Auguste Comte 1798 – 1857

Auguste Comte was a French philosopher and one of the founders of sociology, a term he coined. He developed the doctrine of positivism, according to which authentic knowledge proceeds from observation and the discovery of laws, and he proposed a law of three stages through which human thought passes from the theological to the metaphysical to the positive or scientific. In his later work he attempted to organize a secular Religion of Humanity. Comte's vision of a scientific social science influenced John Stuart Mill, Emile Durkheim, and the early development of the social sciences.