Pickering - Comte y La Academia de Ciencias

AUGUSTE COMTE AND THE ACADMIE DES SCIENCES
Mary Pickering P.U.F. | Revue philosophique de la France et de l'tranger

2007/4 - Tome 132 pages 437 450
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AUGUSTE COMTE AND THE ACADMIE DES SCIENCES
Auguste Comte is often considered the nineteenth-century spokesperson for scientism. But Comtes interaction with the Acadmie des sciences demonstrates that his view of science was far more complex. His relationship to the Acadmie was as ambivalent as his attitude toward the sciences. Rather than embracing a valuefree, technocratic vision of the world as is generally assumed, he believed a more just society could be created partly by curtailing the very sciences that he celebrated as the foundation of positivism. Comtes predilection for the sciences appeared early.1 Born in 1798, Comte grew up in Montpellier, which had been at the center of religious wars between Protestants and Catholics and was a stronghold of the Counter-Revolution. Rebelling against his Catholic, monarchist parents, he became devoted to the sciences, which the French revolutionaries and Napoleon promoted to combat religious influences. In 1813, after excelling at his lyce, he studied with Daniel Encontre, a brilliant mathematics professor and Protestant theologian. Having lost his belief in God, Comte did not share Encontres religious faith. However, he was affected by his insistence on creating a just republican society. In addition, because Encontre was equally at home in the sciences, literature, and theology, Comte came to value a wide-ranging mind and a philosophical and encyclopedic approach to knowledge. In 1814, Comte began studying at the cole polytechnique. It remained
1. Additional information regarding Comtes early life and more extensive documentation may be found in Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, volume one (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and the forthcoming volume two.
Revue philosophique, no 4/2007, p. 437 p. 450
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1. Maurice Crosland, Science under Control: The French Academy of Sciences, 1795-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 19. 2. Henri de Saint-Simon, Mmoire sur la science de lhomme, in uvres de Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon (Paris: Anthropos, 1966), volume five, second section, p. 39.
faithful to the ideals and republicanism of the Convention, which founded it in 1794 to propagate the sciences. Comtes approach to social reform incorporated the scientific idealism of his period and his teachers. After being expelled from the cole polytechnique in 1816 for insubordination, Comte resolved to broaden his education. He studied biology and works of history and philosophy, including books by Condorcet, the perpetual secretary of the Acadmie des sciences and member of the Convention, who reinforced his concern with combining scientific enlightenment and social reform. In 1817, Comte bought the five-volume set of Condorcets loges des acadmiciens de lAcadmie royale des sciences, morts depuis lan 1666 jusquen 1790, which praised scientists for helping humanity. This book was in a sense a history of the Acadmie. Yet the Convention voted in August 1793 to suppress it, because it was an elitist and privileged institution that was loyal to the monarchy and contemptuous of artisans.1 The sciences were extremely important in advancing progress, but they had to prioritize social justice. Condorcet influenced Henri de Saint-Simon, who hired Comte as a secretary in 1817. In his Mmoire sur la science de lhomme, Saint-Simon attacked mathematicians, whom he called these sad calculators, enclosed behind a rampart of X and Z.2 They did not care about general ideas, failed to see the importance of bringing together all scientific knowledge to reconstruct society, and neglected the study of man, which he believed should become a science to help reconcile human interests. Remembering perhaps Encontres stress on the importance of general knowledge, Comte shared SaintSimons concern that scientists were incapable of working together for the greater good of society. In one of the first pieces that he wrote for Saint-Simon, Comte attacked scientists for lacking a common philosophy and immersing themselves so completely in their specialties that they could not converse with scholars outside their own field. He pointed out that this ruinous specialization was apparent at the Acadmie des Sciences, which was under the Institut but had regained its name and autonomy in 1816. Comte was repelled by scientific specialization even before he had his own problems
Auguste Comte and the Acadmie des sciences
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1. Auguste Comte, Essais sur quelques points de la Philosophie des mathmatiques, in crits de jeunesse, 1816-1828: Suivis du Mmoire sur la Cosmogonie de Laplace 1835, ed. Paulo E. de Berrdo Carneiro and Pierre Arnaud (Paris: cole pratique des Hautes tudes, 1970), 494. 2. Antimo Negri, Augusto Comte et lumanesimo positivistico (Rome: Armando, 1971), 37; Maurice Boudot, De lusurpation gomtrique, Revue philosophique de la France et de ltranger, no. 4 (October-December 1985), 391392, 399-402.
