System Of Positive Polity: General View Of Positivism And Introductory Principles

by Auguste Comte

System Of Positive General View Of Positivism And Introductory Principles by Auguste Comte. This opening and concluding portion of Volume 1 presents a comprehensive program for reforming science and society through Positivism. It merges theoretical syntheses of Cosmology, Biology, and Sociology with moral and social commentary, and includes Appendices and didactic fiction to illustrate and propagate the Positivist project. Central ideas the brain as the organ of the soul and altruism as the organizing principle of social life, underpinned by three social instincts and five intellectual faculties; a model for systematizing biology so that subjective, hypothesis-driven inquiry can generalize to sociology as the final aim; and a normative arc in which Cosmology, Biology, and Sociology form an orderly progression toward an encyclopedic, socially engaged science governed by the aim to live for others. Methodological ethics stress hypotheses as instruments of thought and subordinate religious or metaphysical systems to a universal, humanity-centered worldview. The work advocates social reform and education guided by Life and Society, culminating in the Religion of Humanity that replaces older theologies as the basis for morality and social organization. It interweaves philosophical exposition with Appendices, fictional episodes (notably the Lucie novella), poetry, and letters to model social utility and moral aims of positivism, including a utopian vision of a reorganized Europe and world.

746 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2001

About the author

French philosopher Isidore Auguste Comte, known as the founder of positivism, also established sociology as a systematic study.

Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte bettered the discipline and the doctrine. People sometimes regard him first of science in the modern sense of the term.

The utopian socialist Henri Saint-Simon strongly influenced Comte, who developed an attempt to remedy the malaise of the revolution and called for a new doctrine, based on the sciences. Comte influenced major 19th-century thought and the work of Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot. His now outdated concept of evolutionism set the tone for early theorists and anthropologists, such as [authore:Harriet Martineau] and Herbert Spencer; Émile Durkheim presented modern academics as practical and objective research.

Theories of Comte culminated in the "Religion of Humanity," which influenced the development of secular organizations in the 19th century. Comte likewise coined the word altruism.

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_...

http://freethoughtalmanac.com/?p=1016
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/
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http://sociology.about.com/od/Profile...
http://www.egs.edu/library/auguste-co...
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