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in other words, by induction or deduction. Neither of these methods
would help us, even in regard to the simplest phenomena, if we did not
begin by anticipating the results, by making a provisional supposition,
altogether conjectural in the first instance, with regard to some of the
very notions which are the object of the inquiry. Hence the necessary
introduction of hypotheses into natural philosophy. The method of ap-
proximation employed by geometers first suggested the idea; and with-
out it all discovery of natural laws would be impossible in cases of any
degree of complexity; and in all, very slow, But the employment of this
Positive Philosophy/225
instrument must always be subjected to one condition, the neglect of
which would impede the development of real knowledge. This condition
is to imagine such hypotheses only as admit, by their nature, of a posi-
tive and inevitable verification at some future time, the precision of
this verification being proportioned to what we can learn of the corre-
sponding phenomena. In other words, philosophical hypotheses must
always have the character of simple anticipations of what we might
know at once, by experiment and reasoning, if the circumstances of the
problem had been more favourable than they are. Provided this rule be
scrupulously observed, hypotheses may evidently be employed without
danger, as often as they are needed, or rationally desired. It is only sub-
stituting an indirect for a direct investigation, when the latter is impos-
sible or too difficult. But if the two are not employed on the same gen-
eral subject, and if we try to reach by hypothesis what is inaccessible to
observation and reasoning, the fundamental condition is violated, and
hypothesis, wandering out of the field of science, merely leads us astray.
Our study of nature is restricted to the analysis of phenomena in order
to discover their laws; that is, their constant relations of succession or
similitude; and can have nothing to do with their nature, or their cause,
first or final, or the mode of their production. Every hypothesis which
strays beyond the domain of the positive can merely occasion intermi-
nable discussions, by pretending to pronounce on questions which our
understandings are incompetent to decide. Every man of science ad-
mits this rule, in its simple statement; but it cannot be practically under-
stood, so often as it is violated, and to such a degree as to alter the
whole character of Physics. The use of conjecture is to fill up provision-
ally the intervals left here and there by reality; but practically we find
the two materials entirely separated, and the real subordinated to the
conjectural. It is necessary, therefore, to ascertain and explain the ac-
tual state of the question with regard to Physics.
The hypotheses employed by physical inquirers in our day are of
two classes: the first, a very small class, relate simply to the laws of
phenomena: the other, and larger class, aim at determining the general
agents to which different kinds of natural effects may be referred. Now,
according to the rule just laid down, the first kind alone are admissible:
the second have an anti-scientific character, are chimerical and can do
nothing but hinder the progress of science
In Astronomy, the first class only is in use, because the science has
a wholly positive character. A fact is obscure; or a law is unknown: we
226/Auguste Comte
proceed to form a hypothesis, in agreement, as far as possible, with the
whole of the data we are in possession of; and the science, thus left free
to develop itself, always ends by disclosing new observable consequences,
tending to confirm or invalidate, indisputably, the primitive supposi-
tion. We have before noticed frequent and happy examples of this method
of discovering the primary truths of astronomy. But, since the establish-
ment of the law of gravitation, geometers and astronomers have put
away all their fancies of chimerical fluids causing planetary motions; or
have, at least, indulged in them merely as a matter of personal taste, and
not of scientific investigation. It would be well if, in a study so much
more difficult as Physics, philosophers would imitate the astronomers.
It would be well if they would confine their hypotheses to the yet un-
known circumstances of phenomena, or their yet hidden laws, and would
entirely let alone their mode of production, which is altogether beyond
the limit of our faculties. What scientific use can there be in fantastic
notions about fluids and imaginary ethers, which are to account for
phenomena of heat, light, electricity and magnetism? Such a mixture of
facts and dreams can only vitiate the essential ideas of physics, cause
endless controversy, and involve the science itself in the disgust which
the wise must feel at such proceedings. These fluids are supposed to be
invisible, intangible, even imponderable, and to be inseparable from the
substances which they actuate. Their very definition shows them to have
no place in real science; for the question of their existence is not a sub-
ject for judgment: it can no more be denied then affirmed: our reason
has no grasp of them at all. Those who in our day, believe in caloric, in
a luminous ether, or electric fluids, have no right to despise the elemen-
tary spirits of Paracelsus, or to refuse to admit angels and genii. We find
them spurning Lamarck s notion of a resonant fluid; but the misfortune
of this hypothesis was that it came too late, long after the establish-
ment of acoustics. If it had been put forth as early in the days of science
as the hypotheses about heat, light, and electricity, this resonant fluid
would no doubt have prospered as well as the rest. Without going into
the history of more of these baseless inquiries, it is enough to point out
that they are irreconcileable with each other; and when superficial minds
witness the ease with which they destroy each other, they naturally con-
clude the whole science to be arbitrary, consisting more in futile discus-
sion than in anything else. Each sect or philosopher can show how un-
tenable is the hypothesis of another, but cannot establish his own; and it
would generally be easy to devise a third which might agree with both.
Positive Philosophy/227
It is true, physicists are now eager to declare that they do not attribute
any intrinsic reality to these hypotheses; and that they countenance them
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