Editing Auguste Comte (section)

===Law of three stages===
{{Main|Law of three stages}}
Comte was agitated by the fact that no one had synthesized physics, chemistry, and biology into a coherent system of ideas, so he began an attempt to reasonably deduce facts about the social world from the use of the sciences. Through his studies, he concluded that the growth of the human mind progresses in stages, and so must societies. He claimed the history of society could be divided into three different stages: theological, metaphysical, and positive. The Law of three Stages, an evolutionary theory, describes how the history of societies is split into three sections due to new thoughts on philosophy. Comte believed that evolution was the growth of the human mind, splitting into stages and evolving through these stages. Comte concluded that society acts similarly to the mind.<ref name="Delaney, Tim 2003">Delaney, Tim. "Auguste Comte". Council for Secular Humanism. ''Council for Secular Humanism'', Oct.-Nov. 2003.</ref> {{blockquote|The law is this: that each of our leading conceptions&nbsp;{{ndash}} each branch of our knowledge&nbsp;{{ndash}} passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.|A. Comte<ref>From ''The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte'' (trans. Harriet Martineau; London, 1853), Vol. I, p. 1.</ref>}}

The Law of Three Stages is the evolution of society in which the stages have already occurred or are currently developing. The reason why there are newly developed stages after a certain time period is that the system "has lost its power" and is preventing the progression of civilization, causing complicated situations in society. (Lenzer 1975, pg 10)<ref name="Comte, Auguste 1975">Gertrud Lenzer. Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. Print.</ref> The only way to escape the situation is for people within the civilized nations to turn towards an "organic" new social system. Comte refers to kings to show the complications of re-establishment in society. Kings feel the need to reorganize their kingdom, but many fail to succeed because they do not consider that the progress of civilization needs reform, not perceiving that there is nothing more perfect than inserting a new, more harmonious system. Kings fail to see the effectiveness of abandoning old systems because they do not understand the nature of the present crisis. But in order to progress, there need to be the necessary consequences that come with it, which is caused by a "series of modifications, independent of the human will, to which all classes of society contributed, and of which kings themselves have often been the first agents and most eager promoters".<ref name="Comte, Auguste 1975"/> The people themselves have the ability to produce a new system. This pattern is shown through the theological stage, metaphysical stage, and positive stage.
The Law of Three Stages is split into stages, much like how the human mind changes from stage to stage. The three stages are the theological stage, the metaphysical stage, and the positive stage, also known as the Law of Three Stages. The theological stage happened before the 1300s, in which all societies lived a life that was completely theocentric. The metaphysical stage was when the society seeks universal rights and freedom. With the third and final stage, the positive stage, Comte takes a stand on the question, "how should the relations among philosophy of science, history of science, and sociology of science be seen."<ref>Bourdeau, Michel. “Auguste Comte.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 8 May 2018, plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/.</ref> He says that sociology and history are not mutually exclusive, but that history is the method of sociology, thus he calls sociology the "final science".  This positive stage was to solve social problems and forcing these social problems to be fixed without care for "the will of God" or "human rights". Comte finds that these stages can be seen across different societies across all of history.

==== Theological stage ====
The first stage, the theological stage, relies on supernatural or religious explanations of the phenomena of human behavior because "the human mind, in its search for the primary and final causes of phenomena, explains the apparent anomalies in the universe as interventions of supernatural agents".<ref name="ReferenceA">Bourdeau, Michel. Auguste Comte. Stanford University. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/ [28 April 2016].</ref> The Theological Stage is the "necessary starting point of human intelligence" when humans turn to supernatural agents as the cause of all phenomena.<ref name="Auguste Comte 2015">"Auguste Comte." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6Th Edition (2015): 1. MAS Ultra School Edition. Web.</ref> In this stage, humans focus on discovering absolute knowledge. Comte disapproved of this stage because it turned to simple explanation humans created in their minds that all phenomena were caused by supernatural agents, rather than human reason and experience. Comte refers to Bacon's philosophy that "there can be no real knowledge except that which rests upon observed facts", but he observes that the primitive mind could not have thought that way because it would have only created a vicious circle between observations and theories.<ref name="Auguste Comte 2015"/> "For if, on the one hand, every positive theory must necessarily be founded upon observations, it is, on the other hand, no less true that, in order to observe, our mind has need of some theory or other".<ref name="Auguste Comte 2015"/> Because the human mind could not have thought in that way in the origin of human knowledge, Comte claims that humans would have been "incapable of remembering facts", and would not have escaped the circle if it were not for theological conceptions, which were less complicated explanations to human life.<ref name="Auguste Comte 2015"/> Although Comte disliked this stage, he explains that theology was necessary at the beginning of the developing primitive mind.

