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Cruise Scientific Visual Statistics Studio Visual Statistics Illustrated |
Elements of epistemology
Epistemology (Gk. episteme knowledge) is a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin and nature of human knowledge. Visual statistics consists of methods and algorithms for collection, analysis and visualization of quantitative and qualitative information that can help us to obtain a rational view of our world.
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'Thomas, because you have seen me, you
have believed:
blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.’
This story is of interest, as it illustrates a cornerstone of epistemology that of belief vs. doubt. The religious tradition asserts the superiority of belief over doubt while the opposite observed within the tradition of the science.
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Epistemology
began in classical
Socrates by Jacques-Louis David (1787)
About Socrates Plato describes Socrates' (c. 9550 HE, 450 BCE) shabby appearance and tattered clothes. Socrates was appreciated by few and hated by many, as he sought the intellectual and moral improvement of society that, he thought, could be achieved by humanistic education.
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Hemlock
(Conium maculatum) |
This collided with doctrines of religious moralists who want to improve society by religious indoctrination and by punishments meted out by the law. This ideological conflict was resolved not by a Socratic dialogue, but by a judicial decree. Socrates' teachings were judged as corrupt and Socrates was executed.
Over two millennia later, Socrates is still remembered, as his accusers did not realize that a better strategy would have been to accuse him of moral turpitude, and drug addiction. After all, he chose to drink hemlock, didn't he?
Socrates'
Core Thesis Socrates maintained that humans do not
knowingly act evil. We do what we believe is the best. Improper conduct is the
product of ignorance. The way to achieve a better society is through education.
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The opposing view is that a better society must be maintained by punishments. This line of reasoning rests on the assumption that God gave us the free will to choose between good and evil. To restrain the evil; freedom has to be taken away from the guilty by incarceration or by the termination of life. To prevent the evil, freedom must be curtailed by pressures toward the moral rectitude by an elaborate system of rewards and punishments. The core postulates of this system are in the belief in God and in the belief of an afterlife. Thus, this system of rewards and punishments can include promises which fulfillment does not require tangible expenditures and cannot be verified, extended into eternity and intensified by fantasies of bliss in heaven and of suffering in hell. Within this cognitive framework, there is no escape, not even by suicide, which lands you in Hell. However, inflicting death upon others, as in a jihad, earns you into paradise plus the seventy one maidens’ bonus.
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Terrorist Samson killed about 3,000 persons. |
Number of persons killed during the air raids on the U.S. territory within the framework of some of the air raids by the U.S. on the territories of others. |
Samson and
Delilah During
one of the numerous wars
between Israelites and Philistines, the leader of
The temple was crowded with about three thousand men and women. When they stood him among the pillars, Samson prayed to the Lord, reached toward the two central pillars and pushed with all his might. The temple collapsed, killing all the people in it.
Religious justifications of terrorism can be found in both the Qur'an and the Bible. The Bible also includes a remarkably close estimate how many people can be killed by collapsing a large building.
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The Play of Shadows
The shadow play was introduced to the West by travelers who witnessed it in
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Parable of the Cave bears a marked resemblance to the shadow play. It was narrated by Plato (c. 9600 HE, 400 BCE), a student of Socrates. This parable follows an interesting course: Imagine prisoners in an underground cave with their necks chained so that they can only see before them. Behind them a fire is blazing at a distance. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way. In front of the prisoners there is a wall on which the prisoners see the shadows of events taking place on the raised way. To them, the truth is literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
The Knowledge will Set You Free One of the prisoners escapes, returns to the cave, and tells the others about the world above. After prisoners leave the cave, they initially think that the shadows are truer than the visible objects, only gradually grasping the reality. The meaning of this allegory is that mediated images are the world of those who live in the cave. To be free, we have to ascent upwards, into the world that could be correctly perceived and interpreted. Among the tasks of social sciences is to lessen the irrationality of the society, to improve critical thinking of its members, and to enable us to see issues and events as they are and not as the puppeteers would like us to believe. To dispel shadows and to cast the rays of light.
