Death of Auguste Comte

Auguste Comte died on 5 September 1857 in Paris, aged 59. A French philosopher, Comte is regarded as the founder of positivism and one of the creators of sociology, a term he coined. He argued that human thought passes through three stages, theological, metaphysical and positive or scientific, and that society should be studied by the same empirical methods as the natural sciences. His major works include the Course of Positive Philosophy and the System of Positive Polity. Late in life he proposed a Religion of Humanity with rituals and a calendar, which attracted followers in France, Britain and Brazil. He had worked for a time as secretary to the social thinker Saint-Simon.

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