This positive knowledge was, of course, science. However, the problem as Comte saw it was that each branch of knowledge goes through the three stages, but that they don’t all reach scientific maturity at the same time. Astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology had all, Comte argued, arrived at the scientific stage, but accounts of human mental and social life were still languishing in the pre-scientific, metaphysical stage.
The time was now ripe for setting the study of human social life on scientific foundations, and Comte set out to establish ‘social physics’, or ‘sociology’, as a scientific discipline. Since Comte’s day the term ‘positivism’ has been used extensively to characterize approaches to social science which have made use of large data sets, quantitative measurement and statistical methods of analysis. We will describe those approaches which share the following four features:
a. The empiricist account of the natural sciences is accepted.
b. Science is valued as the highest or even the only genuine form of knowledge
c. Scientific method, as represented by the empiricists, can and should be extended to the study of human mental and social life, to establish these disciplines as social sciences.
d. Once reliable social scientific knowledge has been established, it will be possible to apply it to control, or regulate the behaviour of individuals or groups in society. Social problems and conflicts can be identified and resolved one by one on the basis of expert knowledge offered by social scientists, in much the same way as natural scientific expertise is involved in solving practical problems in engineering and technology. This approach to the role of social science in projects for social reform is sometimes called ‘social engineering’.