science of society. This science could be able to both explain the past development of mankind as well as predict it future course. According to him the society of human beings must be studied in the same scientific manner as the world of nature.

According to him the society of human beings must be studied in the same scientific manner as the world of nature. The progress in natural sciences in establishing the laws of nature such as Newton’s laws of gravity, Copernicus’s discovery that it is the sun which is fixed and the Earth and other planets which revolve around it and so on led him to believe that even in society we can discover social laws.

Sociology was to be patterned after the natural sciences; it was to apply the methods of inquiry used by the natural sciences such as:

Observation

Experimentation

Comparison

Along with the natural sciences given method he introduced “Historical method” which compares societies throughout the time in which they have evolved.  

Through these methods Comte wanted to discover social laws because only when we know the laws in society we can restructure it.

According to Comte, nothing is absolute. Every knowledge is true in a relative sense and does not enjoy everlasting validity. Thus science has a self correcting character and whatever does not hold true is rejected.

THE LAW OF THREE STAGES

In the early as 1822 when Auguste Comte was still working as Saint Simon’s secretary, he attempted to discover the successive stages through which human race had evolved. In his study he began from the state of human race not much superior to the great apes to the state at which he found the civilized society of Europe. In this study he applied scientific method of comparison and arrived at THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS OR THE LAW OF THREE STAGES

ü  Traces the evolution of societies

ü  From successor of apes to modern industrial societies

ü  Each successive stage is advanced than the preceding one

ü  Cannot undo the social change

ü  Change occurs in unilinear fashion

CHARACTERISTICS OF CHANGE

ü  EVOLUTIONARY

ü  GRADUAL AND SLOW

ü  PROGRESSIVE AND POSITIVE

ü  IRREVERSIBLE

EVOLUTION IS FOUR DIMENSIONAL

SOCIETIES EVOLVES

HUMAN MIND EVOLVES

SCIENCE WILL ALSO EVOLVES

SOCIETAL COMPONENTS ALSO EVOLVES  ( ALL EVOLVE PARALLEL)

Auguste Comte believed that the evolution of the human mind had taken place along with the evolution of individual minds. In other words just as each individual develops from the stage of

Childhood       -  Devout believer

Adolescence    - Critical metaphysician (one who questions the abstract notions of existence)

Adulthood      -  A natural philosopher

So as the human beings and their systems of thought have evolved in three major stages. The three stages of the evolution of human thought are

THEOLOGICAL STAGE

• Theological stage is characterized by the world prior to 1300 A.D.
• Dominated by religious dogmas, superstitions, blind beliefs.
• Each god has a role assigned, a domain was fixed
• God was conceived in a concrete form (Human form)
• At this stage human mind supposes that all phenomena are produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings.

Example: some tribes believe that small pox, cholera were the expression of God’s anger

According to Comte the Theological stage goes through three phases:

FETISHISM: In the beginning man used to believe that there was a spirit living inside each and every object. Comte calls this phase Fetishism since at this phase each object is considered as fetish that is a thing having a spirit living inside.

POLYTHEISM: With the gradual development in human thinking there occurred a change in the form of thinking. This developed form is known as polytheism. At this stage man had classified gods as well as natural and human forces. Each natural or human force had a presiding deity.

MONOTHEISM: Monotheism represented a higher level of cognition with a relatively low dose of imagination. It paved way for a critical evaluation of the earlier stages. The most developed form of theological thinking is the monotheism. In monotheism it is believed that one God is supreme and he is considered as the master of the whole universe.

This period can be cited with example of domination of two category of people: one is priest (those who had spiritual power) and other were military men (those who had temporal powers)

METAPHYSICAL STAGE

 The second stage is metaphysical stage which occurred between the periods of 1300 A.D. to 1800 A.D. In the metaphysical stage, the mind explains phenomenon by invoking abstract entities like nature.

Explanations are abstract in nature.

Attribution towards abstract God.

Philosophical ideas and concepts evolved like concepts related to souls, cosmos, etc but these are not backed by data.

Human beings pursue meaning and explanation of the world in term of essences, ideals, forms i.e. in short in a conception of some ultimate reality.

According to Comte though it was a feudal era in Europe and priest were dominating society but in the metaphysical stage Lawyers and administrators challenged the dominance of priests because of the rise of Modern Nation States. State becomes the major social unit. Society moves from an organic phase to a critical phase. This stage not doubt offers progress but instead of order often anarchy prevails in society because old order is being replaced by new order. New ideas posing challenges to the old existing ideas. So intellectual’s disputes are common in such kind of status which creates anarchy for a certain period of time which is termed as critical phase   

POSITIVE STAGE

The third stage is the scientific or positive stage. In the positive stage human beings cease to look for original sources or final causes because these can be neither checked against facts nor utilized to serve our needs. Human mind at this stage applies itself to the study of their laws i.e. their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Human beings seek to establish laws which link facts and which govern social life. In this final stage of social development, the individual mind becomes supreme in search of the origin and destination of the universe. It gives importance to causes of the various phenomena. It establishes that reasoning and observation are true means of knowledge.  

Auguste Comte maintained that each stage of the development of human thoughts necessarily grew out of the preceding one. Only when the previous stage exhaust itself does the new stage develop.

He also correlated the three stages of human thought with the development of social organization, types of social order, the types of social units and material conditions found in society. He believed that social life evolved in the same way as the successive changes in human thought took place.

According to Auguste Comte all societies undergo changes. There is a stage in which a society enjoys social stability. Intellectual harmony prevails in such a society and various parts of the society are in equilibrium. This is the organic period of the society. But when the critical period comes the old traditions, institutions etc become disturbed. Intellectual harmony is lost and there is disequilibrium in society. The French Society, in Auguste Comte’s view was undergoing this critical period. He said that there is always a transitional state of anarchy which lasts for some generations at least and the longer it lasts the more complete is the renovation of that society.   

