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IV

Comte's theory of the three stages is closely connected with the second main characteristic of his system, his classification, or the theory of the ``positive hierarchy,'' of the sciences. In the beginning of the Cours he still plays with the Saint-Simonian idea of the unification of all sciences by reducing all phenomena to one single law, the law of gravitation.16.22 But gradually he abandons this belief and in the end it becomes even the subject of violent denunciation as an ``absurd utopia.''16.23 Instead, the ``fundamental'' or theoretical sciences (as distinguished from their concrete applications) are arranged in a single linear order of decreasing generality and increasing complexity, beginning with mathematics (including theoretical mechanics) and leading through astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology (which includes all study of man as an individual) to the new and final science of social physics or sociology. As each of these fundamental sciences is ``based'' on those preceding it in the hierarchical order, in the sense that it makes use of all the results of the preceding sciences plus some new elements peculiar to itself, it is an ``indispensable complement of the law of the three stages'' that the different sciences can reach the positive stage only successively in this ``invariable and necessary order.'' But as the last of these sciences has for its object the growth of the human mind and therefore particularly the development of science itself, it becomes, once established, the universal science which will progressively tend to absorb all knowledge in its system, although this ideal may never be fully realized.

Here we are interested only in the meaning of the assertion that sociology ``rests'' on the results of all other sciences and therefore could only be created after all the other sciences had reached the positive stage. This has nothing to do with the undeniable contention that the biological study of man as one of the most complicated organisms will have to make use of the results of all the other natural sciences. Comte's sociology, as we shall see presently, does not deal with man as a physical unit but with the evolution of the human mind as a manifestation of the ``collective organism'' which mankind as a whole constitutes. It is the study of the organization of society and the laws of the evolution of the human mind which are supposed to require the use of the results of all the other sciences. Now this would be justified if Comte really contended that the aim of sociology (and that part of biology which in his system replaces individual psychology) was to explain mental phenomena in physical terms, that is, if he wanted seriously to carry out his early dreams of unification of all sciences on the basis of some single universal law.16.24But this he has explicitly abandoned. His schematism leads him indeed to assert that none of the phenomena belonging to any of the sciences higher up in his hierarchy can ever fully be reduced to, or explained in terms of, the preceding sciences. It is just as impossible to explain sociological phenomena purely in biological terms as, in his opinion, it will remain forever impossible to reduce chemical phenomena altogether to physical. While there will always be sociological laws which cannot be reduced to mechanical or biological laws, this break between sociology and biology is no different from the presumed difference between chemistry and physics.

When, however, Comte tries to prove his contention that sociology depends on a sufficient development of the other sciences, he fails completely, and the examples he gives as illustrations are almost childish. That in order to understand any social phenomena we have to know the explanation of the change of day and night and of the changes of the seasons ``by the circumstances of the earth's daily rotation and annual movements,'' or that ``the very conception of the stability in human association could not be positively established till the discovery of gravitation,16.25 is simply not true. The results of the natural sciences may be essential data for sociology to the extent to which they actually affect the actions of the men who use them. But that is true, whatever the state of natural knowledge is, and there is no reason why the sociologist need know more of natural science than those whose actions he tries to explain, and therefore no reason why the development of the study of society should have to wait on the natural sciences having reached a certain stage of development.

Comte claims that with the application of the positive method to social phenomena the unity of method of all sciences is established. But beyond the general characteristic of the positive method, ``to abandon, as necessarily vain, all search for causes, be it primary or final, and to confine itself to the study of the invariable relations which constitute the effective laws of all observable events,''16.26 it is difficult to say in what precisely this positive method consists. It certainly is not, as one might expect, the universal application of mathematical methods. Although mathematics is to Comte the source of the positive method, the field where it appeared first and in its purest form,16.27 he does not believe that it can be usefully applied in the more complicated subjects, even chemistry,16.28 and he is scornful about the attempts to apply statistics to biology16.29 or the calculus of probability to social phenomena.16.30 Even observation, the one common element of all sciences, does not appear in the same form in all of them. As the sciences become more complicated, new methods of observation become available while others appropriate to the less complicated phenomena cease to be useful. Thus, while in astronomy the mathematical method and pure observation rule, in physics and chemistry the experiment comes in as a new help. And as we proceed further, biology brings the comparative method and sociology, finally, the ``historical method,'' while mathematics and the experiment become in turn inapplicable.16.31

There is one more aspect of the hierarchy of the sciences which must be briefly mentioned, as it is relevant to points which we shall presently have to consider. As we ascend the hierarchical scale of the sciences, and the phenomena with which they deal become more complex, they also become more subject to modification by human action and at the same time less ``perfect'' and therefore more in need of improvement by human control. Comte has nothing but contempt for people who admire the ``wisdom of nature,'' and he is quite certain that a few competent engineers in creating an organism for a particular task would do infinitely better.16.32 And the same applies necessarily to the most complicated and therefore most imperfect of all natural phenomena, human society. The paradox that the instrument of the human mind, which according to this theory should be the most imperfect of all phenomena, should yet at the same time have the unique power to control and improve itself, does not trouble Comte in the least.


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