The first theological state is the necessary starting point of human intelligence. The human mind primarily focuses its attention on the "inner nature of beings and to the first and final causes of all phenomena it observes." (Ferre 2) This means that the mind is looking for the cause and effect of an action that will govern the social world. Therefore, it "represents these phenomena as being produced by a direct and continuous action of more or less numerous supernatural agents, whose arbitrary interventions explain all the apparent anomalies of the universe." (Ferre 2)

This primary subset of the theological state is known as fetishism, where the phenomena must be caused and created by a theological supernatural being such as God, making humans view every event in the universe as a direct will from these supernatural agents. Some people believed in souls or spirits that possessed inanimate objects and practiced Animism. These natural spiritual beings who possessed souls and may exist apart from the material bodies were capable of interacting with humans, therefore requiring sacrifices and worship to please the agents.

With all these new reasons behind phenomena, numerous fetishisms occur, needing several gods to continue to explain events. 
People begin to believe that every object or event has a unique god attached to it. This belief is called polytheism. The mind "substituted the providential action of a single being for the varied play of numerous independent gods which have been imagined by the primitive mind."

These Gods often took on both human and animal resemblance. In Egypt, there were multiple gods with animal body parts such as Ra, who had the head of a hawk and had sun associations with the Egyptians. The polytheistic Greeks had several gods such as Poseidon who controlled the sea and Demeter who was the goddess of fertility. However, with all these new gods governing the phenomena of society, the brain can get confused with the numerous gods it needs to remember.

The human mind eliminates this problem by believing in a sub-stage called monotheism. Rather than having multiple gods, there is simply one all-knowing and omnipotent God who is the center of power controlling the world. This creates harmony with the universe because everything is under one ruler. This leaves no confusion of how to act or who is the superior ruler out of the several gods seen in polytheism. The theological state functions well as the first state of the mind when making a belief about an event because it creates a temporary placeholder for the cause of the action which can later be replaced. By allowing the brain to think of the reason behind phenomena, the polytheistic gods are fillers that can be replaced by monotheistic gods.

The theological stage shows how the primitive mind views supernatural phenomena and how it defines and sorts the causes. "The earliest progress of the human mind could only have been produced by the theological method, the only method which can develop spontaneously. It alone has the important property of offering us a provisional theory,… which immediately groups the first facts, with its help, by cultivating our capacity for observation, we were able to prepare the age of a wholly positive philosophy." (Comte 149)

Comte believed the theological stage was necessary because of the foundational belief that man's earliest philosophy of explanation is the act of connecting phenomena around him to his own actions; that man may "apply the study of external nature to his own".<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings|last=Lenzer|first=Gertrud|publisher=Transaction Publishers|year=1998|pages=286, 289, 292}}</ref> This first stage is necessary to remove mankind from the "vicious circle in which it was confined by the two necessities of observing first, in order to form conceptions, and of forming theories first, in order to observe".<ref name=":0" /> Additionally, the theological stage is able to organize society by directing "the first social organization, as it first forms a system of common opinions, and by forming such a system".<ref name=":0" /> Though, according to Comte, it could not last, this stage was able to establish an intellectual unity that made an impressive political system. The theological state was also necessary for human progress on account that it creates a class in a society dedicated to "speculative activity".<ref name=":0" /> It is in this way that Comte sees the theological stage continue to exist into the Enlightenment. Comte momentarily admires the theological stage for its remarkable ability to enact this activity amidst a time when it was argued to be impractical. It is to this stage that the human mind owes "the first effectual separation between theory and practice, which could take place in no other manner" other than through the institution provided by the theological stage.<ref name=":0" />

The Theological Stage is the stage that was seen primarily among the civilizations in the distant past. Having been used before the 1300s, this is a very basic view of the world with little to no involvement in the world of science, and a world of illusions and delusions, as Freud would put it. To seek the nature of all beings, mankind puts its focus on sentiments, feelings, and emotions. This turned mankind towards theology and the creation of gods to answer all their questions.

The Theological Stage is broken into three sections:
# [[Fetishism]] is the philosophy in which mankind puts the power of a god into an inanimate object. Every object could hold this power of a god, so it started to confuse those who believed in Fetishism and created multiple gods.
# [[Polytheism]] is, in basic terms, the belief in an order of multiple gods who rule over the universe. Within polytheism, each god is assigned a specific thing in which they are the good of. Examples of this would be the Greek god, Zeus, the god of the sky/lightning, or Ra, the sun god, in Egyptian mythology. A group of priests was often assigned to these gods to offer sacrifices and receive blessings from those gods, but once again, because of the innumerable number of gods, it got confusing, so civilization turned to Monotheism.
# [[Monotheism]] is the belief in one, all-powerful God who rules over every aspect of the universe. The removal of an emotional and imaginational aspects of both Fetishism and Polytheism resulted in intellectual awakening. This removal allowed for the Enlightenment to occur as well as the expansion of the scientific world. With the Enlightenment came many famous philosophers who brought about a great change in the world. This is the reason why "Monotheism is the climax of the theological stage of thinking."<ref>Priya, Rashmi. "Law of Three Stages: The Corner Stone of Auguste Comte's.” Your Article Library, 1 December 2014, www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sociology/law-of-three-stages-the-corner-stone-of-auguste-comtes/43729.</ref>

