Auguste Comte

The Work

Comte's aim was to create a naturalistic science of society, which would both explain the past development of mankind and predict its future course. In addition to building a science capable of explaining the laws of motion that govern humanity over time, Comte attempted to formulate the conditions that account for social stability at any given historical moment. The study of social dynamics and social statics--of progress and order, of change and stability--are the twin pillars of his systems.

The society of man, Comte taught, must be studied in the same scientific manner as the world of nature. It is subject to basic laws just as is the rest of the cosmos, even though it presents added complexities. Natural science, Comte argued, had succeeded in establishing the lawfulness of natural phenomena. It discovered that these phenomena, from the falling of stones to the movement of planets, followed ordered sequences of development. In the world of nature, science had succeeded in progressively contracting the realm of the apparently non ordered, the fortuitous and the accidental. The stage was now set for a similar endeavor in the study of society.

Natural scientists, since the days of Newton and his immediate predecessors, had developed explanatory schemes in which the previous vain quest for first and final causes had been abandoned and had been replaced by the study of laws, that is, of "invariable relations of succession and resemblance." Instead of relying on the authority of tradition, the new science relied on "reasoning and observation, duly combined" as the only legitimate means of attaining knowledge. Every scientific theory must be based on observed facts, but it is equally true that "facts cannot be observed without the guidance of some theory."

The new social sciences that Comte sought to establish he first called "social physics;" later, when he thought that the term had been "stolen" from him by the Belgian social statistician, Adolphe Quetelet, he coined the word "sociology," a hybrid term compounded of Latin and Greek parts. It was to be patterned after the natural sciences, not only in its empirical methods and epistemological underpinnings, but also in the functions it would serve for mankind. Far from being of theoretical interest alone, the social sciences, like the natural sciences, must ultimately be of concrete benefit to man and play a major part in the amelioration of the human condition.

In order for man to transform his nonhuman environment to his advantage, he must know the laws that govern the natural world, "For it is only by knowing the laws of phenomena, and thus being able to foresee them, that we can . . . set them to modify one another for our advantage. . . . Whenever we effect anything great it is through a knowledge of natural laws. . . From Science comes Prevision; from Prevision comes Action." (Savoir pour prevoir et prevoir pour pouvoir.) In a like manner, social action beneficial to mankind will become possible once the laws of motion of human evolution are established, and the basis for social order and civic concord is identified.

As long as men believed that social events "were always exposed to disturbance by the accidental intervention of the legislator, human or divine, no scientific previsions of them would be possible." As long as they believe that social actions followed no law and were, in fact, arbitrary and fortuitous, they could take no concerted action to ameliorate their lot. Under these circumstances men naturally clashed with one another in the pursuit of their differing individual interests. When this was the case, a Hobbesian model of society, in which only power and the willing acceptance of power permit a semblance of order, seemed appropriate and plausible. But things are different once sociology can teach men to recognize the invariable laws of development and order in human affairs. At that time men will learn to utilize these laws for their own collective purposes. "We shall find that there is no chance of order and agreement but in subjecting social phenomena, like all others, to invariable natural laws, which shall, as a whole, prescribe for each period, with entire certainty, the limits and character of social action."

The discovery of the basic laws will cure men of overweening ambition; they will learn that at any historical moment the margin of societal action is limited by the exigencies of the proper functioning of the social organism. But at the same time, men will also be enabled to act deliberately within given limits by curbing the operation of societal laws to their own purposes. In the realm of the social, as elsewhere, "the office of science is not to govern, but to modify phenomena; and to do this it is necessary to understand their laws." Above all, once the new scientific dispensation comes into its own, men will no longer think in absolute terms, but in terms relative to a particular state of affairs in society. It is impossible, for example, to talk about political aims without considering the social and historical context of political action. By recognizing and acknowledging the constraint that any social order imposes on action, men will at the same time be enabled freely to order their society within the bounds imposed by necessity.

The new positive science dethroned the authority of perennial tradition. Comte's oft- repeated insistence that nothing is absolute but the relative lies at the very core of his teaching. Instead of accepting canonical truths as everlastingly valid, he insisted on the continued progress of human understanding and the self-corrective character of the scientific enterprise. "All investigation into the nature of beings, and their first and final causes, must always be absolute; whereas the study of the laws of phenomena must be relative, since it supposes a continuous progress of speculation subject to the gradual improvement of observation, without the precise reality ever being fully disclosed. . . . The relative character of scientific conceptions is inseparable from the true idea of natural laws.

By no means did Comte reject all authority. Once men recognize the overriding authority of science in the guidance of human affairs, they will also abandon the illusory quest for an unfettered "right of free inquiry, or the dogma of unbounded liberty of conscience." Only those willing to submit themselves to the rigorous constraints of scientific methodology and to the canons of scientific evidence can presume to have a say in the guidance of human affairs. Freedom of personal opinion makes no sense in astronomy or physics, and in the future such freedom will be similarly inappropriate in the social sciences. It is an insufferable conceit on the part of ordinary men to presume that they should hold opinions about matters of scientific fact. The intellectual reorganization now dawning in the social sciences "requires the renunciation by the greater number of their right of individual inquiry on subjects above their qualifications." Just as is the case in the natural sciences today, so in the sociology of the future, "the right of free inquiry will abide within its natural and permanent limits; that is, men will discuss, under appropriate intellectual conditions, the real connections of various consequences with fundamental rules universally respected." The exigent requirements of scientific discourse will set firm limits on vain speculation and unbridled utopianism.

From Coser, 1977:3-5.

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