WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.359 There are certain figures in history who, you 00:00:02.359 --> 00:00:04.740 know, they fit very neatly into boxes. Right. 00:00:04.839 --> 00:00:06.900 You've got your scientists over here, the Newtons, 00:00:06.900 --> 00:00:09.339 the Darwin's people who see the world through 00:00:09.339 --> 00:00:13.099 observation, data, cold, hard facts. The rationalists. 00:00:13.160 --> 00:00:15.580 Exactly. And then over on the other side, you 00:00:15.580 --> 00:00:18.600 have your mystics, your religious leaders, the 00:00:18.600 --> 00:00:21.160 people who look at the world through faith and 00:00:21.160 --> 00:00:24.260 ritual and things unseen. We're comfortable with 00:00:24.260 --> 00:00:26.420 that. We know a shelf to put them on. It's clean 00:00:26.420 --> 00:00:28.780 separation. But today we are diving into the 00:00:28.780 --> 00:00:31.410 mind of. a man who looked at those two completely 00:00:31.410 --> 00:00:36.409 opposite worlds, the rigid structure of science 00:00:36.409 --> 00:00:39.810 and the deep emotional pull of religion, and 00:00:39.810 --> 00:00:41.829 he decided he didn't want to choose. He wanted 00:00:41.829 --> 00:00:44.170 both. He decided to just weld them together. 00:00:44.229 --> 00:00:46.829 It's arguably one of the most complex and, frankly, 00:00:46.909 --> 00:00:49.130 strangest intellectual journeys of the entire 00:00:49.130 --> 00:00:51.549 19th century. And we are talking about a ghost 00:00:51.549 --> 00:00:53.490 compt. We are. On the one hand, you have the 00:00:53.490 --> 00:00:55.829 man who literally invented the word sociology. 00:00:56.670 --> 00:00:59.170 He's the godfather of applying the scientific 00:00:59.170 --> 00:01:01.770 method to human society. The reason we trust 00:01:01.770 --> 00:01:04.989 data to run governments, the reason we think 00:01:04.989 --> 00:01:07.150 statistics can tell us the truth about ourselves. 00:01:07.450 --> 00:01:10.950 That's all him. But then, on the other hand... 00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:15.079 This exact same man ends his life wearing a robe, 00:01:15.239 --> 00:01:17.420 proclaiming himself the high priest of humanity 00:01:17.420 --> 00:01:20.480 and writing these incredibly detailed instruction 00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:23.500 manuals for a new secular religion that he genuinely 00:01:23.500 --> 00:01:26.659 believed was going to replace Christianity. It's 00:01:26.659 --> 00:01:29.200 a bit like if, I don't know, a leading Silicon 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:33.319 Valley CEO suddenly quit building AI and declared 00:01:33.319 --> 00:01:35.659 himself the pope of a new church dedicated to 00:01:35.659 --> 00:01:38.260 the algorithm. Right. It sounds completely insane. 00:01:38.659 --> 00:01:41.189 But as we dug through this. source material for 00:01:41.189 --> 00:01:43.370 this deep dive, what's almost terrifying is how 00:01:43.370 --> 00:01:45.390 logical his progression actually was. It's not 00:01:45.390 --> 00:01:47.849 like he just snapped one day. He followed this 00:01:47.849 --> 00:01:50.969 straight line of reasoning that just happened 00:01:50.969 --> 00:01:53.370 to lead him right off a cliff. That is the perfect 00:01:53.370 --> 00:01:55.989 way to frame it. Comte wasn't a madman, or at 00:01:55.989 --> 00:01:57.790 least not in the way we usually think of one, 00:01:57.870 --> 00:01:59.709 though we will absolutely get to his mental health 00:01:59.709 --> 00:02:02.250 stroke. Oh, for sure. He was obsessed with one 00:02:02.250 --> 00:02:06.049 thing above all else, order. And to understand 00:02:06.049 --> 00:02:08.969 why a brilliant mathematician would end up inventing 00:02:08.969 --> 00:02:11.400 a religion, You have to understand the world 00:02:11.400 --> 00:02:13.900 he was trying to fix. Because he didn't just 00:02:13.900 --> 00:02:16.379 wake up one morning and decide to invent sociology 00:02:16.379 --> 00:02:20.520 for fun. He was trying to save civilization from 00:02:20.520 --> 00:02:23.629 what he saw. as total collapse. OK, so that's 00:02:23.629 --> 00:02:25.069 our mission today. We're going to track that 00:02:25.069 --> 00:02:27.550 trajectory. We're going to unpack his law of 00:02:27.550 --> 00:02:30.909 three stages, which is his kind of grand theory 00:02:30.909 --> 00:02:33.909 of everything, how all of human history unfolds. 00:02:33.909 --> 00:02:35.650 And we'll look at why he hated what he called 00:02:35.650 --> 00:02:38.430 the metaphysical stage, which, spoiler alert 00:02:38.430 --> 00:02:40.969 for everyone listening, is basically the stage 00:02:40.969 --> 00:02:42.789 of modern democracy we are all living in right 00:02:42.789 --> 00:02:45.560 now. Right. And we absolutely have to talk about 00:02:45.560 --> 00:02:47.680 the twist right in the middle of his life. A 00:02:47.680 --> 00:02:50.039 really tragic romance that, well, it turned the 00:02:50.039 --> 00:02:52.400 human calculator into a priest. And we can't 00:02:52.400 --> 00:02:54.759 forget his legacy. I mean, we literally use his 00:02:54.759 --> 00:02:56.840 vocabulary every single day. If you've ever used 00:02:56.840 --> 00:02:59.139 the word altruism, you are speaking Comte. I 00:02:59.139 --> 00:03:01.819 had no idea. If you've ever said sociology, you're 00:03:01.819 --> 00:03:04.740 speaking Comte. He gave us the language to describe 00:03:04.740 --> 00:03:07.639 the modern world, even if his prescription for 00:03:07.639 --> 00:03:10.840 how to. you know, run it was, let's just say, 00:03:10.919 --> 00:03:12.560 a little eccentric. All right. So let's drop 00:03:12.560 --> 00:03:14.740 the needle on the origin story. To really get 00:03:14.740 --> 00:03:17.319 Comte, we have to go back to France. But not 00:03:17.319 --> 00:03:20.340 the romantic postcard Paris. We're talking about 00:03:20.340 --> 00:03:22.900 the wreckage left behind after the French Revolution. 00:03:23.280 --> 00:03:26.020 Total chaos. He's born in 1798 in Montpellier, 00:03:26.159 --> 00:03:28.180 the south of France. And what's the vibe in the 00:03:28.180 --> 00:03:31.520 Comte household? Tense. Extremely tense. You 00:03:31.520 --> 00:03:33.520 have to visualize the timeline to really feel 00:03:33.520 --> 00:03:37.139 this. The revolution kicks off in 1789. The king 00:03:37.139 --> 00:03:39.539 is beheaded. The reign of terror happens. It's 00:03:39.539 --> 00:03:41.759 bloody. It's chaotic. So by the time Comte is 00:03:41.759 --> 00:03:44.439 born, France has basically torn down its entire 00:03:44.439 --> 00:03:47.599 social structure. The monarchy, the church, the 00:03:47.599 --> 00:03:49.780 aristocracy, everything is gone. But they haven't 00:03:49.780 --> 00:03:51.860 built anything to replace it. Exactly. They're 00:03:51.860 --> 00:03:55.300 in a vacuum. But his family, they are staunch 00:03:55.300 --> 00:03:57.740 royalists and fervent Catholics. So they're looking 00:03:57.740 --> 00:04:00.280 backward, clinging to the old order, pretending 00:04:00.280 --> 00:04:02.919 the revolution was just some horrible nightmare 00:04:02.919 --> 00:04:05.370 that will eventually end. So he's a kid growing 00:04:05.370 --> 00:04:08.129 up in a house that's saying the past was better, 00:04:08.270 --> 00:04:11.090 the king was chosen by God, while the entire 00:04:11.090 --> 00:04:14.110 world outside his window is on fire and moving 00:04:14.110 --> 00:04:17.009 at a thousand miles an hour. That has to create 00:04:17.009 --> 00:04:20.300 some serious friction. Immense friction. Comte 00:04:20.300 --> 00:04:22.680 is a genius, even as a child, but he's a child 00:04:22.680 --> 00:04:24.860 of his time. He looks at his parents' devotion 00:04:24.860 --> 00:04:26.980 to the king and the church, and he just sees 00:04:26.980 --> 00:04:29.639 it as a relic, something dead and illogical. 