ORGANIZATION OF THE SCIENCES 



the detailed application of general principles 

 already established. 



From these considerations Comte concluded 

 that his Positive Philosophy might be founded 

 upon a thorough organization of the doctrines 

 and methods of the abstract sciences alone. 

 The problem first in order was to arrange these 

 sciences in a natural series. The end to be kept 

 in view, in this encyclopaedic labour, is to ar- 

 range the sciences in the order of their natural 

 succession and mutual interdependence; so that 

 we may study and expound them one after 

 the other, without ever being led into a zigzag 

 or circular course of study and exposition. It 

 should be mentioned here at the outset, that 

 Comte did not regard such an end as strictly 

 attainable in all its rigorous precision. He tells 

 us expressly that however natural and however 

 logically serviceable such a classification may be, 

 it must always and necessarily contain some- 

 thing that is arbitrary, or at least artificial, in 

 its arrangements. This, as he clearly saw, must 

 ever result from the very richness and com- 

 plexity of Nature, which refuses to be analyzed 

 and partitioned off into distinct provinces, save 

 provisionally for convenience of study. In his 

 Introduction he reminds us that so few as six 

 fundamental sciences will admit of seven hun- 

 dred and twenty different arrangements ; and 

 that in behalf of each of these arrangements 



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