Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/263

3 double r of iticism Comte s .ssifica- the latter is concerned with the application of these laws. Concrete science relates to objects or beings ; abstract science to events. The former is particular or descriptive ; the latter is general. Thus, physiology is an abstract science ; but zoology is concrete. Chemistry is abstract ; mineralogy is concrete. It is the method and knowledge of the abstract sciences that the Positive Philosophy has to reorganize in a great whole. Comte s principle of classification is that the dependence and order of scientific study follows the dependence of the phenomena. Thus, as has been said, it represents both the objective dependence of the phenomena and the subjective dependence of our means of knowing them. The more particular and complex phenomena depend upon the simpler and more general. The latter are the more easy to study. Therefore science will begin with those attributes of objects which are most general, and pass on gradually to other attributes that are combined in greater complexity, Thus, too, each science rests on the truths of the sciences that precede it, while it adds to them the truths by which it is itself constituted. Comte s series or hierarchy is arranged as follows : ( 1 ) Mathematics (that is, number, geometry, and mechanics), (2) Astronomy, (3) Physics, (4) Chemistry, (5) Biology, (6) Sociology. Each of the members of this eeries is one degree more special than the member before it, and depends upon the facts of all the members preceding it, and cannot be fully understood without them. It follows that the crowning science of the hierarchy, dealing with the phenomena of human society, will remain longest under the influence of theological dogmas and abstract figments, and will be the last to pass into the positive stage. You cannot discover the relations of the facts of human society without reference to the conditions of animal life ; you cannot understand the conditions of animal life without the laws of chemistry ; and so with the rest. This arrangement of the sciences, and the Law of the Three States, are together explanatory of the course of human thought and knowledge. They are thus the double key of Comte s systematization of the philosophy of all the sciences from mathematics to physiology, and his analysis of social evolution, which is the base of sociology. Each science contributes its philosophy. The co-ordination of all these partial philosophies produces the general Positive Philosophy. " Thousands had cultivated science, and with splendid success ; not one had conceived the philosophy which the sciences when organized would naturally evolve. A few had seen the necessity of extending the scientific method to all inquiries, but no one had seen how this was to be effected ..... The Positive Philosophy is novel as a philosophy, not as a collection of truths never before suspected. Its novelty is the organization of existing elements. Its very principle implies the absorption of all that great thinkers had achieved ; while incorporating their results it extended their methods ..... What tradition brought was the results ; what Comte brought was the organization of these results. He always claimed to be the founder of the Positive Philosophy. That he bad every right to such a title is demonstrable to all who distinguish between the positive sciences and the philosophy which co ordinated the truths and methods of these sciences into a doctrine." (6f. II. Lewes.} We may interrupt our short exposition here to remark that Comte s classification of the sciences has been subjected to a vigorous criticism by Mr Herbert Spencer. Mr Spencer s two chief points are thess : (1) He denies that the principle of the development of the sciences is the principle of decreasing generality ; he asserts that there are as many examples of the advent of a science being determined by increasing generality as by increasing speciality. (2) He holds that any grouping of the sciences 235 in a succession gives a radically wrong idea of their genesis and their interdependence no true filiation exists ; no science develops itself in isolation ; no one is independent, either logically or historically. M. Littre, by far the most eminent of the scientific followers of Comte, concedes a certain force to Mr Spencer s objections, and makes certain secondary modifications in the hierarchy in consequence, while still cherishing his faith in the Comtist theory of tho sciences. Mr Mill, while admitting the objections as good, if Comte s arrangement pretended to be the only one possible, still holds that arrangement as tenable for the purpose with which it was devised. Mr Lewes asserts against Mr Spencer that the arrangement in a series is necessary, on grounds similar to those which require that the various truths constituting a science should be systematically co-ordinated although in nature the phenomena are intermingled. The first three volumes of the Positive Philosophy contain an exposition of the partial philosophies of the five sciences that precede sociology in the hierarchy ,Their value has usually been placed very low by the- special followers of the sciences concerned ; they say that the knowledge is second-hand, is not coherent, and is too con fidently taken for final. The Comtist replies that the task is philosophic, and is not to be judged by the minute accuracies of science. In these three volumes Comte took the sciences roughly as he found them. His eminence as a man of science must be measured by his only original work in that department, the construction, namely, of the new science of society. This work is accomplished in the last three volumes of the Positive Philosophy, and tho second and third volumes of the Positive Polity. The Comtist maintains that even if these five volumes together fail in laying down correctly and finally the lines of tho new science, still they are the first solution of a great problem hitherto unattempted. " Modern biology has got beyond Aristotle s conception ; but in the construction of the biological science, not even the most unphilosophical biologist would fail to recognize the value of Aristotle s attempt. So for sociology. Subsequent sociologists may have conceivably to remodel the whole science, yet not the less will they recognize the merit of the first work which has facilitated their labours." (Congreve.} We shall now briefly describe Comte s principal con- Socio- ceptions in sociology, his position in respect to which lo g ical is held by himself, and by others, to raise him to the ti | level of Descartes or Leibnitz. Of course the first step was to approach the phenomena of human character and social existence with the expectation of finding them as reducible to general laws as the other phenomena of the universe, and with the hope of exploring these laws by the same instruments of observation and verification as had done such triumphant work in the case of the latter. Comte separates the collective facts of society and history from the individual phenomena of biology ; then he withdraws these collective facts from the region of external volition, and places them in the region of law. The facts of history must be explained, not by providential interven tions, but by referring them to conditions inherent in the successive stages of social existence. This conception makes a science of society possible. What is the method 1 Method It comprises, besides observation and experiment (which is, in fact, only the observation of abnormal social states), a certain peculiarity of verification. Ve begin by deducing every well-known historical situation from the series of its antecedents. Thus we acquire a body of empirical generalizations as to social phenomena, and then we connect the generalizations with the positive theory of human nature. A sociological demonstration lies in the establish ment of an accordance between the conclusions of historical

analysis and the preparatory conceptions of biological