ABSTRACT
Comte announced in his writings of the 1820s that he was committing himself to a programme of works, the completion of which would be essential to avert ‘long and terrible convulsions’ in modern society (1974a: 137). The programme had identified three series of works: a study of the ‘general progress of the human intellect destined to become the basis of a positive polity’; a series which would establish ‘a complete system of Positive Education’; and third a ‘general exposition of the Collective Action which civilised men … can exercise over Nature’ (p. 138).
