Sociology and Positivism in 19th-Century France

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Sociology and positivism in19th-century France: the

vicissitudes of the Société deSociologie (1872–4)

JOHAN HEILBRON

ABSTRACT

Little is known about the world’s first sociological society, Émile Littré’sSociété de Sociologie (1872–4). This article, based on prosopographicresearch, offers an interpretation of the foundation, political-intellectualorientation and early demise of the society. As indicated by recruitmentand texts by its founding members, the Société de Sociologie was in factconceived more as a political club than a learned society. Guided in thisby Littré’s heterodox positivism and the redefinition of sociology heproposed around 1870, the Société de Sociologie was intended first andforemost to accompany intellectually the political changes that Littréconsidered imperative in the early years of the Third Republic (1870–1940). This expectation found little echo among the members of thesociety, and it seems possible that Littré himself and his closest asso-ciates were the ones to interrupt the society’s meetings. Some of itsmembers’ general studies on the status of the social sciences and theirmain divisions were continued in the framework of the journal LaPhilosophie positive (1867–83), but the authors most committed tothose studies were on the margins of the Littré network. Neither thedominant positivist republicanism, centered around Littré and Dubost,nor the general sociology of the more peripheral members of the

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 22 No. 4© The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and Permissions: pp. 30–62 http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav [22:4; 30–62; DOI: 10.1177/0952695109337691]http://hhs.sagepub.com



network (Mesmer, Roberty, Vitry) represented an important intellec-tual contribution to the formation of academic sociology in France.Given that the Société de Sociologie did contribute to diffuse the projectof a sociological science and developed forms of sociology coherentenough to be rejected by the pioneers of university sociology, the groupconstitutes a significant case of failure in the history of the discipline.

Key words Émile Littré, positivism, French republicanism,French sociology

Auguste Comte’s positive philosophy and his programme for a new scienceof human society were vividly discussed in intellectual circles throughoutthe 19th century. They were initially concerned with Comte’s conception ofphilosophy and science, and its social and political implications; it took severaldecades, however, before the idea to create a new science of ‘sociology’ ledto a small corpus of studies. John Stuart Mill and a few others considered‘sociology’ to be a convenient notion for the science of society, but it was onlyin the 1870s and 1880s that the first attempts were undertaken to proposesystematic outlines of what the new science might look like. Herbert Spencer’swork was the best known and undoubtedly the most influential example, butprior to Spencer’s Principles of Sociology, which appeared from 1878 onwards,a French group around Emile Littré had already debated several pressingissues. Littré was a heterodox positivist, who had broken with Comte in theearly 1850s, and became one of the most renowned intellectuals in Franceduring the Second Empire (1851–70) and the first years of the Third Republic(1870–1940). He and his associates elaborated Comte’s ideas in differentways, proposing schemes for sociological treatises, identifying certain errorsand lacunae in Comte’s conception of sociology, and reformulating its majordivisions and subdivisions. The problems and promises of the new sciencewere discussed at meetings of the Société de sociologie (1872–4) about whichcuriously little is known. Generally considered to have been a short-livedfailure, Littré’s sociological society was quickly overshadowed by the repu-tation of Spencer, and a few others, and somewhat later by representatives ofthe new generation of Durkheim, Tarde and Worms, whose careers took offin the 1880s and whose work marked the beginnings of sociology as anacademic discipline in France.

Despite the fact that the Société de Sociologie (1872–4) was the first socio-logical society in the world and founded by Émile Littré and a few otherthinkers well known outside the social sciences in the narrow sense, it wasquickly and thoroughly eliminated from collective memory. Discredited bysucceeding generations of academic sociologists, Littré’s society rapidly fellinto oblivion. According to Durkheim, for example, no Frenchman in thedecades following publication of the last volumes of Auguste Comte’s Cours

SOCIOLOGY AND POSITIVISM IN 19TH-CENTURY FRANCE 31



de Philosophie Positive (1830–42) had moved sociology forward, not Comtehimself or his immediate disciples, not Le Play or any others (Durkheim,1970). The new science had no sooner come into existence than it disappearedfrom the horizon, an eclipse that according to Durkheim lasted 30 years –until 1876 when Alfred Espinas defended his doctoral thesis, the first in soci-ology in France. In the following years the movement grew by way of vari-ous works (by Spencer, Schäffle, Fouillée, Wagner, Schmoller, Tönnies) thatDurkheim commented on and analyzed at the beginning of his career. WhileDurkheim wrote nothing directly on Littré’s society and alluded to its failureas both fitting and insignificant, René Worms, who had always been moreinterested in sociological organizations than Durkheim, did publicly recallits existence, making a call in 1910 for a written history of the Société de Soci-ologie, which he offered to publish in his Revue internationale de sociologie(Worms, 1910).1 The offer found no takers.