with the Acadmie. In other works written around this time, he ridiculed scientists, especially mathematicians, whom he accused of cowardice, egoism, and coldness. His later difficulties with scientists only intensified his distaste for their narrowness and reinforced his desire to unite society by encouraging social cooperation and bringing together all ideas as a way of creating an intellectual consensus. Although critical of the Acadmie des sciences, Comte knew that gaining entrance to it was crucial to his career as a professor and scientist. In 1820, when he heard that the Institut had established a prize for the best essay on mathematics, he hoped to win it by writing on the philosophy of mathematics; this triumph would assure him entrance into the Acadmie des sciences. In his rough draft, which he never refined, he stressed that philosophy was the view of the whole and that philosophers of the whole had different abilities than scientists cultivating details.1 From the beginning, he equated scientific specialization with moral egoism and intellectual narrowness and general philosophy with strong social feelings and broadmindedness.2 Four years later Comte again entertained hope of entering the Acadmie des sciences. He wrote Plan des travaux scientifiques ncessaires pour rorganiser la socit, where he explained that he had founded a new positive philosophy systematizing the natural sciences and sought to apply the scientific method to social phenomena, which were still subject to vague metaphysical theories and should be studied by the Acadmie des sciences. Hearing nothing back from the Acadmie to encourage him, Comte gave a course on positive philosophy in 1826 at his apartment to attract more attention. Three members of the Acadmie were present: Henri Ducrotay de Blainville, who had been a friend since they met through Saint-Simon; Joseph Fourier, the perpetual secretary; and Franois Arago, who would succeed Fourier at his death. In 1830, Comte started publishing the Cours de philosophie positive, which he dedicated to Fourier and Blainville, whom he called his illustrious friends as a way of enhancing the
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1. Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, ed. Michel Serres, Franois Dagognet, Allal Sinaceur, and Jean-Paul Enthoven, 2 vols. (Paris: Hermann, 1975), 1: dedication page. 2. Ibid., 1:31, 2:362, 548.
validity and respectability of his project.1 Try as he might, he could not escape the fact that attaching himself to this institution was the way to success in the French scientific and educational worlds. The Cours represented an overview of the sciences, challenging the trend toward specialization. Comte believed that increased specialization was a crucial component of progress, but he condemned this tendency to become isolated and lost in detail as the great weakness of the sciences. He referred to this excess scientism as positivity. To diminish its impact, Comte urged the formation of positive philosophers, who would specialize in the study of scientific generalities, including those pertaining to sociology, the new science that he created. These philosophers would constitute the new spiritual power, which would replace the clergy. Other scientists would learn the work of these generalists so that their own specialties would profit from the knowledge of the whole, whether that be the broad range of scientific knowledge or the needs of the entire society. In this way, positive philosophy would ensure the unity of human knowledge, something scientists always yearned to achieve. Moreover, Comte insisted that scientific geniuses had to be controlled by moral goals to prevent the emergence of their unsociable vanity and their absurd pretensions to dominate the world in the name of ability.2 His difficulties with the Acadmie began soon after the publication of the first volume of the Cours in 1830 a volume that was particularly critical of mathematicians. In February 1831, Comte applied for one of the two chairs of analysis and general mechanics at the cole polytechnique. According to the new regulations of 1830, the Acadmie des sciences and the Conseil dInstruction (composed of the professors of the cole polytechnique, many of whom were members of the Acadmie) had to present separate lists of desirable candidates for jobs at the school to the minister of war, who made the final decision. When he discovered that the Acadmie omitted his name from the list, Comte replied with a tactless letter condemning its contemptuous silence. Admitting that he had not made any special contribution to mathematics, he asserted that an eminent specialist was often a mediocre teacher. He clai-
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1. Comte to the President of the Acadmie des sciences, March 7, 1831, Correspondance gnrale et Confessions, ed. Paulo E. de Berrdo Carneiro, Pierre Arnaud, Paul Arbousse-Bastide, and Angle Kremer-Marietti, 8 vol. (Paris: cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences sociales, 1973-1990), 1:223. 2. Comte to Blainville, June 21, 1832, Correspondance gnrale, 1:238. 3. Crosland, Science under Control, 30.