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Aristotle’s Diagrams Aristotle (c. 9650 HE; 350 BCE) who was among the students of Plato, is one of the fathers of visual statistics, as he used diagrams to illustrate points of explanation. Among these diagrams is a series of concentric spheres:
Geosphere
(Earth at the center
of the Universe)
Hydrosphere (Earth's oceans)
Atmosphere (Air surrounding the Earth)
Pyrosphere (Sphere generating lightning)
Stellarsphere (Stars above the Earth)
with
the prime mover (the first cause) initiating their spinning motion. Teilhard de
Chardin (1881-1955) replaced the Aristotle’s pyrosphere with his concept
of noosphere. He
reasoned that while evolution diversified the living forms, humankind
reversed this divergent process into a convergent one. While many species are
on the verge of extinction, the diverse human cultures are converging toward
the omega point. Teilhard de Chardin predicted that after reaching the
omega point, humankind will cover the Earth's surface with collective human
consciousness, the noosphere (from Greek noos, mind), superimposed on
the already-existing biosphere. He elaborated these concepts in an
effort to reconcile
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Aristotle’s school building |
Corpus Aristotelicum The collected works of Aristotle, Corpus Aristotelicum, are divided into logic, physics, and metaphysics. The metaphysics consists of teleology, epistemology, cosmology, ontology, and ethics. Aristotle thought that every entity in the universe moves toward a goal, teleos, inherent in its nature. The principle subjects of teleology thus are development and change. Materialists understood these as mutually interconnected causal chains of events. The idealists thought that these chains of events must have been initiated and guided by a spiritual, supernatural principle, the ultimate source and cause of all things and events. From these deliberations, philosophy developed along two parallel lines. One was realistic and secular, the other was idealistic and religious. The realistic tradition maintains that the concept of supernatural original cause is redundant, unnecessary to understand our world and the meaning of our existence. The idealistic tradition maintains that in order to understand the world and the meaning of our existence, the concept of God is necessary. The next question then is, how we can know that God exists? This used to be the central question of epistemology, the Greek episteme meaning 'to know.'
Laughing and weeping philosophers
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Heraclitus’ (c. 9500 HE; 500 BCE) concern with brevity of human existence earned him the epithet the ‘weeping philosopher.’ Only about a hundred of Heraclitus’ aphorisms survive. His most memorable is that
‘You cannot step into the same river twice,’
a favorite of Mikhail Gorbachev.
Democritus (c. 9600 HE; 400 BCE), the father of the first atomic hypothesis (Gr., atomos, a-not + temmein to cut), was one of the first philosophers to warn about the subjective qualities of our cognitions, scorned numerous superstitions of his times, and asserted that
Belief in an afterlife is a laughable fiction.
For this medieval commentators sometimes described him as the 'laughing philosopher'.
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Death
is like the Dream Catcher of |
Lucretius and Epicurus
Among Democritus’ followers the most congenial to a skeptical contemporary reader is Lucretius. In his De Rerum Natura Libri Sex (9950 HE; 50 BCE), Lucretius describes the universe as explicable in rational terms and shows the implausibility of religions and superstitions. His arguments about the irrationality of beliefs in God are told with eloquence and clarity.
The preamble to Book Two extols the Epicurean life of detached tranquility, maintaining modest and easily attainable standard of living, while avoiding lofty ambitions, controversies, and disputes. This lifestyle makes life genuinely worth living. Pains should be accepted with equanimity. When experiencing pain, one should concentrate the mind on past pleasures, and, when the pain interminable and severe, on its eventual eclipse by the painless state of death.
The concluding part of Book Three is about the fear of death. To fear a future state of death, Lucretius argues, is to make the conceptual error of assuming yourself being able to lament your own non-existence. Being dead will be no better or worse than it was when you've not yet have been born. This Lucretian ‘symmetry argument’ is gaining prominence in the recent philosophical literature on death.
Lucretius talks about death as the natural conclusion of life, a counterpart of birth, liberating us from pain, anguish, anxiety, and fear. Albert Einstein asserted the same, saying that the fear of death is irrational, since when you die, no one can ever harm you again. Death is also the ultimate defense against cruelty those in power can inflict upon the others.
Stoicism and Skepticism
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Emperor
Marcus Aurelius |
Stoicism
was one of the most influential schools
of thought during Hellenistic and Roman times. Stoicism accentuated rational
self-control, adherence to the laws of nature, and a person's duty to preserve
dignity and reason. The founder of the Stoic school was Zeno (c. 9664 – 9739; 336
- 261 BCE), who met with his students in
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Sextus
Empiricus |
Skepticism Sextus Empiricus (c. 10140 – 10220 HE; 140-220 CE), physician and philosopher, describes a skeptic (from a Greek verb meaning “to examine carefully”) as an investigator (zetetic). According to Sextus, the skeptic is someone who investigates phenomena and events, suspending the judgment during the course of these investigations. Skepticism is an attitude that examines claims to certainty. It can be directly contrasted with belief, which accepts claims that a statement or a set of statements is true. Why are some people more skeptical than others? Research into this question centers around Kelley’s hierarchies of personal constructs. These hierarchies are defined along a continuum reflecting their accessibility to change. The peripheral constructs are more likely to be modified by dissonant evidence or experience than the core constructs. Modification of peripheral constructs can be accomplished by rational argumentation while the modification of the core constructs requires dissonant evidence or experience with a strong emotive component. Comparisons of skeptics and believers indicate that believers are more resistant to change of their core constructs. When faced with the necessity to change a core construct, believers experience more anxiety than skeptics.
