
Contents
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1 Puritans and Revolution: Remembering the Origin; Religion and Social Critique in Early New England
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Comte's Prophesies Comte's Prophesies
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Comte's Readers Comte's Readers
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American Positivists American Positivists
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Science and Religion Rumble Science and Religion Rumble
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Liberal Protestants and Comte Liberal Protestants and Comte
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Conservative Protestants and Comte Conservative Protestants and Comte
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Comte and American Sociology Comte and American Sociology
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Notes Notes
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5 After the Civil War: Auguste Comte's Theory of History Crosses the Atlantic
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Published:September 2008
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Abstract
During the second half of the nineteenth century, American intellectuals found much to argue over in the writings of Auguste Comte. A French social theorist generally credited as the founder of modern sociology, Comte grounded his Positivist philosophy in a theory of history predicting the demise of theism and the triumph of naturalistic science and humanistic religion. Debates over Positivism peaked in the United States between the 1860s and 1880s, and became entangled with arguments over Darwinism and the alleged battle between religion and science. Most Americans dismissed Comte's predictions that belief in God would vanish, but his theories won over a small group of important thinkers, clothed Enlightenment attacks on traditional religion in the garb of scientific neutrality and historical inevitability, spurred on the academic secularizers who sought to reduce religion's public influence, and emerged during the middle decades of the twentieth century as a commonplace of modern sociology.
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