Peter Emmerson

4.2 Sociology and the historicizing of knowledge.

4.2.1 Comte

The successful development of natural philosophy and the new mathematics was preyed upon by philosophers and renamed the Enlightenment, such that the methods of natural philosophy could be applied more widely to the problems of human experience itself: hence the evolution of life and social sciences such as biology, economics and sociology. One outstanding analyst of this sequence of events was Auguste Comte, who, in the first half of the 19^th century, put together a radical series of ideas that seriously undermined the idealist model, by arguing that human knowledge is a function of ordinary social experience. In so doing he pointed to the significance of language as something social; not only do we learn our language from others, we change our thinking by listening to their criticisms. From this point of view knowledge is historical. Rightly or wrongly, Comte believed that what comes to be seen as knowledge develops in relation to the problems that people face during their lives. This certainly explains the sociogenesis (things that develop in relation to social experience) of technology. However, it also explains the sociogenesis of idealism! According to Comte knowledge has developed through three stages beginning with supernatural explanations that involved magic. This was augmented by the metaphysical which incorporated more secular methods into the mix, such as logical argument, numbers and geometry. More recently, such types of knowledge have been augmented still further by the attempt to engage more fully with the factual world; a third stage in the development of knowledge that Comte called the ‘positive’ or what we now call science. Thus today, the supernatural, metaphysical (usually referred to as philosophical) and scientific co-exist as methods of solving human problems.

Comte’s law of three stages in the development of human knowledge has been heavily contested, to the extent that his ideas in general have been stigmatized in order to restrict the spread of his ideas: see Elias, What is Sociology? It is arguable, I would suggest, that this was not so much a reaction to the inexactitude of Comte’s statements, but was more about the implications of accepting his general point; that theologians and philosophers are just two figurations of people, now in competition with positivists (scientists), whose inexorable attachment to idealism had been seriously rumbled, as something contingent upon social experience. The implication of accepting Comte’s findings on the historicality of knowledge is that because social experience is volatile, then so is the knowledge that accrues with it: not a position to be countenanced by anyone who needs the promise of a definitive answer, even the more ‘reasonable’ Socratean position that is advocated by Popper. Comte’s move beyond theometaphysics helps increase the likelihood of relative uncertainty becoming seen as the real nature of experience, with ideals such as truths being demoted to the level of any other product of thinking. Traditionally philosophers have characterized as ‘phenomena’ the things that we see and hear, sense data, as some corrupted, lesser form of knowledge. The acceptance of a perspective of relative uncertainty recasts the truths so zealously guarded by theometaphysicians as just phenomena too, much simplifying our knowledge compendium. Such a view sees the brain as the processor of information more akin to Hobbes, Locke and Hume than Descartes or Kant. Absolute truths and reasonings are social constructions, pieces of mummified, theometaphysical clutter; cognitive idols that distract our perception away from what is construed as the terrifying and anomic possibility that relative uncertainty is everywhere: Emile Durkheim developed the term anomie to describe the disorienting experience of high rates of social change when collectivist social rules have to be jettisoned in the rush to a more individualistic survival pattern.

It is fair to say that Comte was not of this relatively uncertain view; he believed in the over-idealistic notion of a law-like universe. But his arguments contribute to the opening up of a route that leads to the analysis of relative uncertainty. As with Nietzsche later in the 19^th century, the attempt to stigmatize Comte was a good example of institutional bullying, which can occur to people who in developing new ideas and immigrating to new ground are deemed to threaten the large majority left behind: their small numbers make them easy pickings for the established. Sociological philosophers such as Comte and Nietzsche, as members of outsider figurations had little influence and limited potential to fight back: the madman tag therefore stuck and and did its work. Their real crime was to produce radical, threatening arguments, which questioned the very foundation of our belief in ideals such as the absolute truth. Such a finding has serious implications for personal security and the authority and status of those who purvey the truths, as well as subverting the position of other influential figurations, which rely on these truth-finders to justify their dominance.