Comte's philosophy of the sciences : being an exposition of the principles of the Cours de philosophie positive of Auguste Comte / by G.H. Lewes.

  • Lewes, George Henry, 1817-1878.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Comte's philosophy of the sciences : being an exposition of the principles of the Cours de philosophie positive of Auguste Comte / by G.H. Lewes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    146/376 (page 130)
    were requisite to establish beyond cavil the fundamental principle of the necessarily indefinite perpetuity of all matter; such, especially, were the decomposition of air and water, and afterwards the elementary analysis of vegetable and animal substances, and perhaps, too, at a later period, as the complement of those, the analysis of alkalies properly so called, and of earths. The tendency of those discoveries was irrevocably to substitute in all minds the positive notions of decomposition and re- composition, for the theological notions of destruction and of creation. A new light, also, was thereby thrown on vital phenomena. It was perceived that organic and inorganic matter were not radically different; and that vital transformations are, like all others, subordi- nated to chemical phenomena. Comte concludes the chapter with some remarks respecting the divisions of chemistry. The science, he says, is still too much in its infancy, and too imperfect, to offer, of itself, a proper division. The homogeneity of its phenomena, so exceptional when contrasted with other sciences, makes a natural division of it little marked. It is clear, however, that in the meantime the division of chemistry into inorganic and organic, must be disregarded, as being irrational. Combinations cannot be classified in abstract chemistry according to their origin, as they may be in natural history. The two classes referred to are always mutually encroaching on each other. In reality, what is called organic che- mistry is half chemical, half physiological. Any rational division must be founded on the principle involved in the true definition of the science—that of composition and decomposition. Hence, in here ap- plying the rule of always following the gradual compli- cation of the phenomena, we see that, in dividing che- mistry into its principal branches, we can be guided by only these two considerations. 1st. The increase of the number of the constituent