‘ONE OF THE MAJOR DOCUMENTS OF SECULAR PHILOSOPHY’ (PMM) – THE COINING OF THE TERM SOCIOLOGY
COMTE, Auguste.
Cours de philosophie positive.
Paris, Bachelier, 1830-1842.
Six vols, 8vo, pp. viii, 742, with 1 folding table; 724; 848; xi, [1], 736; [6], 776; xxxviii, [2], 904; a little foxed, but a very good copy in contemporary half calf, panelled spines filleted and lettered in gilt, marbled boards, one or two joints rubbed, split or splitting.
First edition, an attractive set, of Comte’s principal work, the outline of positivism. In the course of six volumes Comte sets out the terms of a new sociology and its status in relations to the other fields of knowledge. In fact it is in the forty-seventh lesson that the neologism ‘sociologie’ as ‘social physics’ is coined. ‘The remarkable achievement of Comte, all arguments about the validity of his theories aside, is the construction of a system which embraces all human activity and knowledge. [It] is still one of the major documents of secular philosophy’ (PMM). PMM 295; En français dans le texte, 245.
