Warren Schmaus

Auguste Comte's doctrine of positivism was both a philosophy of science and a political philosophy designed to organize a new, secular, stable society based on positive or scientific, ideas, rather than the theological dogmas and metaphysical speculations associated with the ancien regime. This volume offers the most comprehensive English-language overview of Auguste Comte's philosophy, the relation of his work to the sciences of his day, and the extensive, continuing impact of his thinking on philosophy and especially secular political movements in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Contributors consider Comte’s reasons for establishing a Religion of Humanity as well as his views on domestic life and the arts in his positivist utopia. The volume further details Comte's attempt to apply his "positive method," first to social science and then to politics and morality, thereby defending the continuity of his career while also critically examining the limits of his approach.

The study of similarity is fundamental to biological inquiry. Many homology concepts have been formulated that function successfully to explain similarity in their native domains, but fail to provide an overarching account applicable to variably interconnected and independent areas of biological research despite the monistic standpoint from which they originate. The use of multiple, explicitly articulated homology concepts, applicable at different levels of the biological hierarchy, allows a more thorough investigation of the nature of biological similarity. Responsible epistemological pluralism as advocated herein is generative of fruitful and innovative biological research, and is appropriate given the metaphysical pluralism that underpins all of biology.

Historians of philosophy have hitherto either given scant attention to Cournot and Renouvier’s views on scientific revolution, tried to read Kuhn’s concept of scientific revolution back into their works, or did not fully appreciate the extent to which these philosophers were reflecting on the works of their predecessors as well as on developments in mathematics and the sciences. Cournot’s views on cumulative development through revolution resemble Comte’s more than Kuhn’s, and his notion of progressive theoretical simplicity through revolution recalls Whewell’s philosophy of science. Renouvier, far from regarding a scientific revolution as resulting in a new set of conceptual boxes imposing a conformity of thought on the scientific community, recognized that a new theory proposed during a revolution is open to more than one interpretation.

Recent controversy over whether the Vienna Circle can provide a model for today’s political turn in the philosophy of science indicates the need to clarify just what is meant by the term political philosophy of science. This paper finds fourteen different meanings of the term, including both descriptive and normative usages, having to do with the roles of political values in the sciences, the political consequences and significance of the sciences and scientific modes of thought, and political processes within the sciences. These different senses are exemplified by the history of nineteenth century French philosophy of science, including Comte and Renouvier, as well as twentieth century logical positivists such as Neurath and more recent philosophers of science such as Kitcher and Longino. The paper also addresses the issue of how there could be a positivist political philosophy of science, given positivisms’ questioning of values, and considers Renouvier’s social contract approach to a political philosophy of science more promising than either Comte’s naturalism or the logical positivists’ non-cognitivism.

Considered in its historical context, conventionalism is quite different from the way in which it has been caricatured in more recent philosophy of science, that is, as a conservative philosophy that allows the preservation of theories through arbitrary ad hoc stratagems. It is instead a liberal outgrowth of Comtean positivism, which broke with the Reidian interpretation of the Newtonian tradition in France and defended a role for hypotheses in the sciences. It also has roots in the social contract political philosophy of Renouvier, who explicitly drew the analogy between conventions in political life and the conventional acceptance of hypotheses in the sciences, and conceived a philosophy that permits scientists to set aside foundational worries and explore new ideas. Although Poincaré and Renouvier may have hesitated to accept certain then recent developments in mathematics and the sciences such as non-Euclidean geometries, this conservatism cannot necessarily be attributed to their conventionalism. It may instead reflect the engineering background they shared with Comte, which emphasizes practical applications. Although Renouvier and Poincaré may have seen no practical use for these new ideas, unlike Comte they did not prohibit others from pursuing them, reflecting conventionalism’s more liberal attitude toward recent developments in the sciences.

This article considers Henri Poincaré’s conventionalism in historical context by comparing his use of such terms as “convention” and “conventional” with Charles Renouvier’s. As Renouvier was very influential in late nineteenth-century France, this comparison can provide some insight into how the terms were understood at the time. Renouvier was a political philosopher as well as a philosopher of science. He drew an analogy between the conventions or social contracts that govern society at large and the conventions that governed communities of researchers in mathematics and the sciences. Both kinds of conventions were living contracts for Renouvier, subject to revision and change. What emerges from the comparison is an interpretation of Poincaré’s conventionalism that belies the view that it is a rigid, unbending philosophy holding back scientific progress. Rather, it is one according to which scientists come together to form a temporary consensus about particular starting points in order to make research into nature possible yet retain the liberty to try something new when the old set of assumptions no longer proves fruitful.

