Definitions

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  • adjective Of or pertaining to Auguste Comte (1798–1857), French philosopher and founder of sociology and positivism.

Etymologies

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Comte +‎ -ian

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Examples

  • Bernard's notion of the body as independent of the environment complemented Malthusian economics, liberal political philosophy, and Comtian sociology.

    The Impulse of Breathing 2009

  • Huxley, he rejected the Comtian belief in the need for positivist religious ceremonies, which were, despite

    POSITIVISM IN LATIN AMERICA RONALD HILTON 1968

  • There could be no better illustration, as Prof. Patrick Geddes has pointed out, of the Comtian thesis that science is a "social phenomenon."

    Evolution in Modern Thought Gustav Schwalbe 1880

  • Herodotus to Polybius, the exemplification of the Comtian law of the three stages of thought, the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific: for truly out of the vagueness of theological mysticism this conception which we call the Philosophy of History was raised to a scientific principle, according to which the past was explained and the future predicted by reference to general laws.

    Miscellanies Oscar Wilde 1877

  • There is to my mind no subject more absorbing than the tracing the origin and first growth of human thought; -- not theoretically, or in accordance with the Hegelian laws of thought, or the Comtian epochs; but historically, and like an

    Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I Essays on the Science of Religion 1861

  • Comte in this country, for some of whom, let me observe in passing, I entertain a most unfeigned respect; and Mr. Congreve's recent article gives expression to the displeasure which I have excited among the members of the Comtian body.

    Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews Thomas Henry Huxley 1860

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