Auguste Comte Quotes on Knowledge
Auguste Comte (1798–1857), the French philosopher whose six-volume Course of Positive Philosophy (1830–42) founded the doctrine of positivism and named the new science of sociology, developed the famous "law of three stages" according to which every branch of human knowledge passes from the theological through the metaphysical to the positive — the stage at which it confines itself to the discoverable laws relating observable phenomena and abandons the search for first causes that the earlier stages had pursued. The framework supplies the philosophical infrastructure of the nineteenth-century scientific world-view and of the secular religion of humanity Comte would later attempt to construct.
Quotes
-
“To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.”
A Course of Positive Philosophy (1832 - 1842) [Six volumes] -
Attributed to Auguste Comte:
“Know yourself to improve yourself.”
-
Attributed to Auguste Comte:
“Theories must be based upon facts, just as facts can be observed and arranged only by means of theories.”
-
“A Course of Positive Philosophy (1832 - 1842) [Six volumes]”
To understand a science it is necessary to know its history . -
“Le Catéchisme positiviste (1852)”
The dead govern the living . -
“Le Catéchisme positiviste (1852)”
Social positivism only accepts duties , for all and towards all. Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such notion always rests on individuality . We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. These obligations then increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service. … -
“Mathematical Analysis is... the true rational basis of the whole system of our positive knowledge.”
System of positive polity(1852) | Bk. 1, chap. 1; as cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz . Memorabilia mathematica; or, The philomath's quotation-book , (1914), p. 224