med that his teaching experience and general knowledge of the sciences more than qualified him for the position.1 Nevertheless, the Acadmie decided to nominate one of its own members who had applied for the post: Comtes friend Henri Navier. Two other friends from his days at the cole polytechnique, Flix Savary and Gabriel Lam, were soon appointed professors there as well. When he heard in 1832 that Savary was going to apply for one of the most prestigious posts in the Acadmie des sciences, that of perpetual secretary, he told Blainville that he could not stand watching his inferiors easily reach brilliant scientific positions, while he remained a lowly tutor scrounging for students.2 Comte decided to apply for the secretarial post, a wish that must have appeared extremely presumptuous. The post went, in fact, to Jean-Pierre Flourens, a renowned physiologist. Despite this failure, Comte had some success six months later when he landed a job at the cole polytechnique as an adjunct rptiteur (teaching assistant) to Navier. Yet this subaltern position hurt his pride. In 1832, he tried unsuccessfully to get the government to set up a chair in the history of science at the Collge de France. He tried again in 1846 and in 1848 but to no avail. Comte was constantly blocked by institutions. It became clear that Comte needed to improve his standing among scholars by taking more seriously the importance of presenting the right kind of material. In the early nineteenth century, the Acadmie des sciences was forming a new image of a scientist as a person who advanced the frontiers of a narrow field of knowledge and publicized his or her contributions through research publications.3 Recognizing the new criteria, Comte wrote Premier Mmoire sur la cosmogonie positive, which he presented to the Acadmie in January 1835. The essay offered mathematical evidence verifying Laplaces nebular hypothesis about the formation of the solar system. Even Comte knew it was full of logical mistakes. Indeed, Arago, Savary, and Libri were assigned to examine the paper formally but never bothered to make their report. Having humiliated himself, Comte resigned himself to the impossibility of ever entering the Acadmie.
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Nevertheless, he continued his campaign for professional success, which inevitably involved the Acadmie. In 1836, Comte applied again for the chair in analysis and mechanics at the cole polytechnique. His chief rivals were two rptiteurs who were at a higher level than he was: Joseph Liouville and his former classmate Jean-Marie Duhamel. In a letter to Pierre-Louis Dulong, an Acadmicien and director of studies at the cole polytechnique, Comte claimed that Acadmiciens were qualified to judge the merits of scientists, not professors. Turning his academic weakness into an asset, he explained that his concentration on philosophy had precluded him from making any special contributions to the sciences, but twenty years of teaching experience and the Cours made him a superior candidate. Comte prevailed upon Dulong to read this provocative letter aloud to the Acadmie. Yet members noted that Comte had not studied mathematics since being expelled from the cole polytechnique in 1816. He had not even received a degree. Only two scientists voted for him. Duhamel obtained the position. As compensation, Comte was appointed an admissions officer and full-fledged rptiteur in 1838, the year that Liouville was named to the other chair of analysis. In 1840, Duhamel vacated his chair, and Comte applied to replace him. In a letter to the president of the Acadmie des sciences, Comte maintained that the mathematicians in the Acadmie were unfairly prejudiced against him and that the teaching of mathematics at the cole polytechnique needed to be reformed. Having already heard Comte make his case, the Acadmiciens voted to suppress his letter when Flourens started reading it aloud. The Journal des dbats offered Comte the opportunity to complain. He inserted a note accusing the Acadmie of favoring its own members over outsiders and violating its own rules. Like the members of the Convention, he considered it an arrogant, privileged body that looked down on scientific workers such as himself. The main result of Comtes public denunciation was that he antagonized Acadmiciens, especially those on the left, such as the two friends Arago and Liouville. The Journal des dbats was a conservative, pro-government journal. It had used Comte to attack the cole polytechnique, whose support for the regime was at best lukewarm. He had unwisely politicized his academic battles. He was once again rejected by the Conseil dInstruction, whose members did not view the Cours as a contribution to the field of mathematics and found his teaching superficial. The man chosen for the chair was Charles Sturm, who was a famous geometer, a member
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1. Cours de philosophie positive, 2:625. 2. Comte to Valat, May 1, 1841, Correspondance Gnrale, 2:8; Cours de philosophie positive, 2:650.
