comte, auguste - the positive philosophy vol I (другой вариант)

Positive Philosophy/291

close its radical futility. While affinities were regarded as absolute and invariable, there was at least something imposing in them; but since facts have compelled the belief of their being variable according to a multitude of circumstances, their use has only tended to prove, more and more, their utter inanity. Thus, for instance, it is known that at a certain temperature, iron decomposes water, or protoxide of hydrogen: and yet, it has been since discovered that, under the influence of a higher temperature, hydrogen in its turn decomposes oxide of iron. What signifies, in this case, any order of affinity that we may ascribe to iron and hydrogen with oxygen? If we make the order vary with the temperature, we have a merely verbal, and therefore pretended explanation. Chemistry affords us now many such cases, apparently contradictory, independently of the long series of decisive considerations that have made us reject absolute affinities,—the only ones, after all, that have any scientific consistency whatever. The old habit is, however, so strong that even Berthollet, in the very work in which he overthrows the old doctrine of invariable or elective affinities, proposes vague affinities under many modifications. The strange doctrine of predisposing affinity is to be found in the work, among others, of the most rational of recent chemists, the illustrious Berzelius. When, for instance, water is decomposed by iron through the action of sulphuric acid, so as to disengage the hydrogen, this remarkable phenomenon is commonly attributed to the affinity of the sulphuric acid for the oxide of iron which tends to become formed. Now, can anything be imagined more metaphysical, or more radically incomprehensible, than the sympathetic action of one substance upon another which does not yet exist, and the formation of the last by virtue of this mysterious affection? The strange fluids of physicists are rational and satisfactory in comparison with such notions These considerations justify the desire that chemists should have a sufficient training in mathematical, astronomical, and then in physical philosophy, which have already put an end to such chimerical researches within their own domain, awl would discard them speedily from the more complex parts of natural philosophy. It is only by having witnessed the purification in the anterior sciences that chemists could realize it in their own: and there could not be complete positivity in chemistry if metaphysics lingered in astronomy or physics. This, again, justices the place assigned to chemistry among the sciences. The individual must follow the general course of his race in his passage to the positive state. He must kind that true science consists, everywhere, in exact relations, established among

292/Auguste Comte

observed facts, allowing the deduction of the most extensive series of secondary phenomena from the smallest possible number of original phenomena, putting. aside all vain inquiry into causes and essences. And this is the spirit which has to be made preponderant in chemistry,— dissolving for ever the metaphysical doctrine of affinities.

The inferiority of chemistry to physics, in regard to method and doctrine, explains its relative imperfection with regard to actual science. We have only to compare with the formula which told us what chemistry ought to be, what it actually is, to see that it is at an immense distance—much further than physics—from its true scientific aim.

Chemical facts are at this day essentially incoherent, or, at best, feebly coordinated by a small number of partial and insufficient relations, instead of those certain, extended, and uniform laws of which physics is so justly proud. As for prevision, if it is imperfect in physics in comparison with astronomy, it can hardly be said to exist in chemistry at all: the issue of each chemical event being usually known only by specially consulting the immediate experiment, when, as it were, the event is already accomplished.

Imperfect as chemistry is, in regard to method and doctrine it is yet superior to physiology, and still more, to social science, not only because, from the comparative simplicity of its phenomena, the facts and investigations are clearer and more decisive, but because it has a few, though very few, real theories, capable of affording complete previsions; a thing as yet impracticable, except in a general manner, with living bodies. We shall have occasion to notice the theory of proportions, the equivalent of which is not, in any sense, to be looked for in physiology. We must remember, while estimating the comparative imperfection of the sciences, that the importance to us of their perfection is in proportion to their simplicity; our available means being always found to correspond with our reasonable wants. I hope, too, that this severe estimate of the actual state of each science will stimulate rather than discourage the student; for it is more gratifying to our human activity to conceive of the sciences its susceptible of vast, varied, and indefinite progress, than to suppose them perfect, and therefore stationary, except in their secondary developments.