The various disciplinary histories of sociology since Durkheim have gener-ally reproduced the verdict of the first generation of academic sociologists,and the pioneering experiment of the Société de Sociologie was forgotten.Recent historical studies of the discipline have occasionally mentioned itsephemeral existence, but without offering any detailed research that mightshed light on the episode (Mucchielli, 1998: 85–6). Only Roger Geiger andMassayuki Yamashita, in their respective doctoral theses, have examined inany detail a set of texts written by society members. After a critical discussionof the works in question, Geiger concluded that Littré and his companionsmade virtually no contributions to the academic sociology that was cominginto being in France in the 1880s and 1890s, though their journal, La Philoso-phie positive, and their society had worked to give sociology a new presence(Geiger, 1972). Massayuki Yamashita makes the opposite claim, explainingthat Durkheim could not have succeeded without what society members hadachieved. In Yamashita’s view, the works of a now forgotten author, Guarinde Vitry, more particularly provided an essential contribution to nascentsociology and he should be thought of as the ‘little-known but undeniableprecursor to Durkheim’s sociology’ (Yamashita, 1993: 8; 1995: 83–115).2

Regardless of how sound Geiger’s and Yamashita’s interpretations may ormay not be, both limited their analysis to a few explicitly sociological writingsrather than looking into a wider corpus of texts by the group of authors, theirtrajectories and networks, and only minimally considered the context of theproduction and reception of their texts. The Société de Sociologie thereforedeserves more detailed study, and the research may begin with the hypothe-sis that position-taking in the intellectual field tends to correspond to thepositions and trajectories of the intellectual producers.3 Trying to do intel-lectual history without taking into account the social history of the intellec-tuals in question implies not only ignoring relevant and indeed indispensableinformation but also failing to understand the social dynamics of intellectual

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 22(4)32



production itself. A historical sociology of social sciences thus seems theappropriate framework to address these questions.

Understanding the genesis of the Société de Sociologie and how it operatedis no easy task, however, since there are very few available sources on it: noarchives and virtually no participant accounts.4 The main source is Littré’sjournal, La Philosophie positive (1867–83), which published a list of thesociety’s members, its statutes and several papers read during society meetings.Because there are no minutes or accounts of how meetings were run, the onlyoption is to proceed indirectly, trying to understand the meaning of societyactivities by way of the writings and trajectories of its members as related tothe social and political conditions under which they practised their activities.

A NETWORK OF HETERODOX POSITIVISTS

La Philosophie positive and the Société de Sociologie proceeded out of thenetwork of heterodox positivists that developed around Émile Littré. Littréhad been ‘enthralled’ by Comte’s Cours de Philosophie Positive (1830–42)and he was the first to extensively review it in France (in 1844); from then on,all his various activities – translating and scholarly work, article- and essay-writing, political activism – were marked by this reference. Littré alwaysdescribed himself as a ‘disciple’ of Comte and his ‘positive philosophy’. Heused the doctrine as a general tool for ‘trac[ing] the lineaments, origin andend of every question for myself and protect[ing] me from the danger ofcontradicting myself’. As he had given up the ambition to become an originalthinker himself, he explained, positive philosophy ‘suffices for everything,never misleads me, and always clarifies matters for me’ (Littré, 1863).Acknowledging the ‘power of dogmas’, his overtly declared aim was todefend the philosophical doctrine he adhered to – against the master himself,if necessary; to apply it in various domains; to reconsider and reformulatecertain points and to diffuse that doctrine to persons with ‘some bent forpositive doctrines’ (Littré, 1876, 1879).

