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Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences; Being an Exposition of the Principles of the Cours De Philosophie Positive of Auguste Comte
Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences Being an Exposition of the Principles of the Cours De Philosophie Positive of Auguste Comte Author:George Henry Lewes General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1887 Original Publisher: G. Bell Subjects: Positivism Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com... more » where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: SECTION III. THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF EVOLUTION. In the attempts made by man to explain the varied phenomena of the universe, history reveals to us three distinct and characteristic stages, by Comte named the Theological (Supernatural), the Metaphysical, and the Positive. In the first, man explains phenomena by some fanciful conception suggested by the analogies of his own consciousness. In the second, he explains phenomena by some a priori conception of inherent or superadded entities, suggested by the constancy observable in phenomena, which constancy leads him to suspect that they are not produced by any intervention on the part of an external being, but are owing to the nature of the things themselves. In the third, he explains phenomena by adhering solely to these constancies of succession and co-existence ascertained inductively, and recognised as the laws of nature. It will be seen that the theological stage is the primitive spontaneous exercise of the speculative faculty, proceeding from the known (i. e. consciousness) to the unknown. The metaphysical stage is the more matured effort of reason to explain things, and is an important modification of the former stage; but its defect is, that it reasons without proofs, and reasons upon subjects which transcend human capacity. The positive stage explains phenomena by ascertained laws, laws based on distinct and indisputable certitude gathered in the longand toilsome investigations of centuries; and these laws are not only shown to be demonstrable to reason, but accordant with fact; for the disting...« less