We cannot accept wholly Comte's substantive claim that discovery is a purely non-verbal process. Still, Comte has given us a useful model. The analysis of case studies from the history of scientific method and discovery should serve to illustrate important operations of the human mind. Thus, any philosophy of mind must incorporate and account for such operations. ;Comte was indebted to Kant in his search for the necessary conditions for knowledge. Unlike Kant, Comte starts with an analysis of our methods for analyzing mental imagery and then reasons back to what our mental functions must be like in order for us to be able to use such methods. ;The debate still rages concerning whether or not there exists a logic of discovery. Though contemporary work has treated this issue there is much to be learned by studying the issue as it arose in the past. ;Auguste Comte believed that scientific discovery is a non-verbal process which involves the analysis and comparison of mental imagery. He believed this is shown through an analysis of the historical development of science. However, the philosopher ought not to be limited to doing the philosophical history of science. There is a need for a theory of the nature of the human mind which is capable of explaining the intellectual activity revealed by scientific history

an exemplar of an approach that takes the human mind to be largely the product of social and cultural factors with negligible contributions from biology. The author argues that on the contrary, his sociological theory of the categories is compatible with the possibility of innate cognitive capacities, taking causal cognition as his example. Whether and to what extent there are such innate capacities is a question for research in the cognitive neurosciences. The extent to which these innate capacities can then be explained by natural selection remains an open question for empirical investigation. Key Words: categories • causality • cognition • Durkheim • evolutionary psychology.

Renouvier had argued that Comte's philosophy of science yielded very conservative normative advice regarding the sciences. Fedi, Becquemont, Logue, and Mouy have suggested the same charge could be leveled at Renouvier regarding evolutionary theory, non-Euclidean geometry, and set theory. This paper shows Renouvier's views were not unreasonable given what was known at the time. Further, Renouvier had a deeper appreciation than Comte of human fallibility and did not proscribe any area of research, even those with which he disagree.

This paper traces August Comte’s attempts to get clear about the concept of mathematical analysis at various stages in his intellectual development. Comte was especially concerned with distinguishing a method of analysis for the resolution of complex prolems from analysis in the sense of a method of drawing inferences. Geometrical analysis serves as his model for the former. In his attempt to get clear about this notion, he discovers an historical succession of different methods all of which may be labeled “analytic.” In modern terms, Comte reveals how each of these methods of analysis characterizes a research program in mathematics, even showing us how more powerful methods came to supplant less powerful methods of analysis.

In this demonstration of the link between philosophy of science and scientific practice, Warren Schmaus argues that Durkheim's philosophy is crucial to his sociology. Through a reinterpretation of the relation between Durkheim's major philosophical and sociological works, Schmaus argues that Durkheim's sociology is more than a collection of general observations about society—it reflects a richly constructed theory of the meanings and causes of social life. Schmaus shows how Durkheim sought to make sociology more rigorous by introducing scientific methods of analysis and explanation into the study of society. Durkheim tried to reveal how implicit, commonly held beliefs actually govern people's lives. Through an original interpretation of Durkheim's landmark writings, Schmaus argues that Durkheim, in his empirical studies, refined both the methods of sociology and a theory about society's shared knowledge and practices. This book opens a new window on the development of Durkheim's thought and demonstrates how a philosophy of science can inspire the rise of a new science.

For Hacking, the word "real", like the sexist expression "wear the trousers", takes its meaning from its negative uses. In this essay, I criticize Hacking's reasons for believing that the objects of study of the social sciences are not real. First I argue that the realism issue in the social sciences concerns not unobservable entities but systems of social classification. I then argue that Hacking's social science nominalism derives from his considering social groups in isolation from the entire social system. I conclude that the objects of study of the social sciences do not relegate them to an inferior status.

Renouvier was among the first philosophers in France to break with the nineteenth-century inductivist tradition and defend the use of hypotheses in science. Earlier in the century, the humanistically-educated eclectic spiritualist philosophers who dominated French academic life had followed Reid in proscribing the use of hypotheses. Renouvier, who was educated in the sciences, took up the Comtean positivist alternative and developed it further. He began by defending hypotheses that anticipate laws governing the phenomena, but then eventually adopted a more liberal attitude towards hypotheses that postulate unobservable entities and processes as well. He also came to the realization that, from an epistemological point of view, all of empirical science is hypothetical. Renouvier used the tentative character of scientific knowledge as a premise from which to critique those who would claim scientific status for their social philosophies, and maintained a distinction between normative philosophical and empirical scientific inquiries.Keywords: Charles Renouvier; Auguste Comte; Positivism; Hypothesis; Eclectic spiritualism