of the Acadmie des sciences, a friend of Arago, and the rptiteur for Liouville. In chapter fifty-seven and in the preface to the sixth and last volume of the Cours, published in 1842, Comte took out his fury at the scientific class. He stated that the scientists represented his intellectual family because they were the very imperfect but direct germ of true modern spirituality. Society had to be reconstructed on the basis of the sciences in order to achieve harmony, and men rooted in the sciences needed to represent the new spiritual power, who would rule society along with enlightened industrialists. But contemporary scientists were egoists unable to fulfill their mission. He compared himself to the great Hildebrand, who sought to effect a difficult spiritual reformation but was opposed by the same clergy that he was trying to place at the head of society.1 Comte grew so frustrated that he made the establishment of the spirit of the whole one of the main objectives of the remainder of the Cours. He did not think so much of history as class struggle but as a struggle between specialists and generalists. The spirit of the whole (the tendency toward generalization, synthesis, and coordination) and the spirit of analysis (the tendency toward specialization, detail, and division) were historical forces, which alternated in dominating mental evolution according to the needs of each age. His age was characterized by analysis; specialized scientists were merchants of detail who enriched themselves by pursuing blind and childish research.2 Especially blameworthy were the mathematicians, who sought to extend their analysis to all phenomena and dominate the other sciences. The mathematicians were not only Comtes main opponents in the Acadmie but his rivals in the contest to unify knowledge. Carried away by a personal vendetta, he also explained his situation at the cole polytechnique, which gave him an excuse to complain about the Conseil dInstruction, the Acadmie des sciences, and especially its perpetual secretary, Arago, whom he accused of preventing him from securing an academic position. Arago was indeed the dominant figure in the Acadmie; he had managed to get many of his friends appointed to professorships at the cole polytechnique: Dulong, Sturm, Liouville, Savary, and Lam. Furthermore, as a leftist politician, he had worked to secure the election of many
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1. Bruno Belhoste, La formation dune technocratie: lcole polytechnique et ses lves de la Rvolution au Second Empire (Paris: Belin, 2003), 52, 91-92; Bruno Belhoste, Un modle lpreuve. Lcole polytechnique de 1794 au Second Empire, La formation polytechnicienne, 1794-1994 (Paris: Dunod, 1994), 25; Crosland, Science under Control, XV n6, 119-120, 188-189, 288; Robert Fox, Science, the University, and the State in Nineteenth-Century France, in Professions and the French State, 1700-1900, ed. Gerald L. Geison (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984),78, 82-83. 2. Cours de philosophie positive, 2:631. 3. Comte to Mill, February 27, 1843, Correspondance gnrale, 2:138. 4. Comte to Valat, November 22, 1843, Correspondance gnrale, 2:215.
republican scientists to the Acadmie, including Savary, Sturm, and Liouville.1 Having dispensed with the scientists philosophically and knowing that they paid no heed to his doctrine, Comte resolved to meet them on their own grounds by displaying his didactic prowess. In his view, the didactic ability, as opposed to the specialized academic ability, was linked to the spirit of the whole because teaching required thinking in broad terms.2 In 1843, he wrote Trait lmentaire de gomtrie analytique, which Comte called, a boring voyage into a sad country the country of pedants.3 Yet instead of strengthening his position, this textbook on geometry worsened it. The two professors of analysis, Liouville and Sturm, lobbied to prevent his reappointment as admissions officer. Apparently Comte had disobeyed school rules forbidding teachers from publishing elementary books that could give students an advantage in their examinations. A special committee of the Conseil dInstruction then reviewed his new textbook, concluding that it was badly written, unoriginal, and full of errors. Angry at being attacked in the Cours, the Council indirectly informed Comte that his appointment as admissions examiner would not be renewed. Comte urged the minister of war, Marshal Nicolas Soult, who had jurisdiction over the cole polytechnique, to intervene. But his recourse to Soult backfired as the minister was engaged in a power struggle with the administration and with the Acadmie. In November 1843, Soult issued a new ordinance demanding longer lists of candidates from the Conseil dInstruction and the Acadmie des sciences so that he would have more choices before making a final decision. Comte rejoiced at the news of this controversial ordinance, exclaiming that the minister obviously wanted to temper this pedantocracy, which for ten years has produced so many deplorable abuses.4 By this point, Arago was a leftist deputy in
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1. Comte to Valat, July 10, 1840, Correspondance gnrale, 1:344.