Scholastic epistemology
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Credo quia Absurdum Epistemology has two broad philosophical traditions, scientific and religious. The scientific tradition asks how we know about the world, the religious how do we know about God. Throughout history the answers to this question were that God could be known by reason, by faith, or by experience. The proofs of God based on rational deliberations can be classified into cosmological, teleological, and ontological arguments, and are associated with Catholic theology. The rational arguments for the existence of God were elaborated throughout the Middle Ages. Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae (1273) presents five proofs of God's existence in intricate arguments with eloquence fitting the Angelic Doctor. Jacques Maritain in his Degrees of Knowledge (1932) restated Thomas' proofs of God's existence in modern terms. Maritain divides knowledge into the categories of quantity and being, subject matters of mathematics and metaphysics. However, the rational proofs of God's existence are intrinsically self-contradictory and thus Tertullian's desperate cry 'credo quia absurdum' (I believe because it is absurd) echoes through the ages.
Ontological Argument
Ontology (from
Greek on, to be) is the branch of metaphysics that studies the nature of
existence. The ontological argument can be phrased as follows. God is the most
perfect being and since the concept of the most perfect being is inherent to
our consciousness, then God must exist. This argument was originated by Saint
Anselm (1033-1109). Saint Anselm was born in
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Sic et Non The central maxim of scholasticism was ‘fides quaerens intellectum,’ (belief in search of reason). Primus inter pares of scholastics was Peter Abelard, best known for his book Sic et Non (Yes and No, 1120) about contradictory passages in the Scriptures and writings of the Church Fathers. These passages are discussed within the framework of Aristotle's dialectic method. Dialectic is a series of theses (propositions, arguments), antitheses (counter-propositions, counterarguments) which should result in synthesis, transcending the discussed issue. Dialectics is an important method of epistemology, enabling us to examine inherent contradictions in precepts others would like us to believe. The Sic et Non opens with the statement that 'There are contradictions and obscurities in the writings of the church fathers, but our respect for their authority should not discourage us from their critical evaluation.' Peter Abelard continues with unmistaken sarcasm that, however, 'the freedom of critical evaluation does not extend to the Old and New Testaments. There, if something strikes us as absurd, we should not say so, but must insist that the scribe made an error in copying the manuscript, or that there is an error in interpretation, or that the passage is only allegorical.' Predictably, the Sic et Non earned Peter Abelard hatred of the clerics, notably of Saint Bernard, who denounced him to the Pope Innocent II who had him condemned and his works listed in the Libri Prohibiti (index of forbidden books).
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Occam’s Canon
The question of how we know certain things are true and how to explain them
became prominent during the Middle Ages with the philosophy of William of Occam
(c.1285-1349) Occam studied at Oxford where he was attracted to the philosophy
of John Duns Scotus. Occam is best known by his canon
‘entia non sunt multiplicanda
praeter necessitatem,’
(a multiplicity of reasons should not be posited unless
necessary).
This is better known as Occam’s razor, close to the Aristotelian dictum that 'science is demonstration based on secure premises.'
In his
Summa Logicae Occam rejects
Friar Roger Bacon and Sir Francis Bacon
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Friar
Roger Bacon (c.1220-1292) |
Friar
Roger Bacon was called by his friends 'Doctor Mirabilis' (the admirable
doctor) and by his enemies the 'Crazy Monk at
"Sapientia sine eloquentia est
quasi gladius acutus in manu paralytici,
sicut eloquentia expers sapientiæ est quasi gladius acutus in manu furiosi"
(Science
without eloquence is like a sharp sword in the paralyzed hands,
while eloquence without science is like a sharp sword in the violent hands).
Roger Bacon asserted the necessity of the study of languages, mathematics, experimental sciences, and moral philosophy. Scattered throughout his writings are descriptions of mirages, burning- mirrors, eclipses, laws of ebb and flow, diameters of the celestial bodies and their distances from one another, and shortcomings of the Julian calendar. Roger Bacon also affirms the possibility of microscopes and telescopes, steam- vessels and balloons.
