Auste Comte

Best Known For:

• Founder of positivism.
• Coined the term sociology
• His emphasis on systematic observation and social order

Birth:

Auguste Comte was born January 20, 1798 (according to the Revolutionary calendar then used in France).

Death:

He died of cancer on September 5, 1857.

Early Life and Education:

Auguste Comte was born in Montpellier, France. After attending the Lycée Joffre and then the University of Montpellier, Comte was admitted to the École Polytechnique in Paris. The École closed in 1816 at which time Comte took up permanent residence in Paris, earning a precarious living there by teaching mathematics and journalism. He read widely in philosophy and history and was especially interested in those thinkers who were beginning to discern and trace some order in the history of human society.

Career and Later Life:

In 1826 Comte began a series of lectures on his “system of positive philosophy” for…