==== Metaphysical or abstract stage ====
The second stage, the metaphysical stage, is merely a modification of the first because a supernatural cause is replaced by an "abstract entity";<ref name="ReferenceA"/> it is meant to be a transitional stage, where there is the belief that abstract forces control the behavior of human beings. Because it is a transitional stage between the theological stage and the positive stage, Comte deemed it the least important of the three stages and was only necessary because the human mind cannot make the jump from the theological to the positive stage on its own.

The metaphysical stage is the transitional stage. Because "Theology and physics are so profoundly incompatible", and their "conceptions are so radically opposed in character", human intelligence must have a gradual transition.<ref name="Auguste Comte 2015"/> Other than this, Comte says that there is no other use for this stage. Although it is the least important stage, it is necessary because humans could not handle the significant change in thought from theological to positivity.<ref name="Delaney, Tim 2003"/> The metaphysical stage is just a slight modification of the previous stage when people believed in the abstract forces rather than the supernatural. The mind begins to notice the facts themselves, caused by the emptiness of the metaphysical agents through "over subtle qualification that all right-minded persons considered them to be only the abstract names of the phenomena in question".<ref name="Comte, Auguste 1975"/> The mind becomes familiar with concepts, wanting to seek more, and therefore is prepared to move into the positive stage.

In understanding Comte's argument, it is important to note that Comte explains the theological and positive stages first and only then returns to explain the metaphysical stage. His rationale in this decision is that "any intermediate state can be judged only after a precise analysis of two extremes".<ref name=":0" /> Only upon arrival to the rational positive state can the metaphysical state be analyzed, serving only a purpose of aiding in the transition from the theological to a positive state. Furthermore, this state "reconciles, for a time, the radical opposition of the other two, adapting itself to the gradual decline of the one and the preparatory rise of the other".<ref name=":0" /> Therefore, the transition between the two states is almost unperceivable. Unlike its predecessor and successor, the metaphysical state does not have a strong intellectual foundation nor social power for a political organization. Rather it simply serves to guide man until the transition from imaginative theological state to rational positive state is complete.

==== Positive stage ====
The last stage – the positive stage – is when the mind stops searching for the cause of phenomena and realizes that laws exist to govern human behavior and that this stage can be explained rationally with the use of reason and observation, both of which are used to study the social world.<ref name="ReferenceB">Delaney, Tim. Auguste Comte. Council for Secular Humanism, 2003.</ref> This stage relies on science, rational thought, and empirical laws. Comte believed that this study of sociology he created was "the science that [came] after all the others; and as the final science, it must assume the task of coordinating the development of the whole of knowledge"<ref name="ReferenceA"/> because it organized all of human behavior.

The final, most evolved stage is the positivist stage, the stage when humans give up on discovering absolute truth, and turn towards discovering, through reasoning and observation, actual laws of phenomena.<ref name="Comte, Auguste 1975"/> Humans realize that laws exist and that the world can be rationally explained through science, rational thought, laws, and observation.

Comte was a positivist, believing in the natural rather than the supernatural, and so he claimed that his time period, the 1800s, was in the positivist stage.<ref name="ReferenceB"/> He believed that within this stage, there is a hierarchy of sciences: mathematics, astronomy, terrestrial physics, chemistry, and physiology. Mathematics, the "science that relates to the measurement of magnitudes", is the most perfect science of all, and is applied to the most important laws of the universe.<ref name="Comte, Auguste 1975"/> Astronomy is the most simple science and is the first "to be subjected to positive theories".<ref name="Auguste Comte 2015"/> Physics is less satisfactory than astronomy, because it is more complex, having less pure and systemized theories. Physics, as well as chemistry, are the "general laws of the inorganic world", and are harder to distinguish.<ref name="Comte, Auguste 1975"/> Physiology completes the system of natural sciences and is the most important of all sciences because it is the "only solid basis of the social reorganization that must terminate the crisis in which the most civilized nations have found themselves".<ref name="Auguste Comte 2015"/> This stage will fix the problems in current nations, allowing progression and peace.