This leads us to consider the function of Chemistry in the education of the human mind.

It may be said to train us in the great art of experimentation: not as being our exclusive teacher, for, as we have seen, physics is superior to

Positive Philosophy/293

it in this: and it is more. the art of observing than of experimenting that Chemistry is chiefly distinguished for. But there is an important part of the positive method which chemistry seems destined to carry to the highest perfection. I do not mean the theory of classifications, of which chemists know too little at present, but the art of rational nomenclatures, which is quite unconnected with classifications. Since the reform in chemical language, attempts have been incessantly made, to this hour, to form a systematic nomenclature in anatomy, in pathology, and especially in zoology: but these endeavours have not had, and never can have, any success to compare with that of the reformers of chemical language; for the nature of the phenomena does not admit of it. It is not by accident that the chemical nomenclature is alone in its perfection. The more complex phenomena are, and the more varied and less restricted the comparisons of objects, the more difficult it becomes to subject them to a system of denominations, at once rational and abridged, so as to facilitate the habitual combination of ideas. If the organs and tissues of the living body differed only from one point of view; if maladies were sufficiently defined by their seat. if, in zoology, genera, or at least families could be estate fished by a homogeneous the corresponding sciences might at once admit of systematic nomenclatures as rational and as efficacious as that of Chemistry. But the diversity of aspects, rarely reducible to one head, renders such an arrangement extremely difficult and not very advantageous.

The case of chemistry is the only one in which, by its nature, the phenomena are simple, uniform and determinate enough to allow of a rational nomenclature at once clear rapid and complete, so as to contribute to the general progress of the science. The idea of composition, the great end of the science, is always preponderant. Thus, the systematic name of each body, expressing its composition, indicates first a correct general view, and then, the sum of its chemical history; and, by the nature of the science, the more it advances towards perfection, the more must this double property of the nomenclature be developed. In another view, dualism being the commonest constitution in chemistry, and the most essential, and that to which all other modes of composition are more and more referred by science, we see that the conditions of the problem are as favourable as possible to a rapid and expressive nomenclature. Thus, there has always been some system of nomenclature, more or less rough, though none to be compared to that so happily founded by Guyton-Morveau. Though the art can manifest its excellence only in

294/Auguste Comte

proportion to the advance of chemistry, it is in such harmony with the nature of the science that, in its present imperfect state, it upholds it, by provisionally supplying, as it were, the almost absolute deficiency of true rationality. Thus chemistry may be regarded as specially adapted to develops one of the few fundamental means, the aggregate of which constitutes the general power of the human mind. The formation of a similar aid in the more complex sciences offers a real and strong interest: and I have only desired to show that we must resort to chemistry for the true principles and general spirit of the art of nomenclature, according to the rules so often set forth in this work, that each great logical artifice should be directly studied in the department of natural philosophy where it is found in the greatest perfection, that it may be afterwards applied in aid of the sciences to which it less specially belongs.

The high philosophical properties of Chemistry are more striking in regard to doctrine chemical than to method. However imperfect our chemical science is, its development has operated largely in the emancipation of the human mind. Its opposition to all theological philosophy is marked by the two general facts in which it has a share with all the rest of positive philosophy,—first, the prevision of phenomena, and next, our voluntary modification of them. We have already seen that the more the complexity of phenomena baffles our prevision, the greater becomes our power of modifying them, through the variety of resources afforded by the complexity itself; so that the anti-theological influence of science is infallible, in the one way or the other. In chemistry, our modifying power is so strong that the greater part of chemical phenomena owe their existence to humble intervention, by which alone circumstances could be suitably arranged for their production: and if the phenomena of physiology and social science admit of modification in a yet greater degree, chemistry will always, in this particular, hold the first rank, since the highest order of modifications is that which we here find,— those which are most important for the amelioration of the condition of Man. In the system of the action of man upon nature, chemistry must ever be regarded as the chief source of power, though all the fundamental sciences participate in it more or less.

