The high priest of positivism

Auguste Comte

pp. 68-75

in: Anthony Giddens, Profiles and critiques in social theory, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1982

Abstract

There can be few works whose form and style seem to contrast as radically with its author's temperament and experiences during its writing as Comte's Cours de philosophie positive. The first volume of the Cours was written in 1830; Comte completed five more in just over a decade subsequent to that date. The six volumes offer an encyclopedic conspectus of the development of the sciences, beginning with mathematics, moving through physics, chemistry and biology, and culminating, in the final three works, in an exposition of the nascent science of 'social physics".