It is through observation that humanity is able to gather knowledge. The only way within society to gather evidence and build upon what we do not already know to strengthen society is to observe and experience our situational surroundings. "In the positive state, the mind stops looking for causes of phenomena, and limits itself strictly to laws governing them; likewise, absolute notions are replaced by relative ones,"<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bourdeau |first1=Michel |title=Auguste Comte |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/#PosPol|website=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=22 May 2019}}</ref> The imperfection of humanity is not a result of the way we think, rather our perspective that guides the way we think.

Comte expresses the idea that we have to open our eyes to different ideas and ways to evaluate our surroundings such as focusing outside of the simple facts and abstract ideas but instead dive into the supernatural. This does not make mean that what is around us is not critical to look out for as our observations are critical assets to our thinking. The things that are "lost" or knowledge that is in the past are still relevant to recent knowledge. It is what is before our time that guides why things are the way they are today. We would always be relying on our own facts and would never hypothesize to reveal the supernatural if we do not observe.

Observing strives to further our thinking processes. According to Comte, "'The dead govern the living,' which is likely a reference to the cumulative nature of positivism and the fact that our current world is shaped by the actions and discoveries of those who came before us," {{citation needed|date=August 2019}} As this is true, the observations only relevant to humanity and not abstractly related to humanity are distinct and seen situationally. The situation leads to human observation as a reflection of the tension in society can be reviewed, overall helping to enhance knowledge development.

Upon our observation skills, our thinking shifts. As thinkers and observers, we switch from trying to identify truth and turn toward the rationality and reason nature brings, giving us the ability to observe. This distinct switch takes on the transition from the abstract to the supernatural.

"Comte's classification of the sciences was based upon the hypothesis that the sciences had developed from the understanding of simple and abstract principles to the understanding of complex and concrete phenomena."<ref name="Auguste Comte">{{cite web |last1=Fletcher |first1=Ronald |title=Auguste Comte |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Auguste-Comte|website=Encyclopedia Britannica |access-date=22 May 2019}}</ref> Instead of taking what we believe to be true we turn it around to use the phenomena of science and the observation of natural law to justify what we believe to be true within society. 
The condensing and formulation of human knowledge is what Comte drives us toward to ultimately build the strongest society possible. If scientists do not take the chance to research why a certain animal species are going distinct and their facts researched by those in the past are no longer true of the present, how is the data supposed to grow? How are we to gain more knowledge?

These facts of life are valuable, but it is beyond these facts that Comte gestures us to look to. Instead of the culmination of facts with little sufficiency, knowledge altogether takes on its role in the realm of science. In connection to science, Comte relates to science in two specific fields to rebuild the construction of human knowledge. As science is broad, Comte reveals this scientific classification for the sake of thinking and the future organization of society. "Comte divided sociology into two main fields, or branches: social statistics, or the study of the forces that hold society together; and social dynamics, or the study of the causes of social change," <ref name="Auguste Comte"/> In doing this, society is reconstructed. By reconstructing human thinking and observation, societal operation alters. The attention is drawn to science, hypothesis', natural law, and supernatural ideas, allows sociology to be divided into these two categories.

By combining the simple facts from the abstract to the supernatural and switching our thinking towards hypothetical observation, the sciences culminate in order to formulate sociology and this new societal division. "Every social system… aims definitively at directing all special forces towards a general result, for the exercise of a general and combined activity is the essence of the society,"<ref>{{cite book |last1=Comte, Lenzer |first1=Auguste, Gertrud |title=Auguste Comte and Positivism |date=1975 |publisher=Harper and Row }}</ref> Social phenomena Comte believed can be transferred into laws and that systemization could become the prime guide to sociology so that all can maintain knowledge to continue building a strong intellectual society.

To continue building a strong intellectual society, Comte believed the building or reformation requires intricate steps to achieve success. First, the new society must be created after the old society is destroyed because "without…destruction no adequate conception could be formed of what must be done,".<ref name="Comte, Auguste 1998">{{Cite book|title=Auguste Comte and positivism : the essential writings|last=Comte, Auguste|date=1998|publisher=Transaction Publishers|isbn=0-7658-0412-3|oclc=473779742}}</ref> Essentially a new society cannot be formed if it is constantly hindered by the ghost of its past. On the same terms, there will be no room for progress if the new society continues to compare itself to the old society. If humanity does not destroy the old society, the old society will destroy humanity.

Or on the other hand, if one destroys the old society, "without ever replacing it, the people march onwards towards total anarchy,".<ref name="Comte, Auguste 1998"/> &nbsp;If the society is continuously chipped away without being replaced with new ideal societal structures, then society will fall deeper back into its old faults. The burdens will grow deep and entangle the platforms for the new society, thus prohibiting progress, and ultimately fulfilling the cursed seesaw of remodeling and destroying society. Hence, according to Comte, to design a successful new society, one must keep the balance of reconstruction and deconstruction. This balance allows for progress to continue without fault.