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Sir
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) |
Sir
Francis Bacon was described by some of his contemporaries as 'cold,
calculating and arrogant'. In Novum Organum (1620) Francis Bacon
introduces his well known doctrine of the 'idols' and describes the scientific
method as follows:
Collect reliable data
Classify data
Generalize data
Form a hypothesis
Verify hypotheses by further experiments
Elaborate hypotheses into a theory
Cosmology and epistemology
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Launch
of the Galileo probe |
Ipse Dixit Galileo Galilei's (1564-1642)
nickname was 'the wrangler,' because of his caustic wit, nonconformity, and
argumentativeness. This, together with him being a brilliant teacher with
students flocking to his lectures (in academe, nothing else will infuriate
colleagues more) made him many enemies. Galileo's contribution to epistemology
is that he called attention to Aristotle's erroneous assertion that objects
fall at accelerations proportional to their weights, i.e., the intuitively
obvious argument that a heavier stone falls faster than a lighter stone. For
centuries, the scientific reputation of Aristotle was such that statements were
asserted without proof by the 'ipse dixit,' he himself (Aristotle) said
it argument. Galileo used his timed (he counted his pulse to measure time)
experiment - throwing objects from the (tilted)
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Argument of Cardinal
Bellarmine |
The primary reason behind Galileo's trial by Inquisition was his epistemology and not his cosmology. As most of the religion is based on proving assertions by references to the Bible, Galileo's prosecutor Cardinal Bellarmine was well aware that Galileo's epistemology is a greater threat to religion than his cosmology. He used the Galileo's cosmology (asserting the implausibility of the heliocentric system) as the pretext for his prosecution, as Galileo's cosmology was a lesser threat to religion than his epistemology. In hindsight, Bellarmine was correct. Religion was able to survive the prima facie evidence, provided by satellites, that the Biblical geocentric arguments are erroneous and recently, Pope John Paul apologized for Galileo's persecution. As the assertion that Bible is the 'verbum Dei' is ipsative, whether religion could survive acceptance of Galileo's epistemological canon is an open question. Pope John Paul's Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), a summary of the principles of the Christian religion, has over 3,000 quotations. About 1200 quotes are from the New Testament, 800 from the Old Testament, 760 from encyclicals, canon laws, and ecumenical councils and 300 from church fathers. Pope John Paul's catechism relies not on evidence, but on the ipse dixit type of arguments.
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Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter
Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto |
Cosmological Argument
and the Solar System The cosmological proof of
God's existence revolved around the question of how the Earth came into being
and how it will end. In
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Galaxies as seen by the |
Galactic Stage of the Cosmological Argument The second stage of the cosmological proof of God's existence revolves around the questions of how the Universe came into being and how it will end. In 1902, Kapteyn who catalogued positions and brightness of almost a half-million stars and, using statistical methods, described their motions, observed that these motions were not random, but streamed in two opposite direction. Twenty-five years later, Jan Oort, using Kapteyn’s data, suggested that the two crossing streams of stars could be explained if our galaxy was spiral and rotating. This observation of galaxies also suggested that by looking at the Milky Way, we are looking toward the galactic center of where the stars are the densest.
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The Big-Bang Theory In 1927, Abbe Lemaitre suggested that our Universe is expanding and that it likely began with the 'big-bang,' i.e., with the explosive expansion of extremely condensed matter. The big bang theory was readily embraced since it tacitly implied that the universe could have been created. Subsequently, Albert Einstein postulated that the space-time universe is distorted due to gravitational effects.
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Spheroid |
Hyperboloid |
If this curvature is positive, then the Universe has a finite, closed volume, and properties analogous to that of a spheroid. Its expansion will eventually stop and the red shifts of stars, marking the expanding Universe will become the blue shifts, characteristics of the contracting Universe. After a long but finite time interval, the universe will return to the state of again being a singularity of infinite density. At this moment, it will vanish, and, possibly, again be created during the next big bang.
If this curvature is negative, then the Universe has an infinite, open volume, and properties analogous to that of a hyperboloid. Its expansion will go on and, eventually, all the energy of the stars will be used up and the universe will vanish in the total darkness. There are so far, no definite answers with respect to the curvature of the universe and its final destiny.
Although the Big-Bang theory is widely accepted, the recent Symmetric theory of cosmology, named for the underlying symmetries which form the basis of the general theory of relativity, provides a viable alternative.