While Littré always presented himself as a partisan and spokesman forpositive philosophy, it is surely too simple to attribute this intellectual stancemerely to a psychological desire for emotional security (Conry, 1974: 419).Since the intellectual field in the mid-19th century was much less defined byacademic specializations, general doctrines and philosophical schools repre-sented a preponderant principle of vision and organization among intellec-tuals. It was only with the growth and differentiation of the university systemduring the Third Republic that specialized research and disciplinary affilia-tions acquired greater weight – diminishing that of the grand doctrines thathad dominated the intellectual field (Charle, 1994). In the mid-19th centurythe intellectual field was largely organized in terms of general doctrines,




some of which had acquired the status of semi-official philosophies (Cousin’sspiritualism, for example), while others (evolutionism, materialism, positivism,socialism) were initially marginal or were simply denied any place in theofficial institutions. When the editors of La Philosophie positive suspendedpublication in 1883, two years after Littré’s death, this in fact attested todeclining interest in precisely the kind of ‘general ideas’ favored when thereview was founded:

We are disappearing, then, in the face of general indifference to generalquestions. Writers and readers are busy with quite different things thathave little to do with great scientific syntheses. (Robin and Wyrouboff,1883: 321–33)5

Born into a family of silversmiths and the son of a cultured revolutionary,Émile Littré (1801–81) was of Comte’s generation and only three yearsyounger than he (Aquarone, 1958; Six, 1962; Rey, 1970; and Revue de syn-thèse, 1982 [special issue]). After studying medicine during the Restorationand working as an assistant to the celebrated Paris physician Pierre Rayer,Littré somewhat late in life gave up medicine in favor of journalism, scholar-ship and translation. His father’s death in 1827 very likely forced him to findpaying work rather than write a thesis; at that time, in any case, he begandoing translations and giving Greek and Latin lessons (Rullière, 1982). Fromthen on his professional life was that of a private scholar, an ‘homme decabinet’, and publicist, positions he himself readily qualified as ‘subaltern’and which long kept him relatively ‘obscure’ (Littré, 1991: 487–96).

Having no clearly defined intellectual project for himself, Littré was alsoan activist publicist: he was both a journalist and, during the Second and ThirdRepublics, an elected politician (city councillor, parliamentary representative,senator). His deepest interest and the common denominator of his studiesand political positions was the historical development and future possibilitiesof modern societies. Comte’s greatness, as Littré saw it, lay in having con-ceptualized modern science and used that understanding to conceive the firsttrue science of history (Petit, 1982: 215–43). Littré regularly cited preciselythose ideas – the direction of history, the ‘march of civilization’, ‘the evolu-tion of humanity’ – as the best means of understanding events and seizingavailable possibilities for taking action. In one of his better-rememberedremarks, he described the republic as ‘the regime most apt to allow time tomaintain its appropriate preponderance’ (Littré, 1880a: x).

Littré was a known, recognized scholar, and the 1839 publication of histranslation of the first volume of Hippocrates’ complete works (10 volumes,published 1839–61) was decisive in his election to the Académie des Inscrip-tions et Belles-Lettres, while his studies of the history of medicine and his newedition of Nysten’s Dictionnaire de Médecine (in collaboration with CharlesRobin; the first volume was published in 1855) ensured him membership in




the Académie de Médecine. Alongside his long-term encyclopedic projects,in which he involved his wife and daughter, Littré was one of the main editorsof a non-socialist republican newspaper, the National, for 20 years, from 1831to 1851. He took an active part in the revolution of 1848 (as he had donein that of 1830), and his anthology of texts, Conservation, révolution etpositivisme (1852), completed just before the coup d’état of December 1851and well known in republican circles, attests to his sustained activism andresolutely optimistic vision of the future of European societies. Like AugusteComte, with whom he founded the Société Positiviste in 1848, Littré believedthat the ‘critical’ phase of the revolution was over and that the ‘organic’phase, which would reconcile order and progress, could at last begin. Thepositivists were opposed to ‘retrograde’ or simply ‘stationary’ doctrines, butwere no less critical of revolutionary ones. In some respects they were closeto socialism, but in their understanding the only way socialism could becomesynonymous with social renewal and progress was if it took the ‘sociologicalpath’; that is, if socialists submitted to the teachings of ‘positive knowledge’(Littré, 1879: 160) by abandoning their revolutionary articles of faith; i.e. themetaphysics of popular sovereignty, the illusion of equality, the doctrine ofclass struggle. Desirable reforms were not those that founded political actionon abstract theological or metaphysical ideas but rather those derived fromthe positive spirit, namely from a reorganization of intellectual and moralforces – a new ‘spiritual power’.