00:04:29.959 --> 00:04:31.839 By the time he's a teenager, he creates what 00:04:31.839 --> 00:04:34.000 he later calls unbridgeable differences with 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:36.620 his family. Unbridgeable differences. That's 00:04:36.620 --> 00:04:39.060 a strong phrase. He uses it more than once in 00:04:39.060 --> 00:04:41.560 his life. He completely rejects the Catholic 00:04:41.560 --> 00:04:44.790 God, and he rejects the king. He decides that 00:04:44.790 --> 00:04:47.009 the revolution was necessary to destroy all the 00:04:47.009 --> 00:04:49.529 old rot, but he also sees that the revolution 00:04:49.529 --> 00:04:52.529 completely failed to build a new house. And that's 00:04:52.529 --> 00:04:55.209 a really key insight, isn't it? He wasn't a revolutionary 00:04:55.209 --> 00:04:57.550 in the sense of, let's just burn everything down. 00:04:57.810 --> 00:04:59.910 He was the guy standing in the ashes saying, 00:05:00.069 --> 00:05:02.370 okay, the fire's out, now where are the blueprints 00:05:02.370 --> 00:05:05.069 for the new building? Precisely. He was looking 00:05:05.069 --> 00:05:08.199 for a new source of authority. If the king isn't 00:05:08.199 --> 00:05:10.899 in charge anymore, and God isn't in charge, then 00:05:10.899 --> 00:05:13.740 who is? And for him, the answer was obvious. 00:05:14.379 --> 00:05:17.560 Science. The scientists, the engineers, the mathematicians. 00:05:17.930 --> 00:05:20.269 Which leads him to Paris. It leads him to the 00:05:20.269 --> 00:05:22.910 École Polytechnique in Paris, which is arguably 00:05:22.910 --> 00:05:25.250 the single most important institution in his 00:05:25.250 --> 00:05:28.009 life. You have to understand, this was not some 00:05:28.009 --> 00:05:31.370 stuffy old liberal arts college. This was a military 00:05:31.370 --> 00:05:33.730 and engineering school founded during a revolution. 00:05:34.189 --> 00:05:36.149 So it's a product of this new world. It was a 00:05:36.149 --> 00:05:38.850 hotbed of radical republicanism and this incredible 00:05:38.850 --> 00:05:42.449 scientific optimism. The air there was just thick 00:05:42.449 --> 00:05:44.430 with this idea that engineers should be running 00:05:44.430 --> 00:05:48.089 the world. That is a very modern idea. The technocrat. 00:05:48.089 --> 00:05:50.310 The belief that if you're just smart enough at 00:05:50.310 --> 00:05:53.029 math, you can solve poverty like it's an algebraic 00:05:53.029 --> 00:05:56.370 equation. That was the entire ethos. The students 00:05:56.370 --> 00:05:58.449 there believed that the methods of the natural 00:05:58.449 --> 00:06:01.009 sciences, you know, observation, experimentation, 00:06:01.329 --> 00:06:03.889 calculation, could and should be applied to social 00:06:03.889 --> 00:06:06.670 problems. And Comte just absorbed this completely. 00:06:07.029 --> 00:06:09.589 But his academic career doesn't exactly go smoothly. 00:06:10.050 --> 00:06:12.310 No, it hits a wall. The government actually shuts 00:06:12.310 --> 00:06:15.370 the entire school down in 1816 because the students 00:06:15.370 --> 00:06:17.490 were considered too radical, too Republican. 00:06:17.730 --> 00:06:20.370 So Comte gets sent home, gets into more fights 00:06:20.370 --> 00:06:22.029 with his parents, those unbridgeable differences 00:06:22.029 --> 00:06:24.709 again, and eventually he just drifts back to 00:06:24.709 --> 00:06:26.889 Paris broke and without a degree. And this is 00:06:26.889 --> 00:06:28.970 where he meets the man who essentially gives 00:06:28.970 --> 00:06:31.629 him the raw materials for his life's work. Henri 00:06:31.629 --> 00:06:34.470 de Saint -Simon. Saint -Simon, the mentor figure. 00:06:34.829 --> 00:06:37.430 From the notes, it seems like Saint -Simon was 00:06:37.430 --> 00:06:39.629 already cooking up a lot of these ideas about 00:06:39.629 --> 00:06:43.240 social... physiology and reorganizing society 00:06:43.240 --> 00:06:46.680 around industry. He was. San Samuel is a fascinating 00:06:46.680 --> 00:06:50.000 character in his own right, this eccentric aristocrat 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:51.959 who had somehow survived the revolution by the 00:06:51.959 --> 00:06:54.839 skin of his teeth. For Comte, he was the catalyst. 00:06:55.160 --> 00:06:57.199 San Samuel believed that the old feudal system 00:06:57.199 --> 00:06:59.860 was dead and that the new society had to be led 00:06:59.860 --> 00:07:02.180 by what he called industrialists. Which wasn't 00:07:02.180 --> 00:07:03.959 just factory owners, right? It was a broader 00:07:03.959 --> 00:07:07.000 term. Much broader. For him, it meant everyone 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:09.759 productive. Workers, scientists, bankers, engineers. 00:07:10.860 --> 00:07:14.259 In 1817, Comte becomes his secretary, his student, 00:07:14.420 --> 00:07:16.819 and he's the young bulldog, the systematizer. 00:07:17.399 --> 00:07:20.240 Saint -Simon would have these grand, messy, brilliant 00:07:20.240 --> 00:07:22.360 visions, and Comte would be the one to write 00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:24.699 them down, give them structure, and turn them 00:07:24.699 --> 00:07:26.779 into coherent essays. It sounds like a classic 00:07:26.779 --> 00:07:29.639 dynamic, the big -picture visionary and the detail 00:07:29.639 --> 00:07:32.560 -oriented operator. It was, for a while. But 00:07:32.560 --> 00:07:35.149 the sources say it ended badly. That phrase, 00:07:35.329 --> 00:07:37.810 unbridgeable differences, seems to be comedy's 00:07:37.810 --> 00:07:40.410 personal catchphrase. It really was his recurring 00:07:40.410 --> 00:07:43.730 pattern in life. The breakup in 1824 was just 00:07:43.730 --> 00:07:46.350 ugly. It was partly about intellectual criticism. 00:07:47.180 --> 00:07:49.279 Comte felt that Saint -Simon was putting his 00:07:49.279 --> 00:07:51.740 own name on Comte's specific work, treating him 00:07:51.740 --> 00:07:54.120 like a mere scribe instead of a true collaborator. 00:07:54.259 --> 00:07:55.959 I can see how that would be frustrating. But 00:07:55.959 --> 00:07:58.000 it was also philosophical. Saint -Simon was an 00:07:58.000 --> 00:07:59.740 activist. He wanted to rush straight to the political 00:07:59.740 --> 00:08:01.740 changes. He wanted to reorganize society now. 00:08:02.120 --> 00:08:04.060 Comte was more cautious, more methodical. He 00:08:04.060 --> 00:08:06.379 basically said, hold on, we can't reorganize 00:08:06.379 --> 00:08:08.500 society until we first reorganize the way people 00:08:08.500 --> 00:08:10.959 think. You can't build the new building until 00:08:10.959 --> 00:08:12.860 you've invented the physics that will keep it 00:08:12.860 --> 00:08:14.899 from falling down. That's the perfect analogy. 00:08:15.139 --> 00:08:18.399 So he walks away. No job, no degree, totally 00:08:18.399 --> 00:08:20.959 alienated from his family and now alienated from 00:08:20.959 --> 00:08:23.379 his mentor. And he decides at this low point, 00:08:23.480 --> 00:08:25.639 you know what? I'm going to create a system that 00:08:25.639 --> 00:08:28.220 explains the entire history of human knowledge. 00:08:28.379 --> 00:08:30.439 That is a staggering amount of pressure to put 00:08:30.439 --> 00:08:32.500 on yourself. And the pressure, well, it broke 00:08:32.500 --> 00:08:35.299 him. We often skip over the mental health aspect 00:08:35.299 --> 00:08:37.340 of these great philosophers. You know, we treat 00:08:37.340 --> 00:08:40.759 them like these disembodied brains in jars. But 00:08:40.759 --> 00:08:43.519 with Comte, it is absolutely crucial to understanding 00:08:43.519 --> 00:08:47.789 the urgency of his work. In 1826, just as he 00:08:47.789 --> 00:08:49.769 started lecturing on his great new philosophy 00:08:49.769 --> 00:08:52.409 to a private audience of very distinguished scientists, 00:08:52.809 --> 00:08:56.029 he had what was called a cerebral crisis. Which 00:08:56.029 --> 00:08:58.529 is a polite 19th century way of saying a complete 00:08:58.529 --> 00:09:01.629 psychotic break. It was severe. He fled his home, 00:09:01.750 --> 00:09:03.610 he was found wandering in the suburbs of Paris, 00:09:03.789 --> 00:09:06.269 and he was eventually admitted to an asylum run 00:09:06.269 --> 00:09:08.950 by the very famous alienist of the time, Jean 00:09:08.950 --> 00:09:10.940 -Étienne Dominique Esquerolle. And the treatment 00:09:10.940 --> 00:09:13.899 back then was? It was rudimentary. It was brutal. 