CHAPTER I. 



MATTER, MOTION, AND FORCE. 



In the third took of the "Philosophie Positive," Comte 

 observes that it can hardly be by accident that the word 

 " Physics," which originally denoted the study of the whole 

 of nature, should have become restricted to that science which 

 deals with the most abstract and general laws of the re- 

 arrangement of Matter and Motion. This is one of the 

 many profound remarks scattered through Comte's writings, 

 the full significance of which he could hardly himself have 

 realized. 1 For it will now appear — as the preceding chapter 

 taught us to expect — that the study of Physics (including 

 under that name, for the moment, the three abstract-concrete 

 sciences) underlies the study of the whole of nature, and 

 discloses those universal truths upon which a Synthesis of 

 the widest truths disclosed by the concrete sciences must 

 repose. It investigates the general phenomena of matter, 

 motion, and force ; while the concrete sciences investigate 



1 For immediately afterwards we find Comte basing the organic sciences 

 upon physics, but excluding astronomy, which he calls an "emanation from 

 mathematics." It is indeed difficult to see how astronomy, which involves 

 the physical ideas of matter, motion, and force, can be an emanation from 

 mathematics, which involves only the purely abstract ideas of space and 

 number. In fact, as above shown (part i. chap. viii. ), astronomy, no less 

 than the other concrete sciences, is dependent upon physics. Here, as 

 elsewhere, Comte was misled by his serial arrangement. 



