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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Auguste Comte And Positivism by John Stuart Mill
Reissued in its revised 1866 second edition, this work by John Stuart Mill 1806-73 discusses the positivist views of the French philosopher and social scientist Auguste Comte 1798-1857. Comte is regarded as the founder of positivism, the doctrine that all knowledge must derive from sensory experience. The two-part text was originally printed as two articles in the Westminster Review in 1865. Part 1 offers an analysis of Comtes earlier works on positivism in the natural and social sciences, while Part 2 considers its application in areas such as religion and ethics. Mill states that Comte is the first philosopher who has attempted to extend positivism to all objects of human knowledge. Despite being critical of a number of Comtes views, such as the exclusion of psychology from positivist science, Mill acknowledges his fellow philosophers influence in the face of common negative perceptions of the positivist movement.show more