00:09:14.419 --> 00:09:17.539 Isolation, cold baths, probably bloodletting. 00:09:17.759 --> 00:09:19.679 And the medical notes from the time are really 00:09:19.679 --> 00:09:22.139 telling. It says he was released, but not cured. 00:09:22.679 --> 00:09:25.480 Right. He was just stabilized. His mother essentially 00:09:25.480 --> 00:09:27.440 had to sign him out and take him home to care 00:09:27.440 --> 00:09:38.860 for him. And the tragedy just keeps going. A 00:09:38.860 --> 00:09:42.220 suicide attempt. A very serious one. He was rescued 00:09:42.220 --> 00:09:44.860 by a passing royal guard, but it was an incredibly 00:09:44.860 --> 00:09:47.519 close call. It really changes how you read his 00:09:47.519 --> 00:09:49.240 work, doesn't it? I mean, this is a man whose 00:09:49.240 --> 00:09:52.440 internal world was absolute chaos. He was prone 00:09:52.440 --> 00:09:55.639 to these violent mood swings, deep, deep depression. 00:09:55.820 --> 00:09:58.490 So when he sits down to write... thousands of 00:09:58.490 --> 00:10:01.149 pages about order and stability and certainty, 00:10:01.370 --> 00:10:03.330 he isn't just talking about France. He's talking 00:10:03.330 --> 00:10:04.789 about himself. He's trying to build a mental 00:10:04.789 --> 00:10:07.149 cage strong enough to hold his own sanity. That 00:10:07.149 --> 00:10:10.870 is a profound and I think completely accurate 00:10:10.870 --> 00:10:14.690 observation. His philosophy, which he calls positivism, 00:10:14.769 --> 00:10:17.990 is arguably an externalization of his desperate 00:10:17.990 --> 00:10:21.610 need for internal control. After he survived 00:10:21.610 --> 00:10:24.570 that suicide attempt, he adopted this incredibly 00:10:24.570 --> 00:10:27.929 strict personal regimen he called cerebral hygiene. 00:10:28.409 --> 00:10:30.830 Cerebral hygiene. He refused to read newspapers. 00:10:31.110 --> 00:10:33.149 He wouldn't read other people's scientific journals, 00:10:33.269 --> 00:10:35.889 no political reviews. He basically cut himself 00:10:35.889 --> 00:10:39.210 off from almost all new inputs. Why? To keep 00:10:39.210 --> 00:10:42.840 his mind pure. for his own great synthesis. He 00:10:42.840 --> 00:10:45.019 wanted absolutely no outside noise, only the 00:10:45.019 --> 00:10:47.039 sound of his own internal logic working itself 00:10:47.039 --> 00:10:49.379 out. That's wild. He essentially ghosted the 00:10:49.379 --> 00:10:51.700 entire intellectual world so that he could write 00:10:51.700 --> 00:10:53.820 the instruction manual for the entire intellectual 00:10:53.820 --> 00:10:56.240 world. It's the ultimate paradox. Okay, so let's 00:10:56.240 --> 00:10:58.500 open that manual. He starts publishing the course, 00:10:58.620 --> 00:11:01.000 Positive Philosophy. It's enormous, six volumes. 00:11:01.220 --> 00:11:03.559 And the core of this whole thing is positivism. 00:11:03.740 --> 00:11:06.139 Now, in modern English, when we say someone is 00:11:06.139 --> 00:11:07.940 positive, we mean they're happy or optimistic. 00:11:08.100 --> 00:11:10.740 That is not what he meant. Not at all. In Comte's 00:11:10.740 --> 00:11:13.559 French, the word positive has a very specific 00:11:13.559 --> 00:11:16.100 technical weight. It implies something that is 00:11:16.100 --> 00:11:19.200 real, useful, certain, precise, and organic. 00:11:19.519 --> 00:11:22.159 It's the absolute opposite of the negative critical 00:11:22.159 --> 00:11:24.620 thinking that he felt had defined the revolution. 00:11:25.039 --> 00:11:27.220 What do you mean by negative? Well, the revolution 00:11:27.220 --> 00:11:29.620 was great at saying no. No to the king, no to 00:11:29.620 --> 00:11:32.259 the church, no to the old ways. But it was terrible 00:11:32.259 --> 00:11:35.559 at saying yes to a new system. Positivism is 00:11:35.559 --> 00:11:38.330 all about finding the yes. It's about establishing 00:11:38.330 --> 00:11:41.350 facts that are so certain, so undeniable that 00:11:41.350 --> 00:11:43.309 they can serve as a new foundation for society. 00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:45.919 And to get to those undeniable facts, he says 00:11:45.919 --> 00:11:48.639 we have to clear the deck. No more ghosts, no 00:11:48.639 --> 00:11:51.019 more spirits, no more abstract concepts like 00:11:51.019 --> 00:11:53.360 human rights. If you can't measure it, observe 00:11:53.360 --> 00:11:55.399 it, or deduce it from other observations, it's 00:11:55.399 --> 00:11:58.259 garbage. Exactly. Positivism is what philosophers 00:11:58.259 --> 00:12:00.940 call an epistemological perspective. It's a rule 00:12:00.940 --> 00:12:03.200 for how we know what we know. He's making this 00:12:03.200 --> 00:12:05.299 huge distinction between the natural philosophy 00:12:05.299 --> 00:12:07.919 of the past, which he saw as just smart guys 00:12:07.919 --> 00:12:10.139 thinking deep thoughts in their armchairs, and 00:12:10.139 --> 00:12:12.340 science, which is based on discovering laws. 00:12:12.779 --> 00:12:15.120 through rigorous observation. And to organize 00:12:15.120 --> 00:12:17.899 all of this, he creates one of his most enduring 00:12:17.899 --> 00:12:21.440 ideas, the hierarchy of the sciences. He called 00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:24.279 it the encyclopedic law. He basically creates 00:12:24.279 --> 00:12:26.899 a ladder and ranks every single field of human 00:12:26.899 --> 00:12:28.980 knowledge. It's an incredibly ambitious project. 00:12:29.179 --> 00:12:31.740 I love a good list. How does he rank them? Is 00:12:31.740 --> 00:12:35.820 it by importance? It's by a combination of decreasing 00:12:35.820 --> 00:12:39.059 positivity or exactness and increasing complexity. 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:41.679 But the easiest way to think about it is dependence. 00:12:42.480 --> 00:12:44.840 Imagine a ladder. At the very bottom, the first 00:12:44.840 --> 00:12:46.779 rung, you have mathematics. It's the most abstract, 00:12:46.940 --> 00:12:49.600 the most perfect, the most exact science. Two 00:12:49.600 --> 00:12:52.000 plus two will always equal four. It doesn't depend 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:54.100 on anything else. You don't need to know biology 00:12:54.100 --> 00:12:56.720 to do math, but you absolutely need math to do 00:12:56.720 --> 00:12:58.320 everything else. Right. So math is the foundation. 00:12:58.320 --> 00:13:00.799 It's the tool for all the others. What's next 00:13:00.799 --> 00:13:04.100 at the ladder? Next is astronomy. It's the study 00:13:04.100 --> 00:13:07.340 of the simplest concrete objects, stars and planets 00:13:07.340 --> 00:13:09.759 moving through a vacuum. The variables are relatively 00:13:09.759 --> 00:13:14.110 few. You have mass. distance, velocity. He argued 00:13:14.110 --> 00:13:16.190 it was the first science to become truly positive, 00:13:16.450 --> 00:13:19.169 truly scientific, precisely because it's the 00:13:19.169 --> 00:13:21.049 simplest thing to observe and predict. Then I 00:13:21.049 --> 00:13:24.070 assume we get closer to home, more complex. Exactly. 00:13:24.470 --> 00:13:27.350 The next rung is physics. Now we're dealing with 00:13:27.350 --> 00:13:30.049 terrestrial matter, with heat, light, electricity, 00:13:30.289 --> 00:13:32.990 gravity on Earth. It's more complex than watching 00:13:32.990 --> 00:13:37.509 a planet. After that, chemistry. Matter isn't 00:13:37.509 --> 00:13:39.549 just moving, it's reacting, it's changing its 00:13:39.549 --> 00:13:42.090 composition. It's getting messier and more complicated. 00:13:42.409 --> 00:13:44.190 I see the pattern. We're moving from the simple 00:13:44.190 --> 00:13:46.710 and the abstract to the messy and the concrete. 00:13:46.929 --> 00:13:51.389 Precisely. The next rung up is biology, or physiology 00:13:51.389 --> 00:13:54.049 as he often called it. And now you have life, 00:13:54.190 --> 00:13:57.370 an infinitely more complex phenomenon than a 00:13:57.370 --> 00:14:00.029 rock or a chemical reaction. You have organs, 00:14:00.169 --> 00:14:02.230 you have systems, you have death, you have reproduction. 