There is one respect in which Comte not only admits but even stresses a difference in the method, not only of sociology, but of all organic sciences from that of inorganic sciences. Yet, although this break occurs between chemistry and biology, the importance of this ``inversion'' of procedure, as Comte calls it himself, is of even greater importance with respect to sociology and we shall quote in full the passage in which he himself explains it with direct reference to the study of social phenomena. ``There exists necessarily,'' he explains, ``a fundamental difference between the whole of inorganic philosophy and the whole of organic philosophy. In the first, where solidarity between the phenomena, as we have shown, is little pronounced, and can only little affect the study of the subject, we have to explore a system where the elements are better known than the whole, and are usually even alone directly observable. But in the second, on the contrary, where man and society constitute the principal object, the opposite procedure becomes most often the only rational one, as another consequence of the same logical principle, because the whole of the object is here certainly much better known and more immediately accessible.''16.33
This astounding assertion that where we have to deal with social phenomena the whole is better known than the parts is put forward as an indisputable axiom without much explanation. It is of crucial importance for the understanding of the new science of sociology as created by Comte and accepted by his direct successors. Its significance is further enhanced by the fact that this collectivist approach is characteristic of most of the students who approach such phenomena from what we have called a ``scientistic'' point of view.16.34 But it must be admitted that it is not easy to see why this should be so, and Comte gives us little help in this respect.
One possible justification of this view which would occur first to the modern mind, played at best a very minor role in Comte's thought: the idea that mass phenomena may show statistical regularities while the composing elements seem to follow no recognizable law.16.35 This idea, made familiar by Comte's contemporary Quetelet,16.36 is certainly not the foundation of Comte's own argument. It is indeed more than doubtful whether Comte ever took notice of Quetelet's work beyond showing indignation about the latter's using, in the subtitle of a work dealing with ``mere statistics,''16.37the term ``social physics,'' which Comte regarded as his intellectual property. But though Quetelet seems thus to have been indirectly responsible for the substitution of the new word sociology,16.38 for what Comte till well on in the fourth volume of the Cours still describes as ``social physics,''16.39 his main idea, which should have fitted so well into Comte's general approach and which was to play so important a role in later scientistic sociology, found no place in Comte's system.
We shall probably have to see the explanation in Comte's general attitude of treating whatever phenomena a science had to deal with as immediately given ``things'' and in his desire to establish a similarity between biology, the science immediately beneath sociology in the positive hierarchy, and the science of the ``collective organism.'' And since in biology it was unquestionably true that the organisms were better known to us than their parts, the same had to be asserted of sociology.