the Chamber; he and his friends did not approve of this government interference. By appealing to the government, Comte again placed himself in the conservative camp. When the Conseil dInstruction met a few months later, it considered unfavorable reports on Comtes performance as an admissions examiner and did not renew his appointment. Soult had the school reorganized in October 1844, preventing the Acadmie des sciences and the Conseil dInstruction from nominating candidates for future positions. This right was henceforth to be exercised by the Conseil de Perfectionnement, which had members who did not teach at the school. Arago, who represented the Acadmie, resigned from the Conseil de Perfectionnement in protest. Comte felt that his criticisms of the scientific regime had been vindicated. But he could not regain his post. Comte was caught in a vicious circle. He was opposed to the Acadmie des sciences, which he announced in the Cours he intended to eliminate in the coming positivist society. But the positivist doctrine could not hope to triumph if it did not get the stamp of approval of the scientists. He could not gain legitimacy for his antielitist views that prioritized the needs of the entire community unless he was part of the elite body of scientists. Unable to resolve the quandary, he presented himself as a martyr, persecuted by scientists, especially mathematicians, who he believed were fearful of positive philosophy because it criticized their dominance and would rob them of their prestigious posts once it triumphed and rearranged society so that the interests of the entire community prevailed over those of individuals. He thought he was the only person who combined the scientific spirit with the philosophical spirit; it was precisely this synthesis that made him feel qualified to be a professor as well as the savior of Humanity. However, this intellectual predilection as well as the arrogance that it engendered in him made the Acadmie des sciences and the cole polytechnique turn against him whenever he applied for a purely scientific position. In reaction, he began increasingly to consider himself a pure philosopher, destined to fight against the scientific spirit of detail that was becoming ever more specialized and tainted by the materialism inherent in industrialism.1 What Comte did not understand is that his colleagues did not regard him sufficiently highly to feel threatened by his philosophy. They simply grew tired
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1. Auguste Comte, Systme de politique positive ou Trait du sociologie instituant la religion de lHumanit, 4 vol. (Paris, 1851-1854; 5th ed., identical to the first, Paris, Au Sige de la Socit positiviste, 1929), 2:VI-VII. See also Annie Petit, Limprialisme des gomtres lcole polytechnique: Les Critiques dAuguste Comte, in La formation polytechnicienne, 1794-1994, ed. Bruno Belhoste, Amy Dahan Dalmedico, and Antoine Picon (Paris: Dunod, 1994), 70. 2. Belhoste, La formation dune technocratie, 53, 74.
of Comtes haughty, insulting behavior, which was also causing him to neglect his teaching duties. His recourse to the Journal des dbats and to Soult did not help his case. Comte took consolation in the thought that at least his dismissal proved to the left that he was not an advocate of a despotic scientific theocracy as his detractors claimed. However, he was nervous about his association with the right, which generally did not like him because of his republicanism and rejection of God. When the leftists triumphed during the revolution of 1848 and Arago became a very popular member of the new government, Comte quickly made a public apology to avoid punitive measures. He also secretly hoped that Arago would help him regain his position at the cole polytechnique. Arago accepted the reconciliation. The new government decided in 1850 to reform the cole polytechnique. Like Comte, it worried that its teaching was deteriorating. Yet Comtes refusal to lecture, test, and help students in a sufficient manner as he was warned to do was seen as contributing to the deplorable situation at the school. In 1848, he had stopped reading scientific journals and could not keep up with new scientific developments. Nevertheless, he applied for the fourth time in 1851 for the chair of analysis, which he did not obtain. Instead, in the fall of 1851, he was told that he would not be reappointed rptiteur for the coming school year. He blamed his defeat on the vile intrigues of the algebraic couple, that is, Sturm and Liouville, who were aided by the famous merchant of subjective planets, Urbain Le Verrier, who discovered Neptune in 1846.1 He was Aragos protg, a member of the Acadmie des sciences, and a crusader for the reform of the school, especially during the Second Empire. In 1852, the government declared that the minister of war would appoint most members of the reestablished Conseil de Perfectionnement. The government had realized Comtes desire to reduce the scientists power and independence, though he was paradoxically ousted in the general movement to make the teaching at the school less superficial a movement that he supported.2
