But rationalism argues that God does not stand directly behind every phenomenon. Pure reason insists that God is a First Cause or an Abstract Being. Pure reason speaks in terms of inalienable rights: metaphysical explanations, however, are unsatisfactory to the mind.
Hence, Comte developed his concept of positivism, which is a purely intellectual way of looking at the world. Comte held that the mind should concentrate on the observation and classification of phenomena. He believed that both theological and metaphysical speculations, as he used the terms, were as likely to be fiction as truth, and that there is no way of determining which is the case. Thus it will be more profitable if the individual should direct his thoughts to the lines of thinking which are most truly prolific, namely, to observation and classification of data.
Comte even took the position that it is futile to try to determine causes. We can observe uniformities, or laws, but it is mere speculation to assign causes to these uniformities. Positivism deified observation and classification of data. Its weaknesses should not hinder the student, however, from seeing the importance of its emphasis upon the scientific procedure of observing and classifying data in an age when dogmatism and speculation were rife.
The three stages of thought which Comte described are not three levels of thought, as Comte contended, but, as Herbert Spencer indicated, they may represent the same plane of thinking. Each requires about the same degree of thinking ability. Moreover, as John Fiske argued, the three methods of approach to problems are often pursued simultaneously by a given person. Some phenomena are explained theologically; others, metaphysically; and others, positively.
A second main contribution which Comte made to social thought is that each of the three modes of thinking determines and corresponds to a type of social organization. Speaking from the standpoint of his own religious contacts, he declared that theological thinking leads to a military and monarchial social organization, with God at the head of the hierarchy as King of kings and a mighty warrior, and with human beings arranged in a military organization. Divine sanction rules. As expressed through the human leaders, this divine sanction must not be questioned. Dogmatism must be meekly endured, or else its threatened punishments will be turned loose upon helpless offenders. Divine rights rule.
Metaphysical thinking produces a government dominated by doctrines of abstract rights. Natural rights are substituted for divine rights. A priesthood is furthered. Social organization becomes legalistic, formal, structural, without adequate content.
Positive thinking produces practical results in the form of industrial enterprises, and ushers in an industrial age. It inquires into the nature and utilization of natural forces. It transforms the material resources of the earth, and produces material inventions.
Comte failed to postulate a fourth mode of thinking, namely, socialized thinking, or a system of thought which would emphasize not simply the use of natural forces, but the use of natural forces for social ends, for the purpose of building constructive, just, and harmonious societies, and of developing personalities who will evaluate life in terms of the welfare of other personalities. Comte, however, should be credited with opening the way for the rise of socialized thinking.
A third phase of Comte’s system was his classification of the sciences, with sociology as the latest and greatest of the group. The Greek thinkers, it will be recalled, undertook to classify all knowledge under three headings: physics, ethics, and politics. Bacon made the divisions correlative to the so-called mental faculties of memory, imagination, and reason, namely: history, poetry, and science.
Comte chose as his principle of classifying knowledge, the order of increasing dependence. He arranged the sciences so that each category may be grounded on the principal laws of the preceding category, and serve as a basis for the next ensuing category.[XIII-5] The order, hence, is one of increasing complexity and decreasing generality. The most simple phenomena must be the most general—general in the sense of being everywhere present.[XIII-6]