00:14:02.490 --> 00:14:04.330 And at the very, very top of the ladder. At the 00:14:04.330 --> 00:14:06.570 very top, the queen science. The science that 00:14:06.570 --> 00:14:08.830 depends on all the others, but is more complex 00:14:08.830 --> 00:14:11.669 than any of them. He calls it sociology. He puts 00:14:11.669 --> 00:14:13.450 his own invention at the top of the pyramid. 00:14:13.570 --> 00:14:15.629 That's a pretty convenient move. It's a power 00:14:15.629 --> 00:14:18.870 move, for sure, but it follows his logic perfectly. 00:14:19.250 --> 00:14:22.850 You cannot possibly understand society, which 00:14:22.850 --> 00:14:25.490 is a group of living humans, if you don't first 00:14:25.490 --> 00:14:28.370 understand biology, how individual humans work. 00:14:28.840 --> 00:14:31.240 And you can't understand biology without understanding 00:14:31.240 --> 00:14:33.539 the chemistry of the body and so on, all the 00:14:33.539 --> 00:14:36.460 way down to mathematics. So his argument is that 00:14:36.460 --> 00:14:39.279 the reason society was such a mess in the 1800s 00:14:39.279 --> 00:14:40.980 was that we were trying to solve sociological 00:14:40.980 --> 00:14:43.059 problems without having mastered the science 00:14:43.059 --> 00:14:45.360 of sociology first. That's it, exactly. We were 00:14:45.360 --> 00:14:47.320 trying to run a country based on old religious 00:14:47.320 --> 00:14:50.419 books or vague philosophical ideas, what he would 00:14:50.419 --> 00:14:53.299 call feelings and guesswork, instead of on social 00:14:53.299 --> 00:14:55.740 physics. Social physics. I know he eventually 00:14:55.740 --> 00:14:57.500 dropped that name because some other guy stole 00:14:57.500 --> 00:14:59.090 it, but I actually... like it better than sociology. 00:14:59.509 --> 00:15:01.389 It tells you exactly what he was trying to do. 00:15:01.509 --> 00:15:04.129 He wanted to find the laws of gravity that govern 00:15:04.129 --> 00:15:07.490 human interaction. He really did. And the theft 00:15:07.490 --> 00:15:09.470 of the name is actually a pretty funny sidebar 00:15:09.470 --> 00:15:12.570 in history. There was this Belgian statistician, 00:15:12.570 --> 00:15:15.620 Adolphe Quetelet. who started using the term 00:15:15.620 --> 00:15:17.940 social physics for his own statistical work, 00:15:18.100 --> 00:15:20.559 which was mostly just crunching crime rates and 00:15:20.559 --> 00:15:22.659 things like that. And Comte was not happy. He 00:15:22.659 --> 00:15:24.899 was furious. He felt Quetelet was just playing 00:15:24.899 --> 00:15:27.720 with numbers without the deep philosophical framework 00:15:27.720 --> 00:15:30.220 to understand what they meant. So in a fit of 00:15:30.220 --> 00:15:33.279 pique, Comte coined the neologism sociality, 00:15:33.299 --> 00:15:37.860 which is this awkward hybrid of Latin, socius, 00:15:37.860 --> 00:15:41.559 meaning companion, and Greek. Logos, meaning 00:15:41.559 --> 00:15:43.759 study. The language purists must have hated it. 00:15:43.879 --> 00:15:46.200 They did. They called it a monstrosity. But it 00:15:46.200 --> 00:15:49.340 stuck. And he split this new science of sociology 00:15:49.340 --> 00:15:52.279 into two major branches, statics and dynamics. 00:15:52.559 --> 00:15:54.100 Which are engineering terms. They're borrowed 00:15:54.100 --> 00:15:56.679 from mechanics. Absolutely. He saw society as 00:15:56.679 --> 00:15:59.519 a machine or an organism. So social statics for 00:15:59.519 --> 00:16:01.659 him is the anatomy of society. It's the study 00:16:01.659 --> 00:16:03.620 of the forces that hold it together at any given 00:16:03.620 --> 00:16:05.899 moment. The forces of order. What would he examine? 00:16:06.100 --> 00:16:08.179 He looked at things like the family unit, language, 00:16:08.399 --> 00:16:11.360 religion. the division of labor. These are the 00:16:11.360 --> 00:16:13.379 institutions, the connections, the boundaries 00:16:13.379 --> 00:16:16.639 that create social cohesion. If you don't have 00:16:16.639 --> 00:16:19.200 these, he argued, society just dissolves into 00:16:19.200 --> 00:16:21.200 a collection of individuals. And social dynamics. 00:16:21.620 --> 00:16:23.879 That's the physiology. It's not the structure, 00:16:23.980 --> 00:16:26.480 but how the organism moves and changes over time. 00:16:27.320 --> 00:16:30.460 This is the study of progress. How does a civilization 00:16:30.460 --> 00:16:32.820 evolve from one state to the next? How does it 00:16:32.820 --> 00:16:35.740 develop? And that dynamics part, the study of 00:16:35.740 --> 00:16:38.519 how society moves, that leads us directly to 00:16:38.519 --> 00:16:42.139 the big one, his grand unified theory of history, 00:16:42.460 --> 00:16:45.740 the law of three stages. This is the absolute 00:16:45.740 --> 00:16:48.840 central pillar of all of his thought. He believed 00:16:48.840 --> 00:16:51.379 that this wasn't just a theory. It was an observable 00:16:51.379 --> 00:16:54.340 scientific law like gravity. The idea is that 00:16:54.340 --> 00:16:56.700 the human mind, and therefore all of human society, 00:16:57.000 --> 00:16:59.580 inevitably passes through three distinct theoretical 00:16:59.580 --> 00:17:01.860 conditions. And it applies to everything. To 00:17:01.860 --> 00:17:04.420 everything. To an entire civilization over thousands 00:17:04.420 --> 00:17:07.740 of years, to a single science, and even to the 00:17:07.740 --> 00:17:09.779 development of an individual person's mind from 00:17:09.779 --> 00:17:13.000 childhood to adulthood. He famously said, the 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:16.359 dead govern the living. He meant that our current 00:17:16.359 --> 00:17:19.440 world is completely shaped by the path laid down 00:17:19.440 --> 00:17:21.359 by these previous stages. All right, let's walk 00:17:21.359 --> 00:17:24.140 that path. Stage one. The theological stage. 00:17:24.440 --> 00:17:27.579 He also called this the fictitious stage. This 00:17:27.579 --> 00:17:30.619 is the childhood of humanity. It lasts roughly 00:17:30.619 --> 00:17:32.980 from the dawn of time up until the late Middle 00:17:32.980 --> 00:17:36.740 Ages, maybe the 1300s. In this stage, the human 00:17:36.740 --> 00:17:38.960 mind is desperate to know why things happen. 00:17:39.099 --> 00:17:41.019 The ultimate questions. The absolute questions. 00:17:41.079 --> 00:17:43.200 Why is there thunder? Why did the river flood? 00:17:43.339 --> 00:17:45.559 What's the first cause of everything? And because 00:17:45.559 --> 00:17:47.859 we don't have science yet, we invent supernatural 00:17:47.859 --> 00:17:50.380 agents to explain the anomalies in the universe. 00:17:50.619 --> 00:17:52.920 The thunder god is angry. The river spirit is 00:17:52.920 --> 00:17:56.140 hungry and demands a sacrifice. Exactly. And 00:17:56.140 --> 00:17:58.319 what's interesting is that Comte doesn't mock 00:17:58.319 --> 00:18:01.240 this stage. He actually argues that it was absolutely 00:18:01.240 --> 00:18:04.220 necessary. If the primitive mind didn't have 00:18:04.220 --> 00:18:06.799 some kind of theory to connect the facts, even 00:18:06.799 --> 00:18:08.920 a made -up one, it would have been completely 00:18:08.920 --> 00:18:11.859 paralyzed by fear and confusion. observation 00:18:11.859 --> 00:18:14.200 would have been impossible without a framework. 00:18:14.480 --> 00:18:17.640 So religion was like the training wheels for 00:18:17.640 --> 00:18:19.599 human thought. That's a great way to put it. 00:18:19.660 --> 00:18:21.920 He also said it created the first class of people 00:18:21.920 --> 00:18:24.400 dedicated to speculative activity, the priests, 00:18:24.640 --> 00:18:26.960 which paved the way for later philosophers and 00:18:26.960 --> 00:18:29.960 scientists. And this stage has its own evolution. 