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1. Robert Fox, Science, 66-67, 73; Crosland, Science under Control, 28-30. 2. Comte to de Capellen, November 26, 1851, Correspondance gnrale, 6:189. 3. Comte to Gnral Bonet, December 1, 1851, Correspondance gnrale, 6:191. See also Fox, Science, 105, 119. 4. Jean-Pierre Callot, Histoire de lcole polytechnique (Paris, Charles Lavanzelle, 1982), 100.
Comte was caught up in a series of power struggles. In the early nineteenth century, the pattern of career-making in the sciences was in a state of transition. The old system of patronage was still in place, which meant that scientists made up a powerful elite bound by ties of friendship and family. In nominating professors at the cole polytechnique, Acadmiciens chose other Acadmiciens or protgs of Acadmiciens. Yet this system was being challenged by the professionalization of scholarship with its impersonal system of rules for advancement. One had to be more than a closely connected friend to get a job.1 Comte found that he could not make the patronage system work for him without compromising his integrity. He also did not have the right connections. Blainville, his friend, was not as powerful as Arago. At the same time, Comte could not meet the new professional standards that required specialization and research publications without sacrificing his philosophic mission. He seemed unable to operate in either the old nepotistic system or the new meritocratic system. He kept relying on old codes of honor and claiming that his conduct was irreproachable, as if his moral conduct mattered.2 Somewhat of a Bohemian in scientific circles, he wanted to retain his independence in matters of thought and language. He claimed that the government should not be allowed to regulate the spiritual realm of thought and opinion, although he had called on Soult for support, publicly fawned on minister Arago, and watched government ministers reduce science to a tool of the state. Indeed, the state was beginning to impose control over the scientific community in the interest of the public.3 Comte favored the public too but did not trust the state to define its well-being. He did not fit comfortably in either professorial circles or the government camp, both of which were angling to reform the school to increase their own power.4 Comtes last works, the Systme de politique positive and the Synthse subjective, sum up his views of the scientists, which were remarkably consistent with what he had said when he worked for Saint-Simon. Although his animosity against the scientists was intensified by his personal experience with institutions such as the
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1. I thank Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent for sharing her paper Popular Science as a Political Activity in Nineteenth-Century France, given at Oregon State University, March 2, 2000. 2. Auguste Comte, Discours sur lensemble du positivisme (Paris: Flammarion, 1998), 301-302. 3. Systme de politique positive, 3:121. 4. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Lastronomie populaire, priorit philosophique et projet politique, Revue de synthse, 112 (January-March 1991), 53. 5. Discours sur lensemble du positivisme, 326. 6. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Lopinion publique et la science: chacun son ignorance (Paris: Institut ddition Sanofi-Synthlabo, 2000), 82-87.
Acadmie des sciences, the Collge de France, and the cole polytechnique, his wariness of their impact was tied to a growing general awareness that the industrial, scientific age aggravated the social conflicts inherited from the French Revolution. In these last works, Comte redoubled his efforts to regenerate society by developing altruism as a complement to intellectual harmony. He criticized scientists for being avaricious and unconcerned with social problems, particularly class tensions, which left the proletariat alienated from everyone else. Scientists use of esoteric expressions furthered their distance from the public, whose common-sense approach to searching for regularities with which to make predictions was ultimately the basis of science.1 Because of their narrow views, excessive analysis, and abuse of reason, scientists hurt moral development, that is, the development of sympathetic feelings.2 Comte wrote: The touching logic of [...] Negroes is [...] wiser than our academic dryness, which, under the futile pretext of an always impossible impartiality usually strengthens suspicion and fear.3 Because they threatened social harmony, Comte once again took up Dantons campaign to eradicate