Complete the account of Comte’s system.
Comte held that knowledge passes through a theological stage, then a ______ stage, and finally a ______ stage in which phenomena are explained by observed regularities. The study of what holds a society together he called social ______, and the study of how it changes social ______.
Word bank: metaphysical · positive · statics · dynamics · organic · mechanics
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- The middle stage explains the world by abstract essences rather than by wills.
- Statics and dynamics are borrowed straight from mechanics, and the borrowing is deliberate.
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Comte held that knowledge passes through a theological stage, then a metaphysical stage, and finally a positive stage in which phenomena are explained by observed regularities. The study of what holds a society together he called social statics, and the study of how it changes social dynamics.
The vocabulary is taken wholesale from physics, which is the whole programme in miniature: if society is lawful, the science that studies it should look like the sciences that study lawful things. Later sociologists kept the ambition and dropped almost all of Comte’s specific content.
Practise Comte and Marx
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