00:18:30.299 --> 00:18:32.799 It starts with fetishism. Which is believing 00:18:32.799 --> 00:18:35.319 that inanimate objects, like a rock or a tree, 00:18:35.519 --> 00:18:38.329 have a spirit or a soul in them. Right. Then 00:18:38.329 --> 00:18:40.849 it evolves into polytheism. We move from every 00:18:40.849 --> 00:18:43.410 single object having a soul to having specific 00:18:43.410 --> 00:18:46.170 gods for specific things. Poseidon for the sea, 00:18:46.329 --> 00:18:48.750 Ra for the sun, and so on. This is an improvement, 00:18:48.890 --> 00:18:50.750 but it's confusing because the gods are always 00:18:50.750 --> 00:18:52.930 fighting with each other. And that leads to the 00:18:52.930 --> 00:18:56.569 climax of the stage. Monotheism, the belief in 00:18:56.569 --> 00:19:01.170 one single all -powerful god. For Comte, this 00:19:01.170 --> 00:19:03.470 was the peak of the theological stage because 00:19:03.470 --> 00:19:06.009 it brings the most order. Polytheism is chaotic. 00:19:06.690 --> 00:19:08.630 Poseidon might want one thing, Zeus might want 00:19:08.630 --> 00:19:11.490 another. Monotheism reduces the entire confusion 00:19:11.490 --> 00:19:14.390 of the universe down to a single will. One God 00:19:14.390 --> 00:19:17.390 in heaven, one king on earth, one absolute truth. 00:19:17.690 --> 00:19:20.390 It prepares the mind for the idea of universal 00:19:20.390 --> 00:19:24.210 scientific laws. But then we grow up a bit. We 00:19:24.210 --> 00:19:27.680 hit the difficult teenage years. Stage two. The 00:19:27.680 --> 00:19:30.279 metaphysical stage. Or the abstract stage. He 00:19:30.279 --> 00:19:32.619 saw this as a transitional phase, lasting roughly 00:19:32.619 --> 00:19:36.000 from the 1300s to the 1800s. It covers the Renaissance, 00:19:36.319 --> 00:19:37.660 the Enlightenment, and crucially, the French 00:19:37.660 --> 00:19:40.279 Revolution. So what defines the stage? In the 00:19:40.279 --> 00:19:42.000 metaphysical stage, we stop believing that Zeus 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:43.680 is literally up on a mountain throwing lightning 00:19:43.680 --> 00:19:46.039 bolts, but we're not quite ready for pure physics 00:19:46.039 --> 00:19:48.779 yet. So we replace the supernatural agents with 00:19:48.779 --> 00:19:51.359 abstract entities or invisible forces. What does 00:19:51.359 --> 00:19:53.660 that mean in practice, abstract entities? Instead 00:19:53.660 --> 00:19:56.420 of saying, God moved the planet, a metaphysical 00:19:56.420 --> 00:20:00.140 thinker might say, Nature abhors a vacuum. Instead 00:20:00.140 --> 00:20:02.720 of saying the king rules by divine right from 00:20:02.720 --> 00:20:05.579 God, we start talking about the sovereignty of 00:20:05.579 --> 00:20:08.880 the people or inalienable rights that are endowed 00:20:08.880 --> 00:20:11.559 by, well, something abstract. We talk about a 00:20:11.559 --> 00:20:14.920 social contract or vital forces in biology or 00:20:14.920 --> 00:20:17.700 the soul. Wait, hold on a second. Inalienable 00:20:17.700 --> 00:20:20.220 rights, sovereignty of the people. That sounds 00:20:20.220 --> 00:20:22.759 like us. That sounds like the U .S. Declaration 00:20:22.759 --> 00:20:24.599 of Independence. That sounds like the foundation 00:20:24.599 --> 00:20:27.609 of modern democracy. And this is precisely where 00:20:27.609 --> 00:20:30.130 Comte gets so controversial and so challenging 00:20:30.130 --> 00:20:33.430 to our modern ears. He hated this stage. He called 00:20:33.430 --> 00:20:35.890 it the critical or negative stage. Hate of it. 00:20:36.069 --> 00:20:38.869 He saw it as necessary, but only as a tool of 00:20:38.869 --> 00:20:41.130 destruction. He believed it was like a teenager 00:20:41.130 --> 00:20:43.029 who has to rebel against their parents to become 00:20:43.029 --> 00:20:45.049 an independent adult. The metaphysical stage 00:20:45.049 --> 00:20:47.269 was necessary to destroy the old tyranny, the 00:20:47.269 --> 00:20:49.549 theological stage, the absolute power of the 00:20:49.549 --> 00:20:52.930 king and the church. But he argued that you cannot 00:20:52.930 --> 00:20:56.079 build a lasting society on it. Why not? I mean, 00:20:56.099 --> 00:20:58.140 we seem to have built plenty of societies on 00:20:58.140 --> 00:21:00.440 the idea of rights and liberty. Come to would 00:21:00.440 --> 00:21:03.380 argue, have we? Or have we just built societies 00:21:03.380 --> 00:21:05.960 that are in a permanent state of argument? His 00:21:05.960 --> 00:21:08.299 critique was that metaphysical concepts like 00:21:08.299 --> 00:21:12.859 liberty, equality, or human rights are just abstractions. 00:21:12.880 --> 00:21:15.140 They aren't scientifically defined. You can't 00:21:15.140 --> 00:21:17.420 measure liberty. And because they aren't observable 00:21:17.420 --> 00:21:19.720 facts, people just debate their meaning forever. 00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:22.859 It leads to what he called intellectual anarchy. 00:21:23.039 --> 00:21:24.859 He's basically looking at the French Revolution 00:21:24.859 --> 00:21:27.640 and saying, see? You got rid of the king in the 00:21:27.640 --> 00:21:29.700 name of liberty, and five minutes later you were 00:21:29.700 --> 00:21:31.759 chopping each other's heads off in the name of 00:21:31.759 --> 00:21:34.680 liberty. Exactly. The abstraction didn't provide 00:21:34.680 --> 00:21:38.119 stability. It created a vacuum. He saw liberal 00:21:38.119 --> 00:21:41.940 democracy as this chaotic, messy bridge between 00:21:41.940 --> 00:21:44.900 the old stable order of the past and the new 00:21:44.900 --> 00:21:47.839 stable order that was yet to come. A necessary 00:21:47.839 --> 00:21:50.519 phase of destruction, but a terrible foundation 00:21:50.519 --> 00:21:53.269 for construction. That is a genuinely haunting 00:21:53.269 --> 00:21:55.470 critique. He's saying we are just stuck on the 00:21:55.470 --> 00:21:58.569 bridge, arguing. Precisely. And he desperately 00:21:58.569 --> 00:22:01.150 wanted to push humanity across that bridge to 00:22:01.150 --> 00:22:04.670 the final destination. Stage three, the positive 00:22:04.670 --> 00:22:07.789 stage, the adulthood of humanity. The scientific 00:22:07.789 --> 00:22:10.529 stage. What does that world look like? In the 00:22:10.529 --> 00:22:13.069 positive stage, the human mind finally gives 00:22:13.069 --> 00:22:16.049 up the search for absolute knowledge. We stop 00:22:16.049 --> 00:22:18.859 asking why. We stop asking, what is the ultimate 00:22:18.859 --> 00:22:20.940 meaning of life? Or where did the universe come 00:22:20.940 --> 00:22:23.339 from? Because those questions can't be answered 00:22:23.339 --> 00:22:25.400 with observation and data. So what do we ask 00:22:25.400 --> 00:22:28.339 instead? We ask how. How do the planets move 00:22:28.339 --> 00:22:30.779 according to mathematical laws? How does poverty 00:22:30.779 --> 00:22:33.240 spread through a population? We stop searching 00:22:33.240 --> 00:22:35.599 for first causes and start searching for discoverable 00:22:35.599 --> 00:22:38.319 laws, which he defined as the constant relations 00:22:38.319 --> 00:22:41.400 between observed phenomena. So we trade meaning 00:22:41.400 --> 00:22:45.519 for prediction. See to foresee, foresee to provide. 00:22:46.569 --> 00:22:49.109 That was one of his great mottos. The goal of 00:22:49.109 --> 00:22:51.549 science for him wasn't just to understand the 00:22:51.549 --> 00:22:54.210 world. It was to control it for human benefit. 00:22:54.609 --> 00:22:56.869 If we know the scientific laws of sociology, 00:22:57.289 --> 00:22:59.569 we don't need politics anymore. We don't need 00:22:59.569 --> 00:23:01.490 to vote on whether to build a bridge or how to 00:23:01.490 --> 00:23:04.069 distribute food during a famine. We just calculate 00:23:04.069 --> 00:23:06.630 the optimal, most efficient solution, and we 00:23:06.630 --> 00:23:09.349 do it. It's the ultimate technocracy. The absolute 00:23:09.349 --> 00:23:11.549 ultimate. It sounds incredibly efficient. It 00:23:11.549 --> 00:23:14.250 also sounds incredibly cold. It's a world run 00:23:14.250 --> 00:23:16.710 by spreadsheets. There's no room for debate, 00:23:16.890 --> 00:23:19.529 no room for passion, just calculation. And that 00:23:19.529 --> 00:23:22.509 is exactly where the entire story twists. Because 00:23:22.509 --> 00:23:25.130 Comte, the man of pure reason and cold calculation, 00:23:25.349 --> 00:23:28.269 fell in love. And it completely broke his system. 