In this way, chemistry effectually discredits the notion of the rule of a providential will among its phenomena. But there is another way in which it acts no less strongly; by abolishing the idea of destruction and creation in nature. Before anything was known of gaseous materials and products, many striking appearances must inevitably have inspired

Positive Philosophy/295

the idea of the real annihilation or production of matter in the general system of nature. These ideas could not yield to the true conception of decomposition and composition till we had decomposed air and water, and then analysed vegetable and animal substances, and then finished with the analysis of alkalies and earths, thus exhibiting the fundamental principle of the indefinite perpetuity of matter. In vital phenomena, the chemical examination of not only the substances of living bodies, but their functions, imperfect as it yet is,—must cast a strong light upon the economy of vital nature by showing that no organic matter radically heterogeneous to inorganic matter can exist, and that vital transformations are subject, like all others, to the universal laws of chemical phenomena. Chemical analysis seems to have fulfilled its function in this direction: henceforth it must be by the more difficult, but more luminous method of synthesis that this great philosophical revolution must be completed: and attempts enough have been successfully made to prove the possibility of it.

The divisions of the science have not been clearly and permanently settled, partly because of its very recent origin, and partly on account of its nature. In the first place, students have been more occupied in multiplying observations than in classifying them; and in the next, the homogeneous character of chemical phenomena causes essential differences to be less profound, and therefore less marked, than in any other of the fundamental sciences. In astronomy, there can be no question of a division into geometrical and mechanical phenomena. Physics is less a unique science than a group of almost isolated sciences; and they indicate their own arrangement. We shall see hereafter that nearly the same thing happens, though from a different cause, in physiology. But in chemistry, the conditions are less favourable, the distinctions being scarcely more marked than those which exist in a single department of physics,—as thermology, and yet more, electrology. The imperfection and small importance of its present divisions are easily explained: and there are strong symptoms of an approaching discussion of this great subject; for the majority of eminent chemists are more or less dissatisfied with the provisional division which they have been hitherto obliged to accept as guidance in their labours.

The general division of organic and inorganic chemistry cannot be sustained, on account of its evident irrationality. What is at present called organic chemistry has an essentially bastard character, half chemical, half physiological, and not, in fact, either the one or the other, as we

296/Auguste Comte

shall have occasion to see. The division cannot even be sustained under another form, as equivalent to the general distinction between cases of dualism and of other composition. For if inorganic combinations are usually binary, there are some which are composed of three elements and even of four; while, conversely, we very often meet with a true dualism in bodies which are called organic. For a genuine division we must look to general ideas relating to composition and decomposition; and in this form, attending to the rule of following the gradual complication of phenomena: first the growing plurality of constituent principles (mediate or immediate), according as the combinations are binary, ternary, etc.; and secondly, the higher or lower degree of composition of the immediate principles, each of which may (as in the case of a continual dualism) be decomposable into two others, for a greater or smaller number of consecutive times. Though each of these two points of view is of high importance, the preponderance of the one or the other must be agreed upon before the rational division of chemistry can be organized. Though this is not the place to discuss this new question of high chemical philosophy, it may be well to state that I regard it as solved; and that the consideration of the degree of composition is, in my eyes, evidently superior to that of the number of elements, inasmuch as it affects more profoundly the aim and spirit of chemical science, as they have been characterized in this chapter. As for the rest, whatever the decision may be, we may remark that the two classifications differ from each other much less than we might at first be tempted to suppose; for they necessarily concur, whether in the preliminary or in the final case, and diverge only in the intermediate parts.

We have now reviewed the nature and spirit of chemical science; the means of investigation proper to it; its true encyclopedical position; the kind and degree of perfection of which it is susceptible; its philosophical Properties in regard to method and to doctrine; and, finally, the mode of division which would be suitable to it. We must complete the survey of the science by a special and direct notice of the few essential doctrines which have been disclosed by the spontaneous development of chemical philo sophy. It must be remembered that the object of this work is not to present a treatise on each science, or to enlarge upon it in proportion to its proper importance, or the multiplicity of its facts: but to ascertain its relative importance, as one head of positive philosophy. No one will expect that chemical philosophy, in its present state, can be examined here as fully or satisfactorily as, for instance, astronomical philosophy,

Positive Philosophy/297

the perfection of which admits of a methodical analysis, clear and complete, though summary, such as befits that immutable type of natural philosophy.

