Law of three stages
The law of three stages is an idea developed by Auguste Comte in his work The Course in Positive Philosophy. It states that society as a whole, and each particular science, develops through three mentally conceived stages: (1) the theological stage, (2) the metaphysical stage, and (3) the positive stage.
For Kierkegaard's theory of the three stages, see Three stages of life of Søren Kierkegaard.Critiques of the law[edit]
Historian William Whewell wrote "Mr. Comte's arrangement of the progress of science as successively metaphysical and positive, is contrary to history in fact, and contrary to sound philosophy in principle."[6] The historian of science H. Floris Cohen has made a significant effort to draw the modern eye towards this first debate on the foundations of positivism.[7]
In contrast, within an entry dated early October 1838 Charles Darwin wrote in one of his then private notebooks that "M. Comte's idea of a theological state of science [is a] grand idea."[8]