academies, where professional scientists cultivated their autonomy, distancing themselves from the public.4 In the future science [would] be reduced to its true office, that is, to constructing the objective basis of human wisdom in order to furnish an indispensable foundation to art and industry. The study of the true had to help the development of the good and the beautiful.5 Aided by the public, that is, workers and women, whom he considered inherently moral, positive philosophers instead of the temporal power would direct the sciences, making sure they remained encyclopedic, helped industry in a practical sense, and contributed to the arts.6 A leitmotif of his last work, the Synthse subjective, which he dedicated to Encontre, was that the arts and the sciences shared many affinities, especially a concern with moral improvement. While the arts developed our fee-
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1. Comte to Audiffrent, January 29, 1857, Correspondance gnrale, 8:394. 2. Comte to Audiffrent, March 24, 1857, Correspondance gnrale, 8:413. 3. Auguste Comte, Trait philosophique dastronomie populaire (Paris: Arthme Fayard, 1985), 26-27. See also Annie Petit, Le corps scientifique selon Auguste Comte, Sociologie de la science, ed. Angle Kremer-Marietti (Sprimont, Belgium: Mardaga, 1998), 83-84.
lings, science should teach us to submit to what cannot be changed in the world around us and should inspire us to cooperate with others to work on what can be modified. Instead of instilling us with hubris and pride in our individual efforts, science should make us humble and cognizant of the contributions of others, both in the past and in other countries. Besides trying to erase the dividing line between science and art, Comte wished to bring science and religion together, for he believed that the distinctiveness of the former was not as sharp as scientists pretended. He worried that the development of excessive positivity hampered acceptance of his new religion, which revolved around the secular worship of Humanity, an abstract concept but one that he believed was rooted in reality, that of the individuals who composed it. At the end of his life, he insisted more strongly than ever that to have full liberty of mind, one had to be emancipated from science as from metaphysics and theology.1 Scientific emancipation was his new slogan because being dominated by the sciences was degrading.2 Collecting incoherent facts and detailed observations served no purpose except pure erudition, a source of pride. Comte was a proto-postmodernist in insisting that scientists could never have an exact representation of the universe and that their own intellectual constructions were at least partly subjective. They could not know reality or discover absolute, unchanging truths. Thus they should give up their desire for an objective synthesis of knowledge based on a single method, the scientific method; a single law, like the law of gravity; or a single science such as mathematics. Instead, scientists should build useful scientific theories that improved the material conditions of human existence, society, and human nature itself, which should become more intelligent and moral, that is, more sociable.3 In directing all the sciences to Humanity, which he believed everyone should worship, Comte made the sciences religious. People would study Humanity to determine what was modifiable, they would act on behalf of Humanity, and they would love Humanity. Comte, a man at odds with his thoroughly Catholic upbringing, a student of a Protestant theologian, and the repository of memories of religious wars, attempted
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to erase the line between religion and science to resolve the problems that each had caused. It is thus no wonder that a conservative journal in the United States recently suggested that Comte was the eighth most dangerous thinker in modern history, right ahead of Friedrich Nietzsche.1 Mary PICKERING.
mpickeri@email.sjsu.edu
1. Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Human Events, May 31, 2005, pages 1, 5, http://www.humanevents.com/article. php?id=7591.

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AUGUSTE COMTE AND THE ACADMIE DES SCIENCES

Mary Pickering P.U.F. | Revue philosophique de la France et de l'tranger

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AUGUSTE COMTE AND THE ACADMIE DES SCIENCES

Auguste Comte and the Acadmie des sciences

Auguste Comte and the Acadmie des sciences

Revue philosophique, no 4/2007, p. 437 p. 450

Auguste Comte and the Acadmie des sciences

Auguste Comte and the Acadmie des sciences

1. Comte to Valat, July 10, 1840, Correspondance gnrale, 1:344.

Auguste Comte and the Acadmie des sciences

Auguste Comte and the Acadmie des sciences

Revue philosophique, no 4/2007, p. 437 p. 450

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