466 (Jan.-Fall 1888)
It is not the victory of science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but the victory of scientific method over science.
467 (Spring-Fall 1887)
History of scientific method, considered by Auguste Comte as virtually philosophy itself.
468 (Spring-Fall 1887)
The great methodologists: Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Auguste
469 (Jan.-Fall 1888)
The most valuable insights are arrived at last; but the most valuable insights are methods.
All the methods, all the presuppositions of our contemporary science were for millennia regarded with the profoundest contempt; on their account one was excluded from the society of respectable people—one was considered as an “enemy of God,” as a reviler of the highest ideal, as “possessed.”
We have had the whole pathos of mankind against us—our conception of what “truth” should be, what service of truth should be, our objectivity, our method, our silent, cautious, mistrustful ways were considered perfectly contemptible—
At bottom, it has been an aesthetic taste that has hindered mankind most: it believed in the picturesque effect of truth, it demanded of the man of knowledge that he should produce a powerful effect on the imagination.
This looks as if an antithesis has been achieved, a leap made; in reality, the schooling through moral hyperbole prepared the way step by step for that milder of pathos that became incarnate in the scientific character—
The conscientiousness in small things, the self-control of the religious man were a preparatory school for the scientific character: above all, the disposition that takes problems seriously, regardless of the personal consequences—