00:23:28.450 --> 00:23:32.930 Enter Clotildeveau. The year is 1844. Comte is 00:23:32.930 --> 00:23:35.579 long separated from his first wife. a woman named 00:23:35.579 --> 00:23:38.220 Caroline Massine, a former prostitute he'd tried 00:23:38.220 --> 00:23:40.900 to save, and their marriage was just disastrous 00:23:40.900 --> 00:23:43.900 and volatile. A total mess. So he meets Clotilde 00:23:43.900 --> 00:23:45.839 at the home of one of his students. She's young, 00:23:45.900 --> 00:23:48.240 she's an intellectual, she writes poetry, and 00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:50.799 she's also trapped in a terrible situation. Her 00:23:50.799 --> 00:23:53.720 situation was just tragic. Her husband was a 00:23:53.720 --> 00:23:55.859 tax collector who had embezzled a huge amount 00:23:55.859 --> 00:23:58.140 of government funds and then fled the country, 00:23:58.299 --> 00:24:00.900 leaving her disgraced, penniless, and abandoned. 00:24:01.609 --> 00:24:04.490 But, and this is key, divorce was illegal in 00:24:04.490 --> 00:24:06.470 France at the time, so she was still legally 00:24:06.470 --> 00:24:09.630 married to him. And Comte falls for her. Hard. 00:24:09.869 --> 00:24:12.569 He becomes completely infatuated with her. But 00:24:12.569 --> 00:24:14.359 it couldn't go anywhere. The relationship couldn't 00:24:14.359 --> 00:24:16.640 be consummated? It was this intense, passionate, 00:24:16.900 --> 00:24:19.400 intellectual, and emotional connection, but it 00:24:19.400 --> 00:24:22.539 was strictly platonic. Clotilde is a devout Catholic, 00:24:22.660 --> 00:24:25.579 and she refused to break her marital vows, even 00:24:25.579 --> 00:24:27.319 to a criminal husband who had abandoned her. 00:24:27.779 --> 00:24:29.539 Comte just worshipped her. He wrote her these 00:24:29.539 --> 00:24:32.660 agonizingly long, beautiful letters. He called 00:24:32.660 --> 00:24:36.400 her his angel. But the story doesn't have a happy 00:24:36.400 --> 00:24:39.920 ending. No. She was sick with tuberculosis, and 00:24:39.920 --> 00:24:43.180 she died just two years later in 1846. literally 00:24:43.180 --> 00:24:45.900 in his arms. And this death, it wasn't just a 00:24:45.900 --> 00:24:48.460 personal tragedy for him. It completely rewired 00:24:48.460 --> 00:24:51.660 his entire philosophy. Completely. Before Clotilde, 00:24:51.799 --> 00:24:53.720 Comte believed the intellect was the supreme 00:24:53.720 --> 00:24:57.480 guide for humanity. The brain was the boss. But 00:24:57.480 --> 00:24:59.779 after her death, after experiencing this profound 00:24:59.779 --> 00:25:02.839 love and profound grief, he decided that the 00:25:02.839 --> 00:25:04.839 intellect was actually just a servant to the 00:25:04.839 --> 00:25:08.099 heart. He had this huge realization that his 00:25:08.099 --> 00:25:11.019 positive society had a fatal flaw. Which was? 00:25:11.200 --> 00:25:13.720 It was boring. It was cold. It offered truth, 00:25:13.839 --> 00:25:15.759 but it offered absolutely no comfort. It had 00:25:15.759 --> 00:25:19.200 no community, no ritual, no love. The theological 00:25:19.200 --> 00:25:21.740 stage for all its fictions had rituals and art 00:25:21.740 --> 00:25:23.519 and feelings that bound people together into 00:25:23.519 --> 00:25:26.460 a community. The positive stage was just dry 00:25:26.460 --> 00:25:29.200 data and efficient administration. So he decides 00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:31.240 to solve this problem. And where most people 00:25:31.240 --> 00:25:33.619 would, you know, just join a choir or start a 00:25:33.619 --> 00:25:36.259 book club to find community, Comte decides to 00:25:36.259 --> 00:25:38.660 invent a new global religion. The religion of 00:25:38.660 --> 00:25:41.299 humanity. This is the phase that his former admirer, 00:25:41.400 --> 00:25:43.900 John Stuart Mill, famously called the bad Comte. 00:25:44.559 --> 00:25:46.799 Mill loved the scientific philosophy, but was 00:25:46.799 --> 00:25:48.960 horrified by what came next. So what was the 00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:51.880 goal of this religion? The goal was to fulfill 00:25:51.880 --> 00:25:54.380 the cohesive social function of traditional religion, 00:25:54.559 --> 00:25:58.619 but for a modern scientific society. Comte argued 00:25:58.619 --> 00:26:01.259 that humans have an innate biological need to 00:26:01.259 --> 00:26:03.880 worship. You can't get rid of it. So since we 00:26:03.880 --> 00:26:05.859 can't believe in a supernatural god anymore, 00:26:06.099 --> 00:26:08.000 because science has proven that's a fiction, 00:26:08.200 --> 00:26:10.740 we should worship the only thing that is truly 00:26:10.740 --> 00:26:13.680 worthy of our worship. Which is? Humanity itself. 00:26:13.839 --> 00:26:16.420 The collective greatness of the human species, 00:26:16.680 --> 00:26:19.940 past, present, and future. He called it le grandet, 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:22.799 the supreme great being. He was not speaking 00:26:22.799 --> 00:26:25.039 metaphorically here. Not at all. He designed 00:26:25.039 --> 00:26:27.140 a priesthood. with himself as the first high 00:26:27.140 --> 00:26:29.819 priest, naturally. He designed a whole new calendar. 00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:32.480 He renamed the 13 months of the year after great 00:26:32.480 --> 00:26:35.400 historical figures. Moses, Homer, Archimedes, 00:26:35.539 --> 00:26:38.220 Caesar, Shakespeare, Descartes. He even created 00:26:38.220 --> 00:26:41.279 his own set of social sacraments. Oh yeah, he 00:26:41.279 --> 00:26:43.619 went all in. He had nine of them, which mirrored 00:26:43.619 --> 00:26:45.799 the seven Catholic sacraments, but he expanded 00:26:45.799 --> 00:26:48.660 on them. Instead of baptism, you had presentation, 00:26:48.960 --> 00:26:51.119 where the parents formally present their newborn 00:26:51.119 --> 00:26:54.500 child to humanity. At age 14, you had initiation, 00:26:54.839 --> 00:26:57.619 where the child enters public life. At 21, admission, 00:26:57.940 --> 00:27:00.660 where they choose a career. Then you had marriage 00:27:00.660 --> 00:27:03.299 and so on. And what about after death? That was 00:27:03.299 --> 00:27:06.200 the final sacrament, incorporation. This took 00:27:06.200 --> 00:27:08.059 place seven years after your death. There would 00:27:08.059 --> 00:27:10.660 be a public judgment of your life. And if you 00:27:10.660 --> 00:27:12.599 were deemed to have been a worthy servant of 00:27:12.599 --> 00:27:15.619 humanity, your remains were symbolically incorporated 00:27:15.619 --> 00:27:18.960 into the great being. You achieved a kind of 00:27:18.960 --> 00:27:21.579 immortality through the memory of the living. 00:27:22.109 --> 00:27:24.109 It's just fascinating because he's literally 00:27:24.109 --> 00:27:26.549 reverse engineering Catholicism. He grew up in 00:27:26.549 --> 00:27:28.690 it. He rejected it. He hated it. And then he 00:27:28.690 --> 00:27:30.670 spent the last years of his life rebuilding it 00:27:30.670 --> 00:27:34.049 piece by piece, but just swapping out Jesus for 00:27:34.049 --> 00:27:36.890 civilization. He explicitly called his system 00:27:36.890 --> 00:27:40.569 Catholicism without Christianity. He wanted the 00:27:40.569 --> 00:27:43.569 entire structure, the rituals, the robes, the 00:27:43.569 --> 00:27:47.210 moral authority, the social cohesion, but without 00:27:47.210 --> 00:27:49.670 any of the supernatural beliefs. And this is 00:27:49.670 --> 00:27:51.470 where we get his other major contribution to 00:27:51.470 --> 00:27:53.930 our vocabulary, altruism. Right. This is the 00:27:53.930 --> 00:27:55.910 other word he coined. We tend to use it to mean 00:27:55.910 --> 00:27:58.190 just, you know, charity or being nice to people. 