Chapter II Inorganic Chemistry

Whatever mane be the principles of division and classification preferred in the general system of chemical studies, it is agreed by almost all chemists that the preliminary and fundamental study should be the successive and continuous history of all the simple bodies. The plan of M. Chevreul is an exception to this, his method being to proceed at once from the study of each element to all the combinations binary, ternary, etc., that it can form with those already examined; confining himself, however, to compounds of the first order. This plan has the advantage that simple bodies are more completely known from the beginning than by the usual method, which scatters through the different parts of the science the most important chemical properties of each of them. But, on the other hand, the history of any element remains incomplete; a factitious inequality is established among chemical researches into different elementary substances; and the didactic inconvenience which M. Chevreul proposed to escape seems to me to be unavoidable, under any method. On no plan can any chemical history be completed by a first study. The provisional information obtained by a first study must be followed by a revision which allows us to take into consideration the whole series of phenomena relative to each substance. The question is merely a didactic one, only of secondary importance in this work, though of great practical interest. On any scheme, it remains certain that the preliminary study of elementary substances is, by the nature of the science, the necessary foundation of chemical knowledge.

On account of the considerable and always increasing number of substances regarded as simple, some modern philosophers, possessed with the notion of the simplicity and economy of nature, have concluded a priori that most substances must be the various compounds of a much smaller number of others. But, while endeavouring to conceive of nature under the simplest aspect possible, we must do so under the teaching of her own phenomena, not substituting for that instruction any thoughtless desires of our own. We have no right to presume beforehand that the number of simple substances must be either very small or very large. Chemical research alone should settle this, and all that we are

298/Auguste Comte

entitled to say is that our minds are disposed to prefer the smaller number, even, if it were possible, so far as there being but two. But not the less are we bound to suppose all substances which have never in any way been decomposed to be simple, though we should not pronounce them to be for ever undecomposable. All chemists now admit this rule as the first axiom of sound chemical philosophy.

Aristotle first saw this rule, though he did not conceive of its rational grounds. His doctrine of the four elements, popularly cried down in our time, should be judged of as the first attempt of the true philosophical spirit to conceive of the composition of natural bodies, amidst the then existing deficiency of all suitable means of research. To appreciate it we must compare it with anterior notions. Now, up to that time, all the schools, however they might differ about other things, agreed that there was only one elementary substance; and their dispute was about the choice of the principle. Aristotle, with his rational character of mind, put an end to all those barren controversies by establishing the plurality of elements. This immense progress must be considered the true origin of chemical science, which would be radically impossible on the supposition of a single element, excluding all idea of composition and decomposition. Whatever appearances may be, there is no doubt that it must be much more difficult for the human mind to pass from the absolute idea of unity of principle to the relative idea of plurality, than to rise gradually, by means of research, from the four elements of Aristotle to the fifty-six simple bodies of our chemistry of this day. Our Naturists, who are all for simplicity and economy without caring much for reality, have no right to appeal to the authority of Aristotle, who had so much reverence for reality as to infringe the notion of simplicity which he found prevailing. They should go back further than Aristotle,—to Empedocles or Heraclitus, and attain the utmost simplicity at once, by admitting only a single principle.

