ABSTRACT
Auguste Comte's historical and differential theory of science inaugurated an original tradition in epistemology. His theory of the sciences was a detailed elaboration of a historical and differential theory of science. This tradition may be regarded as specifically French. It started to develop at the end of the nineteenth century, when academic philosophers such as Boutroux began to be interested in Comte's work. He introduced both terms: positivism and sociology, nothing seems more plausible than to summarize his contribution according to these terms. Positivism is commonly considered a form of narrow-mindedness, and the term is used most often in a polemical sense. Comte's intellectual contributions cannot be reduced to his positivism and his sociology. His theory basically concerned the relationships between different sciences. Comte eliminated all the problems of interpretation and sociability, of hermeneutics and sociology.