00:27:58.390 --> 00:28:00.410 But for Comte, it was a much more rigorous and 00:28:00.410 --> 00:28:02.750 central concept. He coined the term from the 00:28:02.750 --> 00:28:05.769 French phrase vivre pour autrui, which means 00:28:05.769 --> 00:28:09.730 to live for others. For Comte, the entire ethical 00:28:09.730 --> 00:28:12.269 basis of this new religion was that the individual 00:28:12.269 --> 00:28:14.809 must subordinate themselves to the collective 00:28:14.809 --> 00:28:18.460 whole. You exist to serve humanity. Self -interest, 00:28:18.599 --> 00:28:21.240 egoism was the original sin. Which sounds incredibly 00:28:21.240 --> 00:28:23.220 noble on the surface, but when you combine it 00:28:23.220 --> 00:28:25.400 with his political views, it gets a little dystopian, 00:28:25.400 --> 00:28:28.019 a little creepy. He wanted what he called a sociocracy. 00:28:28.539 --> 00:28:30.799 Yes, and this is where the modern critique of 00:28:30.799 --> 00:28:32.880 liberticide, the killing of liberty, comes in. 00:28:33.240 --> 00:28:35.759 He believes that since social physics is a science, 00:28:35.920 --> 00:28:38.200 you shouldn't vote on its findings. You don't 00:28:38.200 --> 00:28:39.900 vote on the laws of gravity, do you? Of course 00:28:39.900 --> 00:28:42.200 not. So why, he asks, should you vote on the 00:28:42.200 --> 00:28:45.720 laws of society? He imagined a future world ruled 00:28:45.720 --> 00:28:48.200 by a sort of board of directors, a coalition 00:28:48.200 --> 00:28:50.779 of bankers who would manage the material resources 00:28:50.779 --> 00:28:55.019 of society, and positivist priests, the sociologists, 00:28:55.220 --> 00:28:57.259 who would manage the education and morality. 00:28:57.579 --> 00:28:59.519 And what would the public do? The public would 00:28:59.519 --> 00:29:03.140 just obey. Their job was to trust the experts. 00:29:03.279 --> 00:29:11.559 It's the Borg from Star Trek. It certainly has 00:29:11.559 --> 00:29:14.440 those deeply authoritarian undertones. He explicitly 00:29:14.440 --> 00:29:18.519 valued order far above liberty. For him, liberty 00:29:18.519 --> 00:29:21.220 was just a messy, disruptive, metaphysical concept. 00:29:21.779 --> 00:29:24.220 And this is why, for all his brilliance, his 00:29:24.220 --> 00:29:26.160 religion of humanity never really took off in 00:29:26.160 --> 00:29:28.259 Europe. The intellectuals loved the sociology 00:29:28.259 --> 00:29:31.039 part. They loved his analysis of history. But 00:29:31.039 --> 00:29:32.619 they ran for the hills when he started talking 00:29:32.619 --> 00:29:34.900 about wearing robes and having bankers run the 00:29:34.900 --> 00:29:37.240 world without elections. But, and this is one 00:29:37.240 --> 00:29:39.059 of the weirdest and most fascinating facts in 00:29:39.059 --> 00:29:41.180 all the notes, it did take off somewhere else, 00:29:41.180 --> 00:29:43.500 not in Europe, but across the ocean. In Brazil. 00:29:44.140 --> 00:29:46.819 It's a crazy piece of history. In the late 19th 00:29:46.819 --> 00:29:49.220 century, Brazil was still an empire, and a powerful 00:29:49.220 --> 00:29:52.160 group of military officers and politicians wanted 00:29:52.160 --> 00:29:54.819 to overthrow the emperor and establish a modern 00:29:54.819 --> 00:29:57.250 republic. And they were reading Comte. They were 00:29:57.250 --> 00:29:59.710 obsessed with him. People like Benjamin Constant 00:29:59.710 --> 00:30:02.390 and the military thinkers at the Military Academy 00:30:02.390 --> 00:30:06.109 of Rio de Janeiro. They loved his idea of a scientific 00:30:06.109 --> 00:30:09.230 dictatorship. They saw it as a way to modernize 00:30:09.230 --> 00:30:12.349 Brazil overnight, to skip the messy metaphysical 00:30:12.349 --> 00:30:15.069 stage of democracy and go straight to the efficient, 00:30:15.150 --> 00:30:17.470 positive stage of order in scientific governance. 00:30:17.690 --> 00:30:20.049 And they literally put his slogan on their new 00:30:20.049 --> 00:30:23.329 national flag. Ordem e Progresso. Order and progress. 00:30:23.470 --> 00:30:26.250 That is the abbreviated positivist motto. The 00:30:26.250 --> 00:30:28.450 full version is love is a principle and order 00:30:28.450 --> 00:30:30.890 is the basis. Progress is the goal. When you 00:30:30.890 --> 00:30:32.910 look at the Brazilian flag today, you are looking 00:30:32.910 --> 00:30:35.250 at a giant billboard for Auguste Comte. That 00:30:35.250 --> 00:30:38.390 is absolutely mind -blowing. A forgotten 19th 00:30:38.390 --> 00:30:40.789 century French cult leader is waving over the 00:30:40.789 --> 00:30:43.369 beaches of Rio de Janeiro right now. And it gets 00:30:43.369 --> 00:30:48.309 weirder. There are still actual functioning temples 00:30:48.309 --> 00:30:51.329 of humanity in Brazil and a few in France. You 00:30:51.329 --> 00:30:53.549 can go visit them. They have the altars, not 00:30:53.549 --> 00:30:56.549 to saints, but to Newton and Caesar and Dante. 00:30:56.890 --> 00:30:59.549 It's like a living fossil of this very specific, 00:30:59.750 --> 00:31:01.930 very strange moment in intellectual history. 00:31:02.069 --> 00:31:04.450 I want to touch on one other quirk before we 00:31:04.450 --> 00:31:07.750 get to the final legacy. For a guy who claimed 00:31:07.750 --> 00:31:11.049 to know the future of science, he made one hilariously 00:31:11.049 --> 00:31:14.210 bad prediction. Ah, yes. The star composition. 00:31:14.509 --> 00:31:16.910 This is a classic. In his big book, The Positive 00:31:16.910 --> 00:31:19.549 Philosophy, Conti wanted to give an example of 00:31:19.549 --> 00:31:21.670 knowledge that was permanently and forever out 00:31:21.670 --> 00:31:24.150 of reach for humans. He wanted to show that science 00:31:24.150 --> 00:31:26.250 had its limits. Okay, what was his example? He 00:31:26.250 --> 00:31:28.509 wrote, with complete confidence that while we 00:31:28.509 --> 00:31:30.630 can calculate the distance and movement and mass 00:31:30.630 --> 00:31:32.849 of the stars, we would never be able to know 00:31:32.849 --> 00:31:34.710 their chemical composition. Why not? Because 00:31:34.710 --> 00:31:36.950 we can't go there. We can't fly to a star and 00:31:36.950 --> 00:31:38.910 take a sample and bring it back to a lab. It 00:31:38.910 --> 00:31:41.420 sounded perfectly logical. But literally within 00:31:41.420 --> 00:31:44.220 30 years of him writing that, the science of 00:31:44.220 --> 00:31:47.460 spectroscopy was invented. Gustav Kirchhoff and 00:31:47.460 --> 00:31:50.160 Robert Bunsen figured out that you could analyze 00:31:50.160 --> 00:31:52.779 the light coming from a star, look at its spectral 00:31:52.779 --> 00:31:55.259 lines, and from that, you could tell exactly 00:31:55.259 --> 00:31:58.019 what elements it's made of. Helium was discovered 00:31:58.019 --> 00:31:59.779 on the sun before it was discovered on Earth. 00:31:59.940 --> 00:32:02.900 So he was proven completely wrong almost immediately. 00:32:03.519 --> 00:32:06.000 Humiliatingly wrong. It's a great lesson for 00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:09.559 any thinker. Never, ever bet against human ingenuity 00:32:09.559 --> 00:32:11.519 in technology. But there is another evolution 00:32:11.519 --> 00:32:13.180 in his thought that's actually quite surprising, 00:32:13.259 --> 00:32:15.660 and that's his view on Islam. Yes, I saw that 00:32:15.660 --> 00:32:18.859 in the notes. For a French atheist ex -Catholic, 00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:21.720 he developed a surprisingly warm view of Islam 00:32:21.720 --> 00:32:24.579 later in his life. How did that happen? Well, 00:32:24.640 --> 00:32:26.619 initially he was pretty dismissive, just like 00:32:26.619 --> 00:32:29.880 most Western European thinkers of his time. He 00:32:29.880 --> 00:32:32.400 saw it as less rational, less progressive than 00:32:32.400 --> 00:32:35.440 Western monotheism. But as he got deeper into 00:32:35.440 --> 00:32:38.319 designing his own religion of humanity, he reassessed 00:32:38.319 --> 00:32:40.750 it. What did he see? He looked at the Catholicism 00:32:40.750 --> 00:32:44.369 he grew up with and saw a messy, overly complex 00:32:44.369 --> 00:32:47.329 