August comte

hey there, i am humaira jahan and today my presentation is about august comte.
some can say that if your topic is august comte why have you focused on his theory not his life? the ans is that i believe one's identity is her/his work not their life style.
I hope you guys will like it.

1. August comte Prepared for Ms. Nasrin Zahan Department of applied sociology prepared by hUmaira jahan tanha

2. August comte August Comte, full name: Isidore - Auguste -Marie-François-Xavier Comte . Born January 19, 1798, Montpellier France died September 5, 1857, Paris. He was a school dropout but still considered as a father of sociology.

3. Books of august comte Positive philosophy & Positive polity This two book was published since 1830 to 1842 in total six piece. Comte has written his thought’s , observations & theories in those two books.

4. Social physics At first he named this subject as “social physics”. And later he change this to sociology. This word comes from the Greek word “ soci ” means the “society” and “ology” means to “study of”

5. Comte proposed

6. Social Statics Social Statics refers to the study of the conditions and pre-conditions of social order.  It is concerned with the present structure of the society. It studies the issues of social stability and social order. It studies the current laws, rules and present conditions of the society. It observes how these laws and rules are affecting the present society. It investigates the law of action and reaction of the different parts of the social system.  It is concerned with the study of major institutions, which preserve the social order.  For example, family; it occupies an important position in social structure. It provides the base for the social order and progress of the society. Individual, family and social combinations are three levels of society. Family is the smallest and basic unit of sociology. 

7. Three factors of social statics

8. Social dynamics It begins with the study of the process of social changes. Therefore, it is concerned with the matter of social progress. The term 'Progress' refers to the orderly development of the society, which are according to the natural law. Hence, the order and progress or statics and dynamics are co-related to each other. Dynamics begin when the functions of the social institutions are altered or changed. According to Comte, social dynamics describe the successive and necessary stages in the development in the human mind and the society. Further, he opined that the social dynamics should depend on the historical perspectives in order to study the process of social change and progress. Thus, the social dynamics are found in all the aspects of the society, such as physical, moral and intellectual. However, the intellectual is the most important. Social dynamics refers to the pattern of the revolutionary progress in which the sequence of the development is necessary and inevitable. Moreover, it is natural that the social systems, such as institutions are interrelated and interdependent, so they can make a harmonious whole.

9. Social dynamics

10. The Law of three stages The Law of three stages is the corner stone of Auguste Comte’s approach. Comte’s ideas relating to the law of three stages reveal that man is becoming more and more rational and scientific in his approach by gradually giving up speculations, imagination etc. Comte considered his law of Three stages based upon belief in social evolution to be the most important. There has been an evolution in the human thinking. This law appeared in, the year 1822 in his book Positive Philosophy.

11. Law of Three Stages

12. Theological stages The theological stage is the first and it characterized the world prior to 1300. Overall the theological thinking implies belief in super natural power. This type of thinking is found among the primitive races. In theological stage, all natural phenomena and social events were explained in terms of super natural forces and deities, which ultimately explaining everything as the product of God’s will. This stage is dominated by priests and ruled by military men.

13. Fetishism Fetish means “inanimate” and ism means “philosophy”. This is a philosophy which believes that super natural power dwells in inanimate objects. Fetishism as a form of religion started which admitted of no priesthood. When everything in nature is thought to be imbued with life analogous to our own, pieces of wood, stone, skull etc. are believed to be the dwelling place of super natural powers, as these objects are believed to possess divine power. But too many fetishes created confusion for people.

14. polytheism ‘Poly’ means many. So the belief in many Gods is called polytheism. Human being received variety or diversity of natural phenomena. Each phenomenon was kept under the disposal of one God. One God was believed to be in charge of one particular natural phenomenon. People created the class of priests to get the goodwill and the blessings of these gods. The presence of too many gods also created for them mental contradictions. Finally they developed the idea of one God, i.e. monotheism.

15. Monotheism It means belief in one single God. He is all in all. He controls everything in this world. He is the maker of human destiny. Monotheism is the climax of the theological stage of thinking. The monotheistic thinking symbolizes the victory of human intellect and reason over non-intellectual and irrational thinking. Slowly feelings and imaginations started giving place to thinking and rationality. In monotheism a simplification of many gods into one God takes place, largely in the service of awakening reason, which qualifies and exercises constraint upon the imagination.

16. Metaphysical (Abstract) Reality explained in terms of abstractions: – Essence – Existence – Substance – Accident

17. Positive (Scientific) The dawn of the 19th Century marked the beginning of the positive stage in which observation predominates over imagination. The concept of God is totally vanished from human mind. Human mind tries to establish cause and affect relationship.

18. Positivism Positivism is nothing but a philosophy of science. Ex: one can predict future by analyzing present

19. Five Principles of Positivism The logic of inquiry is identical across all branches of science. The goal of inquiry is to explain, predict, and discover. Research should be observed empirically with human senses. Science is not the same as common sense. Science should be judged by logic and remain free of values.

20. Comte used the term in two distinctive ways

21. Thank you