Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
this synthetic turn, even as it advanced this historical progression by finally
stripping the notion of “God” of its supernatural content.
In the hands of Saint-Simon's onetime secretary and disciple, Auguste
Comte, this philosophy of history was formalized in the better-known doc-
trine of the three laws. The study of “the progressive course of the human
mind,” Comte wrote in the introduction to his
Cours de philosophie positive
,
reveals the “great fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and
which has a solid foundation of proof both in the facts of our organization
and in our historical experience.” This law showed that “each of our leading
conceptions—each branch of our knowledge—passes through three different
theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or
abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.”
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The theological stage of intel-
lectual evolution, in which natural events were attributed to the agency of
supernatural beings, represented the limitations of a youthful species striv-
ing for knowledge beyond its reach. In this early stage, it was inevitable that
reason should interpret the natural world as the product of beings imag-
ined to be like ourselves. Just as Saint-Simon had argued concerning the
monotheism of Socrates, Comte recognized that the “Theological system
arrived at the highest perfection of which it is capable when it substituted
the providential action of a single Being for the varied operations of the
numerous divinities which had been before imagined.”
40
This showed that
theological inquiry was driven by reason, even though it was misdirected by
its pursuit of an unattainable “Absolute knowledge,” and therefore it had
at least formal scientific import. In spite of monotheism's misguided search
for “the essential nature of beings, the first and final causes (the origin
and purpose) of all effects,” it had all the while been guided by that innate
principle of historical development that was destined to lead to its positive
culmination in a grand sociological theory that would encompass and direct
all subordinate knowledge. Reason's tendency to move in this direction was
shown by the inclination of each branch of inquiry to pass through a middle
or metaphysical period, a transitional stage between the theological and
positive in which “abstract forces, and veritable entities” took the place of
the supernatural beings of theology. Metaphysical knowledge was no less
illusory than that constructed in the theological stage, but by substituting
abstract representations for the anthropomorphic ones of the theological
stage, it detached reason from these false substances and freed it to discover
its appropriate natural referents. Once so liberated from this vain search for
absolutes, reason attaining to this middle stage would be inclined to seek
understanding of “the causes of phenomena, and apply itself to the study