theology with saints and relics and a convoluted 00:32:47.329 --> 00:32:50.690 hierarchy. Then he looked at Islam and he saw 00:32:50.690 --> 00:32:53.930 what he called doctrinal simplicity. One God, 00:32:54.210 --> 00:32:57.730 one book, a clear set of practices. He really 00:32:57.730 --> 00:33:00.670 admired the focus on daily ritual, the five prayers 00:33:00.670 --> 00:33:03.450 a day, and the intense social cohesion of the 00:33:03.450 --> 00:33:05.680 Ummah, the global community. So he thought it 00:33:05.680 --> 00:33:07.880 was a better model for his own religion. He actually 00:33:07.880 --> 00:33:10.200 argued that Islam was better suited to transition 00:33:10.200 --> 00:33:12.759 people to the final positive stage than Christianity 00:33:12.759 --> 00:33:15.799 was. He even proposed borrowing the idea of the 00:33:15.799 --> 00:33:18.079 Qibla, the fixed direction of worship toward 00:33:18.079 --> 00:33:20.720 Mecca. He wanted his followers to pray in a certain 00:33:20.720 --> 00:33:23.200 direction. Yes. He proposed that all positivists, 00:33:23.240 --> 00:33:24.900 wherever they were in the world, should orient 00:33:24.900 --> 00:33:27.099 their private prayers toward Paris, specifically, 00:33:27.380 --> 00:33:29.599 toward his apartment on the Rue Monsieur le Prince. 00:33:29.900 --> 00:33:32.420 His disciples even nicknamed his apartment our 00:33:32.420 --> 00:33:35.099 Kaaba. It just shows how desperate he was to 00:33:35.099 --> 00:33:37.700 create this universal system by borrowing what 00:33:37.700 --> 00:33:39.819 he saw as the best practices of every culture. 00:33:40.119 --> 00:33:43.160 Okay, so let's zoom out. We have this incredibly 00:33:43.160 --> 00:33:46.900 complex figure, a rebel, a math nerd, a mental 00:33:46.900 --> 00:33:49.859 patient, a tragic lover, a self -proclaimed high 00:33:49.859 --> 00:33:53.140 priest. Why does he matter today? If the religion 00:33:53.140 --> 00:33:55.579 of humanity was a total failure, why are we still 00:33:55.579 --> 00:33:57.740 talking about him? Because the structure of our 00:33:57.740 --> 00:34:01.430 modern world is fundamentally positivist. Even 00:34:01.430 --> 00:34:03.490 if we don't wear the robes or pray to humanity, 00:34:03.809 --> 00:34:06.130 we are living in the house that Compt designed. 00:34:06.490 --> 00:34:09.989 How so? Just think about how a modern government 00:34:09.989 --> 00:34:12.010 or a modern corporation functions. We have the 00:34:12.010 --> 00:34:13.769 Bureau of Labor Statistics. We have the Census 00:34:13.769 --> 00:34:15.989 Bureau. We have economic forecasting models. 00:34:16.130 --> 00:34:18.869 We have A .D. testing for websites. We have an 00:34:18.869 --> 00:34:21.550 absolute faith that the way to fix a problem, 00:34:21.730 --> 00:34:24.630 whether it's inflation or crime or low user engagement, 00:34:24.809 --> 00:34:27.630 is to gather massive amounts of data. Find the 00:34:27.630 --> 00:34:29.809 pattern and then pull a policy lever based on 00:34:29.809 --> 00:34:32.210 that data. That is pure cunt. It is the absolute 00:34:32.210 --> 00:34:35.010 essence of the positive stage. We are all unwitting 00:34:35.010 --> 00:34:37.010 positivists in our public and professional lives. 00:34:37.170 --> 00:34:39.409 We accepted his method, even though we totally 00:34:39.409 --> 00:34:41.829 rejected his bizarre religion. We took the sociology 00:34:41.829 --> 00:34:44.809 and we left the supreme great being on the shelf. 00:34:45.030 --> 00:34:48.949 We did. But here's the thing. I would argue we 00:34:48.949 --> 00:34:51.110 are also feeling the consequences of that choice. 00:34:51.409 --> 00:34:53.710 We're feeling the absence of the thing he tried 00:34:53.710 --> 00:34:56.150 to create with his religion. What do you mean? 00:34:56.670 --> 00:34:59.230 Compton was right about one huge, important thing. 00:34:59.949 --> 00:35:02.309 Data is not enough to satisfy the human soul. 00:35:02.510 --> 00:35:04.969 We are living in the most positive, scientific, 00:35:05.230 --> 00:35:08.369 data -driven age in all of human history. And 00:35:08.369 --> 00:35:11.190 yet, what do we see everywhere? A massive crisis 00:35:11.190 --> 00:35:14.489 of meaning. People feel lonely, alienated. They're 00:35:14.489 --> 00:35:16.949 becoming more and more tribal. They're desperately 00:35:16.949 --> 00:35:19.050 looking for rituals, for community, for something 00:35:19.050 --> 00:35:21.570 to belong to. That's the great irony, isn't it? 00:35:21.880 --> 00:35:24.639 We basically achieved his dream of a scientific 00:35:24.639 --> 00:35:27.840 society, and it feels exactly like the metaphysical 00:35:27.840 --> 00:35:30.380 anarchy that he warned us about. We are still 00:35:30.380 --> 00:35:32.920 arguing endlessly about rights and liberty. We 00:35:32.920 --> 00:35:34.519 are still searching for that sense of community 00:35:34.519 --> 00:35:36.860 he thought was so important. It suggests that 00:35:36.860 --> 00:35:38.780 maybe his law of three stages isn't a straight 00:35:38.780 --> 00:35:41.159 line. Maybe we don't just grow out of the theological 00:35:41.159 --> 00:35:43.519 or the metaphysical stages and discard them like 00:35:43.519 --> 00:35:46.280 old clothes. Maybe a healthy society and a healthy 00:35:46.280 --> 00:35:48.880 person needs all three. You need the science 00:35:48.880 --> 00:35:51.110 for the plumbing and the bridges. The metaphysics 00:35:51.110 --> 00:35:53.550 for our rights and our justice. And the theology, 00:35:53.809 --> 00:35:55.650 or at least the ritual and the community part 00:35:55.650 --> 00:35:59.349 of it, for our hearts. And Comps' tragedy, or 00:35:59.349 --> 00:36:02.650 maybe his genius, was that he saw the need for 00:36:02.650 --> 00:36:04.570 all three, but he tried to jam them all into 00:36:04.570 --> 00:36:08.730 one single, rigid, top -down system. And it just 00:36:08.730 --> 00:36:10.690 collapsed under its own weight. But you have 00:36:10.690 --> 00:36:12.570 to admire the sheer ambition of the attempt. 00:36:12.829 --> 00:36:15.010 He looked at a world that he saw as completely 00:36:15.010 --> 00:36:17.469 broken and tried to build a single machine that 00:36:17.469 --> 00:36:19.889 would fix everything. He absolutely did. And 00:36:19.889 --> 00:36:22.030 in the process, he gave us the very language 00:36:22.030 --> 00:36:25.130 we use to understand our own brokenness. Sociology. 00:36:25.519 --> 00:36:27.980 altruism, social dynamics, the entire idea of 00:36:27.980 --> 00:36:30.960 functionalism, that society is a system of interconnected 00:36:30.960 --> 00:36:33.900 parts, like a body, that's all him. We are still 00:36:33.900 --> 00:36:36.000 thinking with the tools he forged, even if we 00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:37.800 completely disagree with the building he wanted 00:36:37.800 --> 00:36:40.219 to construct. So here's the thought I want to 00:36:40.219 --> 00:36:42.739 leave you with as we wrap this up. Comte believed 00:36:42.739 --> 00:36:45.800 that the metaphysical stage, the stage of questioning 00:36:45.800 --> 00:36:48.860 authority, of debating abstract rights, of individual 00:36:48.860 --> 00:36:52.440 liberty, was just a messy, chaotic teenage phase 00:36:52.440 --> 00:36:55.039 we needed to grow out of. He thought the Final 00:36:55.039 --> 00:36:58.179 destination was a world of perfect, silent, scientific 00:36:58.179 --> 00:37:00.840 order. But looking around at our world today, 00:37:01.059 --> 00:37:04.420 maybe the messiness isn't a bug. Maybe it's the 00:37:04.420 --> 00:37:07.300 feature. Exactly. Maybe the endless debate, the 00:37:07.300 --> 00:37:09.059 constant questioning, maybe that is the point. 00:37:09.119 --> 00:37:11.320 And maybe being a walking contradiction like 00:37:11.320 --> 00:37:14.000 Auguste Comte, someone who needs both the cold, 00:37:14.019 --> 00:37:16.880 hard math and the deep human mystery, is just 00:37:16.880 --> 00:37:19.300 what it means to be human. A thought worth pondering. 00:37:19.440 --> 00:37:21.099 Thanks for taking this deep dive with us. We'll 00:37:21.099 --> 00:37:21.639 see you next time.