ORGANIZATION OF THE SCIENCES 



accept the simplest and most completely estab- 

 lished principles of political economy ? 



Thus there are at least five separate factors 

 determining the order and rate at which know- 

 ledge progresses ; and it is the interaction of 

 these factors which has made the actual order 

 of scientific development too complex to be 

 embraced in any linear formula, like that pro- 

 posed by Comte. It is because it recognizes 

 only one of these factors that the Comtean clas- 

 sification fails to represent the historic order 

 in its true complexity. It makes a straight line 

 where it ought to make a system of inosculating 

 spirals. 



Returning now from the historical to the 

 logical point of view, we have to note a still 

 more fundamental error in the Comtean classi- 

 fication. That classification rests primarily upon 

 the distinction, above explained, between the 

 abstract and the concrete sciences. That there 

 is such a distinction cannot be questioned ; but 

 it will not be difficult to show that Comte has 

 made the division incorrectly. When Comte 

 contrasts chemistry with mineralogy, because 

 the one formulates the abstract laws of the ag- 

 gregation of heterogeneous molecules, while the 

 other applies these laws to concrete instances 

 actually realized in nature, under the influence 

 of particular sets of conditions, the distinction 

 must be admitted as valid. But when he simi- 

 39 



