Robert C. Scharff is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire and Executive Director of ITERATA, a non-profit institute for the study of interdisciplinarity in science, industry, and higher education. He is author of How History Matters to Philosophy (2015), Comte After Positivism (2002), and numerous papers on 19th and 20th century positivism, postpositivism, and continental philosophy; co-editor (with Val Dusek) of The Philosophy of Technology (2003, 2014); and former editor of Continental Philosophy Review (1994-2005).
Introduction: Comte for a post-positivist world
Part I. Comte Then: 1. Mill versus Comte on 'interior observation'
2. Mill versus Comte as positivist philosophers of science
3. Comte's three-stage law
Part II. Comte Now: 4. Comte's ambiguous legacy: science defended or already justified?
5. Cartesian ahistoricism and later epistemic analysis
6. Comte and the very idea of a post-positivist philosophy
7. Comte for tomorrow?