Devil’s Concubine Like Tertullian, Martin Luther (1483-1546) was not able to reconcile his incisive reasoning with his faith. Like many others he was unable to renounce his belief even though his reason was telling him that he was wrong. In desperation, he called reason
the devil’s concubine
and developed his sotereologic (from Gr. soteri(a) salvation) teaching around the central theme that people believe in God’s existence sola gratia, sola fide, and sola scriptura. That is, through faith given to them as a favor by God, and revealed in the Bible. Luther, who was well educated, had to realize that at his time the classical proofs of God’s existence were no longer tenable. What remained, unassailable by evidence, was faith. And it was faith that Luther embraced.
Those who believe God can be known only by faith that is a response to the Biblical revelation tend to be skeptical of philosophical proofs of God’s existence and maintain that the proofs of God’s existence by faith or by direct personal experience are more transcendental than the rational proofs. The assertions of God's existence by faith are intangible and stand aloof as ultimately unverifiable, purely personal mental constructs.
Some
time ago there happened an alleged miracle in a southern
‘To those who believe, no proof is
necessary.
To those who do not, no proof is possible.’
The onset of Protestantism coincides with the time when the advances in sciences, especially astronomy, made the rational proofs of God's existence untenable and they thus had to be replaced by experiential (based on exaltation) and fiducial (based on trust) arguments that God exists.
Classical protagonists of epistemology
Rene
Descartes (1596-1650)
Je Pense, Donc Je Suis The search for knowledge is fraught with difficulties.
Rene Descartes is best known for his unique strategy to conquer some problems
of epistemology. This strategy is, initially, to withhold belief from anything
that is not entirely certain. On close scrutiny, practically everything is open
to doubt. In the process of examining his beliefs, Descartes imagined that a
demon who, while actively trying to deceive him, challenges the belief that the
physical world exists and calls into question the validity of reason. But not
even a demon could deceive someone into believing that he or she does not
exist. Cogito, ergo sum, which is usually translated 'I think, therefore
I am,' is thus beyond skeptical doubt. This is the best part of the Descartes’
philosophy. However, entertaining doubt can easily lead to doubts about the
existence of God and at this point Descartes becomes frightened. In 1633, upon
hearing of Galileo barely escaping being burned at the stake, Descartes
destroyed several of his manuscripts and introduced as the basic postulate of
his epistemology an absolute belief in God’s existence as a prerequisite of all
knowledge. Descartes managed to escape persecution. Some, upon hearing this story
contemplated whether the Descartes’ Cogito, ergo sum should not be better
rendered into English as 'I think, thus I am.'
George Berkeley (1685-1753)
Esse
est Percipi A variation of the ontological
proof of God’s existence was presented by the Bishop George Berkeley, best known
for the main campus of the University of California renamed in 1866 after him,
and for the expression ‘esse est
percipi,’ (to be is to be perceived).
David Hume’s (1711-1776)
Will
the Sun Rise Tomorrow? Central to David Hume’s theory of knowledge is the
classification of knowledge into a priori and a posteriori
categories. A priori knowledge is knowledge attainable prior to experience by
reason alone. A posteriori knowledge is based upon experience. In the course of
deductive reasoning one may attain positive, certain knowledge by building
super-ordinate structures according to the laws of logic from a subordinate set
of a priori truths. A classic example of a super-ordinate structure build by
deduction from a set of postulates is Euclidian geometry. A posteriori
knowledge is derived from experience by induction. While deductive reasoning
seeks positive, certain truth, inductive reasoning makes conclusions that are
only true with some degree of probability. Hume, one of the modern skeptics,
successfully defended the contention that the statement 'the sun will rise
tomorrow' is a statement of probability and not an absolute truth. About a
century after Hume, the procedures of inductive reasoning were formalized by
the theory of inferential statistics.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Phenomena
and Noumenoa
Immanuel Kant is best remembered for his 'zwei Dinge erfüllen das
Gemüt mit immer neuer und zunehmender Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht, je öfter und
anhaltender sich das Nachdenken damit beschäftigt:
der gestirnte Himmel über mir
und das moralische Gesetz in mir.'
(the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.) Kant claimed that only objects of experience, phenomena, may be known, whereas things lying beyond experience, noumena, are unknowable, and thus in some cases we assume a priori knowledge of them. The existence of such unknowable 'things-in-themselves' cannot be verified by science, yet the belief in God and immortality is mandatory, as morality requires their existence.