Other philosophers, among whom has Cuvier, have objected to the simplicity of most of the elements now admitted by chemists, that some of them seem to be extremely abundant in nature, while others are scantily and partially distributed: whereas, it seems natural to presume that the different elements must be almost equally diffused throughout the globe, and that therefore chemical analysis will sooner or later prove the rare ones to be compound substances, requiring peculiar and rare influences for their formation. It would be enough to say that the presumption, though plausible, is nothing more than a presumption: but it may be

Positive Philosophy/299

added that we know nothing of our planet beyond the upper strata; and we can form no prejudgment of the composition of the whole. It would be too much to say that there should be an equality of elements on the surface, even the probability being the other way; for the heaviest elements are the rarest at the surface, and the commonest are those which go to the composition of living bodies; and the probability is strong that the preponderance is reversed in the interior of the globe, to make up the mean density, which is not to be found among the solids, liquids, and gases which are required for the existence of life. Thus the objection seems to be converted by chemical analysis into a sort of confirmation.

Since the time,—recent, it is true,—of the decomposition of the elements of Aristotle, there has not been a single instance of a substance having passed from the class of simple to that of compound bodies, while the inverse case has been frequent. Yet, no chemist disputes the possibility of a reduction of the elements by a more thorough analysis, for chemical simplicity, as it is to us, is a purely negative quality, not admitting of those irreversible demonstrations proper to positive compositions and recompositions. The great general example of substances called organic, the chemical theory of which is so complex, notwithstanding the small number of their elements, might lead us to sup pose that such a reduction would not be, after all, so very great an advantage: but in this case, the difficulty seems to me to be referrible to the deficiency of duality. Not withstanding this example, we cannot but thinly that chemistry would become more rational and more systematic, if the elements were fewer, from the closer and more general relation which must then subsist among the different classes of phenomena. But the apparent perfection could be only barren and illusory if we were to assume it by conjecture anticipating the real progress of chemical analysis.

This profusion of elements has naturally led to endeavours to classify them. The high importance of the question has become manifest through the deep persuasion that the rational classification of simple bodies must determine that of compound substances, and therefore that of the whole chemical system. The first principle to be laid down is that the hierarchy of elementary substances is not to be determined only by their proper essential characters, but by the less direct consideration of the principal phenomena of the compounds which they form. Without this requisition, the classification would have little use or interest; for it would be of small consequence in what conventional order we studied

300/Auguste Comte

fifty-six bodies all independent of each other: whereas, with its proper condition, this question is as important as any that chemical philosophy can present.

The old division of the elements into the comburent and combustible, (those which burn in the active and in the neuter sense,)—and the subdivision of these into metallics and non-metallics, are evidently too artificial to be maintained, except provisionally. For many years, endeavours have been made to supersede it; but no irreversible classification has been yet obtained. M. Ampère seems to have been the first who pointed out the necessity; and he proposed a system in 1816; but it was not one which induced the chemists to abandon their ancient distribution, the binary structure of which nuade it easy of application whatever might otherwise be its defects. A few years after, Berzelius offered, in a simple and almost incidental form and manner, a far superior system of classification. He first understood the necessity of rising finally to a unique series, constituting, by a uniform and preponderant character, a true hierarchy; whereas, M. Ampère saw only the importance of natural groups, which might be arbitrarily co-ordinated. Both conditions are imposed by the general theory of classifications; but that which Berzelius had chiefly in view is unquestionably superior to the other; and especially in the present case, when the small number of objects to be classified renders the formation of groups a matter of secondary importance, provided the series be naturally ordained.

M. Berzelius’s conception is grounded on the consideration of electrochemical phenomena. Its simple and lucid principle is that the elements are to be so disposed as that each shall be electro-negative to those which precede it, and electropositive to those which follow it. The series thus derived appears, thus far, to be in conformity with the whole of the known properties of both the elements themselves and their principal compounds. It is too soon however to speak decisively of this: and, on the other hand, the chemical preponderance of electric characters is by no means so logically established as to compel us to seek the bases of a natural classification in that order of phenomena. It must, it seems to me, be clearly proved, at the outset, that the point of departure is a real one,—that is, that a constant order of electrization exists among the different elements, which is maintained under all conditions of exterior circumstances, of aggregation and decomposition: lout, not only has this never been adequately undertaken, but there is some reason to apprehend that its result would be opposite to the proposed principle.