Also connected to this development was the abiding admiration for
Comtian social science under the Progressive banner.
This
Comtian Positivism, which ultimately goes back to the Greeks, reduces water to a substance consisting of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen attached to each other at a certain angle and having certain physical and chemical properties.
through a deft mixture of
Comtian Positivism and German erudition.
According to the positivism, especially to the
Comtian one, religion is an archaic thing remained in human history.
Other portions of the argument demonstrate the inappropriateness of labeling Paris a "positivist" in the
Comtian sense, as his awareness of metaphysical absolutes made him spurn philosophical positivism; claim revered intellectual status for Paris in his day (sometimes on such inconclusive evidence as a single letter from a colleague soliciting his participation in pro-Dreyfus activities); examine the professionalization of the discipline through Paris's promotion of a historico-comparative method sharply divergent from the older model of rhetorical eloquence that had reigned in France; and, especially, probe the varieties of meaning ascribed to the term "philology" as practiced in both France and Germany at the time.