According to Auguste Comte the whole purpose of studying society is to explore that critical phase and to know how to compress that critical phase.

After French revolution society was moving from metaphysical to positive stage. So it was a transitional -critical phase. Old traditional order was going and new order was replacing the old one. 

Religion of humanity was establish: Positive religion (secular /scientific)

SOCIAL STATIC : Equilibrium phase

                                 Order maintained

                                Cooperation (how one structure is related to other)

SOCIAL DYNAMIC: How society change

                                To explore the reason behind the change in society  

 

 

 HIERARCHY OF SCIENCES

In the POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY, Comte examines the different sciences and their logical relations to one another. His position is that the most general and inclusive sciences were required first, as the logically necessary preparation for the more particular ones. Mathematics, as the abstract or fundamental study of the forms of existence common to all things, is presupposed for the successful study for astronomy and physics, Physics is needed for the development of chemistry. Biology, in like manner, depends upon chemistry for its emergence as lawful science. Biology, though logically depending upon chemistry, has laws of its own because living beings behave very differently from non-living chemical entities. In the same way, human society is far less general than the biological realm as a whole though society clearly presupposes and depends on the biological laws.

The idea of Classification of Sciences did not originate with Comte. It did exist prior to Comte. From times immemorial thinkers have been trying to classify knowledge on some basid. The early Greek thinkers undertook to classify all knowledge under three headings:

(1)   Physics

(2)   Ethics and

(3)   Politics

Francis Bacon made the classification on the basis of the faculties of man namely:

Memory  : The science based upon memory is history

Imagination: The science based upon imagination is poetry

Reason: The knowledge based upon reason is physics

Comtean classification of sciences has its own specialites. Comte’s arrangement of sciences on ths basis was Mathematics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Sociology.

Mathematics was the first science as it was the most general of all sciences while he regarded sociology as the most complex of all sciences.

Auguste Comte felt that an examination of the several established sciences showed not only those human thoughts in general have passed through the three stages mentioned earlier but also each subject has developed in the same way. That is, each subject has evolved from a general simple level to highly complex level. He put forth a hierarchal arrangement of the sciences in a way which coincided with

1. The order of their historical emergence and development
2. The order of dependence upon each other (each rests on the one which precedes it and prepares the way for the one that follows it).
3. Their decreasing degree of generality and the increasing degree of complexity of their subject matter and
4. The increasing degree of modifiability of the facts which they study     

Thus the final arrangement of sciences in terms of their emergence and complexity on this basis were

 

Sociology was the most complex science because it had to study the most complex matter i.e. society. Sociology therefore also arose much later than the other sciences. The object of study of the other subjects was relatively simpler than sociology. When Auguste Comte spoke of Sociology as the ‘Crowning edifice’ of the hierarchy of sciences, he had the general unifying nature of science in mind. He was not claiming any superior status for sociology. He only felt that with the growth of positive knowledge all sciences can be brought into relationship with each other. According to Auguste Comte all sciences pass through the three stages, THE THEOLOGICAL STAGE, THE METAPHYSICAL STAGE, and AND FINALLY THE POSITIVE STAGE. But the individual sciences do not move through these three stages simultaneously. In fact the higher a science stands in the hierarchy, the later it shifts from one stage to another. With the growth of positive knowledge he also advocated the use of positive methods of sociology.      

POSITIVISM

According to Auguste Comte Positivism is the philosophy that claimed the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific ideology, and is often shared by technocrats who believe that essential progress occurs through scientific progress.

An approach to the philosophy of science deriving from Enlightenment thinkers like Pierre-Simon Laplace (and many others). Positivism was first systematically theorized by Comte who saw the scientific method as replacing metaphysics in the history of thought. Comte also observed the circular dependence of theory and observation in science.

Comte Positivism should not be confused with Logical positivism, which originated in the Vienna circle in the 1920. Logical Positivism is a school of philosophy that combines positivism –which states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge –with a version of apriorism –the notion that some propositional knowledge can be had without or prior to experience.

The goal of Comte’s intellectual Endeavour was to develop a science of society that could explain the past, organize the present, and predict the future. Initially he called this new science SOCIAL PHYSICS and late SOCIOLOGY.

Comte stressed the necessity of separating facts from values during the course of scientific inquiry and dreamt about the ideal society ruled by scientists with decisions made on the basis of scientific evidences.

Comte wanted sociology to be the integrating science of all other sciences that deal with the external nature of human life in society. The possibility of moral unity of individuals and society depends upon the necessity of recognizing our subjection to an external power which can discipline our instincts.

Comte believed that social scientists should use the same methods which proved successful in the natural sciences:

Observation

Experimentation

Comparison

And historical analysis method

Comte argued that society should be understood and studies just like we study the phenomena in natural sciences.

The study and application of natural sciences in physical world is more common and useful

Natural sciences methods of inquiry are equally applicable to social understanding.

True knowledge can only be gained through observation and experimentation.

Hence positivist makes a serious distinction between fact and value

Fact can be used in experimentation and can be observed only externally while values cannot be observed externally, cannot be put in experimentation.

Thus positivism means the doctrine and movement founded in the 19^th century by the French Philosopher Auguste Comte and also the general philosophical view of knowledge proposed by Francis Bacon, John Locke, Isaac Newton and other empirical philosophers which assert that genuine knowledge should be based on observation and advanced by experiments.

The goal of Comte’s intellectual Endeavour was to develop a science of society that could explain the past and predict the future. Initially, he called this new science social physics and late Sociology. Comte stressed the necessity of separating facts and values during the course of scientific inquiry and dreamt about the ideal society ruled by scientist who would make decisions on the basis of scientific evidences.