Comte de Saint-Simon When he was 13-years-old, Henri de
Saint-Simon (1760-1825) refused to make his first Communion. During the War of
Independence he followed his relative, the Marquis de Saint-Simon, to
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Saint-Simon envisaged the reorganization of society with elite of philosophers, engineers and scientists. He also advocated a secular humanist religion to replace the traditional religions with scientists as instructors. When dying, Saint-Simon said to Olinde Rodriguez, a philanthropist who liked his social ideas and supported him financially:
"Remember that to do anything great you must be impassioned".
Saint-Simon was crucial for the
development of the social sciences, as he proposed a "science of society,"
based on the same foundations as the natural sciences. Saint-Simon highly
influenced his disciple Auguste
Comte. Saint-Simon's vision was highly influential
throughout
Among Saint-Simon his notable adversaries was Friedrich Hayek (1889-1992), one of the architects of the “supply side” economics which gained momentum during the Ronald Reagan administration. The influence of the Kantian tradition on Hayek is evident in his use of Popper's principle that scientific knowledge proceeds by falsification, not by verification. Hayek's personal relationship with Popper, whom he helped in his career, was somewhat ironic considering that Hayek was a cousin of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) whom Popper criticized in the footnotes to The Open Society and Its Enemies. Hayek's entire approach to economics emphasized the limited nature of knowledge. He reasoned that the price mechanism of the free market serves to convey information about supply and demand that is dispersed among many consumers and producers and which cannot be coordinated in any other way. The tragedy of our time is that Hayek’s theory, leading to abysmal inequalities in the distribution of wealth happened precisely at the time when the computer technology could have made planned economies a viable and likely superior alternative to the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith, concentrating the wealth in the hands of few and sowing the social ills all around the globe.
The ancillor of Hayek and Popper was Allan Bloom who maintained that
"professors [promulgating positivism and logical positivism] simply would not and could not talk about anything important, and they themselves do not represent a philosophic life for the students."
seconded by his adherents describing the scientific analysis of society as a
miserable, impoverished, and incoherent a theory of logical positivism, a sea of nonsense, sterility, futility, and what could even be called autism.
Oeuvres de Saint-Simon
- Letters from an Inhabitant of Geneva to His Contemporaries, 1803
- Introduction aux Travaux Scientifiques du Dixneuvieme Siècle, 1807.
- Memoire sur la Science de l'Homme, 1813.
- De la Réorganisation de la société européene, with A. Thierry, 1817.
- Industrie, with A. Comte, 1819.
- La Politique, 1821.
- Du Système industriel, 1823.
- De l'Organisation Sociale, 1825
- Le Cathécisme des Industriels with A. Comte, 1825
- New Christianity, 1825
Auguste Comte Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857) strived to develop a science of society that could explain past events and predict the future. Initially, he called this new science ‘social physics,’ and, later, 'sociology.' Comte stressed the necessity of separating facts and values during the course of scientific inquiry and dreamed about the ideal society, a sociocracy, ruled by scientists with decisions made on the basis of scientific, sociologic evidence. The natural science of Comte’s time was largely liberated from the restrictions the medieval Church had placed on the surviving knowledge of the ancients. It lessened its dependence on authority and relied instead on a combination of reason, observations, and experiments as the primary means of attaining knowledge. Comte maintained that his new science, sociology, should not only be of academic interest, but also should benefit society and contribute to the improvement of the quality of life. A strong point of Comte’s blueprint for the new science and new society was the stress he placed on the self-corrective nature of scientific theory. This he contrasted with theories and societies based on religious dogma, coerced to accept canonical beliefs as permanently valid and enforcing the laws as absolute criteria of conduct. Among the methodologies Comte envisioned for his new science was that of the natural experiments. In his book, A General View of Positivism (1848), Comte proposed to replace religion with humanism guided by the principles of social science. The inscription on Comte’s tombstone reads ‘Love as the Principle, Order as the Means, Progress as the Goal.
In his book The Course of Positive
Philosophy (1830-1842), Comte theorized that humanity is progressing
through a series of stages of intellectual and cognitive development,
consisting of:
Theological Stage
Theological
Stage, where cognitive structures of people are dominated by supernatural
entities with priests ruling society
Metaphysical Stage
Metaphysical Stage, where the cognitive structures of people are shaped by
abstractions and lawyers rule the society.
Positive Stage
Positive,
Scientific Stage, where the cognitive structures are primarily built on the
basis of facts discovered by methods of science and verified through
experimentation, observation, and logic.
Logical
Positivism
