← See the axis · Place of science
ArgumentThe argument from success
Where every other approach sinks into endless disagreement, science converges and predicts: because it alone submits its claims to the verdict of the facts.
Supports
Comte ·
- The line between knowledge and mere opinion rests on one point: knowledge can be corrected by something other than our wishes, by a test independent of who holds it.
- Now no approach institutes this test as systematically as the scientific method: it exposes its claims to public experience and discards what fails. Where it applies, disagreements resolve and predictions succeed, as no theology or metaphysics ever managed.
- The alleged 'other paths' — intuition, revelation, tradition — either say nothing a test could settle, or, when they do, have always ended up retreating before science: the heavens, disease, the mind.
Therefore So science is not one source among others but the very measure of knowledge: any question that admits of an answer will, in the end, receive its own.
How far does this reasoning convince you?
Not at all
Entirely
Deepenings
The law of the three stages
- Humanity passes, says , from theological explanation, which invokes gods, to metaphysics, which invokes hidden essences, then to the 'positive' stage, where one gives up ultimate causes for the laws that observation establishes.
- Each field, as it matures, follows this path and leaves speculation for science: physics, chemistry, biology have done so; human affairs themselves are to do the same.
How far does this reasoning convince you?
Not at all
Entirely
Put to the test
Objection