“Comte’s most famous idea is undoubtedly his three stage law, according to which human intelligence successively develops three distinct philosophical methods the theological (fictive), metaphysical (abstract), and scientific (positive). This law depicts human development from several angles. Historically, it identifies three stages in the whole human race: epistemologically, the stages through which each science passes to realize its aim: psychobiographically, the stages of individual intellectual growth: and sociopolitically, the regeneration of economic, military, legal, and spiritual practices in response to intellectual progress” (Encyclopedia of Psychology, Pg. 241). Using these three methods helps an individual to explain how their thoughts were formulated and how they could address how they were feeling in a social environment. The growth of a person, both psychologically and intellectually is key to that person's …show more content…
“Sociology is a relatively new discipline in comparison to chemistry, math, biology, philosophy and other disciplines that trace back thousands of years. Sociology began as an intellectual/philosophical effort by a French man named Auguste Comte (born 1798 and died 1857). He is considered the founder of sociology and coined "Sociology." Comte's Definition of Sociology is the science of society” (http://freebooks.uvu.edu/SOC1010/). This resulted in the later discovery of social psychology and the disciplines within it that include not only studying the physiology of the brain, but how it reacts in different social situations. Positivism has a history of its' own. While Comte developed this method, he did not get to see how it was used to influence others in future generations. “During the twentieth century positivism was a dominant philosophy used to make sense of natural and social science. Many scholars made sense of their work using the tenets of empiricism and derivative philosophies, such as positivism, behaviorism, pragmatism and instrumentalism. Pragmatists and instrumentalists, such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and Dewey employed some of the tenets of Comtean positivism during an