As Comte rallied to the Second Empire and dedicated himself to the reli-gion of humanity and ‘subjective synthesis’, Littré took his distance. Littré’sjudgment of the new political regime was radically opposed to Comte’s, ashe explained in a letter written in 1852:

I remain a partisan of liberty against despotism, I prefer the constitu-tional, pacific regime to Bonaparte’s bloody military dictatorship, andI see the advent of the imperial regime as the grimmest solution the situ-ation of 1851 could have received. (Littré, 1991: 569)

This break with his master together with the new political conditions reducedLittré’s journalistic and political activities to a minimum and left him to his‘philosophical leisure’ (Littré, 1868: 154). He resumed his scholarly work,namely the dictionaries, and regularly contributed to the major intellectualjournals of the time: the Journal des Débats, the Journal des Savants and theRevue des Deux Mondes. After Comte’s death in 1857, the conflict aroundhis legacy brought to light the opposition between his orthodox heirs, led byPierre Laffitte, and the heterodox positivists, of whom Littré was the mostrenowned public figure.6 The publication of his hefty Auguste Comte et laphilosophie positive (1863), written at the request of Madame Comte, co-incided with a critical moment in the evolution of the Second Empire. In thiswork, the first intellectual biography of Comte, Littré described his life and




work in detail while specifying his own reasons for having rejected the movefrom ‘positive philosophy’ to the ‘religion of humanity’ and from the ‘objec-tive method’ to the ‘subjective method’.

POLARIZATION OF THE INTELLECTUAL FIELD

Meanwhile Littré was presenting his candidacy for the Académie française.This so horrified the Academician Monseigneur Dupanloup, bishop of Orléans,that he wrote an Avertissement à la jeunesse et aux pères de famille sur lesattaques dirigées contre la religion par quelques écrivains de nos jours (1863),wherein four authors – Littré, Taine, Renan and Maury – were identifiedas atheist intellectuals who, refusing to respect the country’s religion, hadfallen into the old revolutionary errors of materialism, fatalism and pan-theism. Several of Littré’s texts are cited – he was the primary target – and todemonstrate the worrying proportions that atheism had taken, Dupanloupcompared the earlier edition of Nysten’s Dictionnaire de Médecine to Littréand Robin’s, explaining how the key notions of soul, love, spirit, man andphilosophy had all fallen in the latter version under the deleterious influenceof atheism. Littré’s competitor for the seat in the Académie française, theCount Louis de Carné, won the battle and Littré only joined the immortalsafter the advent of the Third Republic, but the affair and the dispute it gaverise to extended far beyond the usual intrigues over the membership of theAcademy and brought him great renown.

The proliferation of new doctrines that followed on the revolution of 1848,particularly the devastating attack by the young Taine in Les philosophesfrançais du XIXième siècle (1857), convinced the spiritualist philosophersreigning at the national Institut de France and the Sorbonne that Mon-seigneur Dupanloup’s concerns were justified. In 1864, the best-known spir-itualist philosopher of the time, Elme Caro, professor at the École Normale,member of the Académie française and a powerful orator, published aneminently orthodox defense of Christian spiritualism, L’idée de Dieu et sesnouveaux critiques. That same year Paul Janet, member of the spiritualistschool but less confident in its position, published a critical study entitled Lematérialisme contemporain en Allemagne, before penning ‘La Crise philoso-phique’ (1865), an essay explaining that what he understood as the currentcrisis situation had begun when the spiritualists lost their dominant positionin enlightened public opinion. After a wave of articles, brochures and booksattacking or defending the position of Dupanloup and his allies, Dupanlouphimself clarified his view by way of a book entitled L’athéisme et le péril social(1866), which presented a far-reaching inventory of the current movement ofimpiety and its harmful consequences. Attacking positivism (and its exponents,Comte and Littré), pantheism (Hegel, Renan) and materialism (Vogt, Büchner)




as the main forms of atheism, the author deplored the ‘sad spectacle’ of thepolemic, which had given rise to more than 100 articles in newspapers andjournals.

