Comte and the Modern World

However, Comte's real significance is derived from his philosophy of positivism, which holds that when mankind reached intellectual maturity, science became possible. Consequently, the world was described by laws founded on observable relations of phenomena. Comte's purpose was to complete the positivistic stage by removing metaphysics from sociologic reasoning, and then to render sociology a science in its own right.

The objectives of Comte's sociology were quite practical. As Comte states: "Now that the human mind has founded celestial physics, terrestrial physics (mechanical and chemical), and organic physics (vegetable and animal), it only remains to complete the system of observational sciences by the foundation of social physics " (Comte, 1988, p. 13). This,

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sitive sciences in their present state. It would be their function to determine exactly the character of each science, to discover the relations and concatenation of the sciences, and to reduce, if possible, all their chief principles to the smallest number of common principles, while always conforming to the fundamental maxims of the positive method" (Comte, 1988, p. 17-18). Comte intended to discover the logical laws of human intellect; and it was his contention that this could be accomplished by way of positive philosophy. Thus, Comte states: "In the first place, the study of the positive philosophy, by considering the results of the activity of our intellectual faculties, furnishes us with the only really rational means of exhibiting the logical laws of the human mind, which have hitherto been sought by methods so ill calculated to reveal them" (Comte, 1988, p. 19). Consequently, Comte sought to define the general rules that are significant with respect to the investigation of scientific endeavors. Comte also believed that it would be necessary to reorganize the educational system. Of course, he was referring to education as he knew it in nineteenth-century France. However, educational reform is always a wise idea, pa
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