‎COMTE (A.)‎
‎Traité élémentaire de géométrie analytique à deux et à trois dimensions, contenant toutes les théories générales de géométrie accessibles à l'analyse ordinaire -- EDITION ORIGINALE -- TRES BEL EXEMPLAIRE‎

‎P., Carilian-Goeury, 1843, un volume in 8 relié en demi-chagrin vert, dos orné de caissons à froid, (reliure moderne signée Laurenchet), VIIIpp., 598pp., 3 planches dépliantes, .‎

Reference : 1309

‎---- EDITION ORIGINALE ---- TRES BEL EXEMPLAIRE ---- "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... . (DSB III)**1309/ARM1D‎