This English edition of The Catechism of Positive Religion was published in 1891, thirty-four years after the death of Comte, the French philosopher of science and politics and founder of positivism, whose work was widely read in the later nineteenth century. Comte's self-published French original of 1852, translated here, outlines his progressive ideal of 'sociocracy', which would provide a systematic basis, free of metaphysics, for intellectual and moral transactions among humans. Congreve's edition, in common with others, divides the book into five parts. The introduction contains two...
This English edition of The Catechism of Positive Religion was published in 1891, thirty-four years after the death of Comte, the French philosopher o...
William Paley (1743 1805) argues for the existence of God as the intelligent creator of the world in this, his last book, published in 1802. He builds on early modern natural theology including the works of John Ray, William Derham, and Bernard Nieuwentyt, and most of his examples are taken from medicine and natural history. Paley uses analogy and metaphors, including a particularly well-written version of the 'watchmaker analogy', to prove that the world is designed and sustained by God. This sixth edition also contains a detailed bibliography, appendices on Paley's courses, and background...
William Paley (1743 1805) argues for the existence of God as the intelligent creator of the world in this, his last book, published in 1802. He builds...
Baden Powell (1796 1860) was a mathematician who held the Savilian Chair of Geometry at Oxford, and was also a priest in the Church of England. He was a defender of the claims of new scientific discoveries in the face of Christian orthodoxy well before Darwin published the theory of evolution, and drew a clear distinction in his thinking and writing between moral and physical phenomena, as being independent of each other and the fields of completely different study. Darwin himself wrote, in the 'Historical Sketch' at the beginning of the third edition of On the Origin of Species, 'The...
Baden Powell (1796 1860) was a mathematician who held the Savilian Chair of Geometry at Oxford, and was also a priest in the Church of England. He was...
Henry George Atkinson (c.1812 c.1890), a free thinker and supporter of naturalism, published extensively on phrenology, mesmerism, and spiritualism. He became acquainted with the professional writer, political activist and radical philosopher Harriet Martineau (1802 76) in the 1840s, when she attributed her recovery from a long illness to mesmerism. Their correspondence was published in 1851, and promotes a radical form of atheistic naturalism, more extreme than that found in George Combe's best-selling Constitution of Man (also published in this series). It ranges widely over topics...
Henry George Atkinson (c.1812 c.1890), a free thinker and supporter of naturalism, published extensively on phrenology, mesmerism, and spiritualism. H...
