HISTORY OF SCIENCE 31 



constant recourse to the history of science; (2) It is necessary to 

 study the evolution of the different sciences to understand the de- 

 velopment of the human mind and the history of mankind; (3) It 

 is insufficient to study the history of one or of many particular 

 sciences; one must study the history of all sciences, taken to- 

 gether. Besides this, as early as 1832, Auguste Comte made an 

 application to the minister Guizot for the creation of a chair, de- 

 voted to the general history of the sciences (histoire generate des 

 sciences). It was sixty years before this wish of his was granted; 

 and the course entrusted to Pierre Laffitte was inaugurated at the 

 College de France in 1892, thirty-five years after Comte's death. 

 Another French philosopher, Antoine Cournot, also helped to 

 clear up our ideas by the publication in 1861 of his book Iraite 

 de Vencbainement des idees fondamentales dans \es sciences et 

 dans I histoire. However, the real heir to Comte's thought, from 

 our special point of view, is neither Laffitte nor Cournot, but Paul 

 Tannery. It is hardly necessary to say much of him, because all 

 who have the slightest knowledge of the history of science must 

 needs have come across one of his numerous memoirs, all so re- 

 markable for their originality and exactitude. Paul Tannery him- 

 self attached importance to his intellectual connection with Comte 

 and often expressed his admiration for the founder of positivism. 



Tannery's philosophy is very different from Comte's, but the 

 greatest difference between them is that Comte's knowledge of 

 the history of science was very superficial, whereas Paul Tannery, 

 being extremely learned and having at his disposal a mass of his- 

 torical research work which did not exist in the thirties, knew 

 more of the history of science than anybody else in the world. 

 Certainly no man ever was better prepared to write a complete 

 history of science, at least of European science, than Paul Tan- 

 nery. It was his dream to carry out this great work, but unfortu- 

 nately he died, before realizing his ambition, in 1904. 



One can understand the history of science in different ways, 

 but these different conceptions do not contradict each other; they 

 are simply more or less comprehensive. My own conception does 



