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The Law of Three Stages is an idea developed by Auguste Comte. It states that society as a whole, and each particular science, develops through three mentally conceived stages: (1) the theological stage, (2) the metaphysical stage, and (3) the positive stage.
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(1) The Theological stage refers to explanation by personified deities. Comte broke this stage into 3 sub-stages:
(2) The Metaphysical stage refers to explanation by impersonal abstract explanation. Often those who developed metaphysical systems believed they were engaging in scientific activity, but they were not.
(3) The Positivity stage refers to scientific explanation based on observation, experiment, and comparison. Positive explanations rely upon a distinct method, the scientific method, for its justification.
Comte proposed a hierarchy of the sciences based on historical sequence, with areas of knowledge passing through these stages in order of complexity. The simplest and most remote areas of knowledge - mechanical or physical - become scientific first. These are followed by the more complex sciences, those considered closest to us.
The sciences, then, according to Comte's "law", developed in this order: Mathematics; Astronomy; Physics; Chemistry; Biology; Psychology; Sociology. A science of society is thus the "Queen science" in Comte's hierarchy as it would be the most fundamentally complex. Through social science, Comte believed all human social ills could be remedied.
William Whewell wrote "Mr. Comte's arrangement of the progress of science as successively metaphysical and positive, is contrary to history in fact, and contrary to sound philosophy in principle." [1] The historian of science H. Floris Cohen has made a significant effort to draw the modern eye towards this first debate on the foundations of positivism. [2]
In contrast, within an entry dated early October 1838 Charles Darwin wrote in one of his then private notebooks that "M. Comte's idea of a theological state of science [is a] grand idea." [3]