Auguste Comte - Research Paper Example

Comte’s success in defining sociology from an all-embracive or universal perceptive provokes the frontiers of other branches of knowledge to accept it and utilize in various purposes. Due to these harmonious relations of sociology with other sciences, scholars were inspired to consider it as science and they began to consider human being as well as his society and culture as a subject matter of this branch of knowledge. According to Comte, the preamble of sociology is considered to be embedded in his Positive Philosophy, that is, Positivism.

After theoretically reviewing all the origins of all sciences he comes to a conclusion that human knowledge about has gone along three different stages: theological, metaphysical and scientific. The later, according to Comte, is Positivism. Therefore it is evident that Comte’s Positivism involves the scientific exploration of human society and thus “sociology” emerges as a branch of human knowledge. In fact, the polysemus connotation of the scientific exploration of society provokes him to use the term “positivism”.

At the theological phase, the knowledge of society basically comes from how religion and religious beliefs tend to define it. This theological view is based on the dogmatic doctrine of religion that is devoid of any opposition unless another religious view comes up with a set of totally different dogmas. It defines man and society as the implementation of the will of God and the social rules and regulations are referenced to God. This view, in the first place, circumcises the scope of experimenting the validity of the religious doctrines of society under the blasphemous taboo.

So according to Comte, it goes exclusively goes against the zeal of science. But the Enlightenment in Europe in the 19th Century challenged this superiority of religion to shape human and to determine the position of human