‎COMTE (A.)‎
‎Traité philosophique d'astronomie populaire, ou exposition systématique de toutes les notions de philosophie astronomique, soit scientifiques, soit logiques, qui doivent devenir universellement familières -- EDITION ORIGINALE -- BEL EXEMPLAIRE‎

‎P., Carilian-Goeury, 1844; un volume in 8 relié en demi-basane bleue marine, dos orné de filets dorés (reliure de l'époque), (petit manque de papier sans gravité sur le premier plat de couverture, traces de mouillures pâles sans gravité dans l'angle supérieur des premiers feuillets), 10pp., 486pp., 1 planche dépliante‎

Reference : 1308

‎---- EDITION ORIGINALE ---- BEL EXEMPLAIRE ---- C'est dans cet ouvrage que le Discours sur l'esprit positif apparaît pour la première fois. Il occupe les pages 1 à 108 ---- "Comte's writings exhibit a remarkable scope and breadth, ranging from mathematics to the philosophy of science, from religion and morality to sociology and political economy. What unifies them all is Comte's concern with the problem of knowledge, its nature, its structure and the method of its acquisition. Positivism, the official name Comte adopted for his philosophy, was primarily a methodological and epistemological doctrine... Believing that knowledge could be understood only by examining the growth of knowledge in its historical dimension, he insisted that it is the collective history of thought, rather than the individual psyche, that can illuminate the conditions and limits of human knowledge... It is not knowledge in its static dimension which interested Comte, but the dynamics of man qua knower, the progressive development of knowledge... The most famous result of this approach is Comte's law of three states... It is not only knowledge in general but every branch of knowledge which evolves through these three states... Insofar as Comte identified himself as a natural scientist, it was mathematics which he knew best. Having been a tutor in mathematics for the Ecole Polytechnique in the 1830's, Comte published two straightforward scientific works, the Traité élémentaire de géométrie (1843) and the Traité philosophique d'astronomie populaire (1844). Both were popular works that grew out of his public lectures in Paris... Among all the empirical sciences Astronomy was closest to the positivist ideal. Concerning themselves exclusively with the position, shape, size, and motion of celestial bodies, astronomers had restricted themselves to studying the observable properties of the heavens...". (DSB III pp. 375/380) ---- Discours préliminaire sur l'esprit positif - Considérations fondamentales sur la nature et la destination du véritable esprit philosophique : appréciation sommaire de l'extrême importance sociale que présente aujourd'hui l'universelle propagation des principales études positives ; application spéciale de ces principes à la science astronomique, d'après sa vraie position encyclopédique - Institution fondamentale des moyens généraux d'observation précise - Géométrie céleste - Mécanique céleste - etc**1308/ARM1A‎