Liberalization of the Second Empire and the rise of new opposition journalsand newspapers during the 1860s (Charle, 2004), made it possible to pursuethis intellectual sparring with increased energy after the Academy candidacyaffair. The election of the positivist biologist Charles Robin to the Academyof Sciences in 1866 gave rise to a similar conflict, with one significant differ-ence: among scientists the balance of power was much more favorable to anti-clerical opinion. Robin was elected though at approximately the same timehis course at the Paris Faculty of Medicine was harshly attacked. Then theminister of education, Victor Duruy, called him to account but ultimatelyabsolved him (Fox, 1982: 171–92). Meanwhile demonstrators attacked anddisturbed the courses of other free-thinking professors. In 1868, two cardinalsin the Senate, Donnet and Bonnechose, denounced the ‘materialist teachings’being diffused at the Faculty of Medicine, but Duruy once again defendedthe modern scientific spirit (Léonard, 1981: 225 and 234; Ellis, 1990: 39–40).

In this atmosphere of intense intellectual polarization, the clerical party,supported by the right and a number of spiritualist philosophers, foundthemselves up against an opposition whose forces became more numerousand better organized. Alongside individual figures like Taine and Renan andrepublican philosophers like Jules Barni or Jules Simon, several intellectualgroups had been formed. In the Société d’Anthropologie (founded 1859) free-thinking physicians interested in such areas of research as physical anthro-pology and human natural history came together around Broca (Blanckaert,2001; Hecht, 2003). The positivists were divided in two distinct groups:orthodox partisans of integral positivism around Pierre Laffitte, and hetero-dox positivists around Littré. Young ‘scientific materialists’ gathered aroundLouis Asseline and Gabriel de Mortillet; their references were German mater-ialists (Büchner, Vogt, Haeckel, and not Marx) and they were uncompro-mising in both political and intellectual matters (Lefèvre, 1881).

The most renowned intellectuals, such as Michelet, Renan and Littré, metin salons where figures of various political tendencies were regularly present,namely ‘republican salons’, such as those of Daniel Stern, the Comtessed’Agoult and Juliette Adam, meant to be more than places of amusement(Aprile, 1991: 473–87).7 Other meeting places were the associations de la librepensée, which began to spread in the 1860s, and Masonic lodges, which weremoving toward positions close to the republicans and expanded quickly inthe last years of the empire (Lalouette, 1997, 2003: 302–15; Hazareesingh andWright, 2001). The youngest and most intransigent, such as the ‘scientificmaterialists’, preferred gathering in cafés and brasseries. The Third Republicwas the first enduring republican regime in France, in part because of theemerging networks of opposition to the Second Empire, which allowed for




the development of new elites who later became the new republic’s leadershippersonnel (Nord, 1995). The positivist group around Émile Littré providesa typical example of this trajectory.

In the dynamics of polarization between clerical and anti-clerical forces,the real diversity of the intellectual opposition, which encompassed posi-tivists, materialists and evolutionists, often went unnoticed or simply did notseem relevant. The constraint to form alliances for or against the clerical partyactually produced many misunderstandings about actual intellectual affinities,including among later historians.8 Since the clerical party considered atheismthe main enemy, they tended to lump their opponents together under genericlabels that clouded their differences. The Abbé Guthlin, a Dupanloup ally,listed together authors as different as Littré, Sainte-Beuve, Havet, Taine andRenan as ‘the main leaders of the positivist school’ (Guthlin, 1873).9 For theopposite political reason, certain representatives of scientific materialismgrouped all their allies together in a great materialist family. As André Lefèvreput it, positivism was, after all, only a ‘particular form of materialism’ (Lefèvre,1911: 419).10 In the political-intellectual logic of opposed camps, scholarlyconflicts were structurally overdetermined by philosophical and politicalaffinities. Littré himself in 1868 deemed the differences among anti-clericalgroups to be of secondary importance:

I constantly mix politics and philosophy. . . . It cannot be otherwise,because at bottom the point is to substitute one belief for another:scientific belief for theological belief. The rest, however important itmay be, is secondary. (Littré, 1868: 9)11

THE PROGRAM OF LA PHILOSOPHIE POSITIVE

In 1867, amidst the intellectual and cultural effervescence marking the end ofthe Second Empire, Émile Littré and Grégoire Wyrouboff founded a bi-monthly journal, La Philosophie positive.12 The young Russian CountWyrouboff, like his friend Eugène de Roberty, had discovered positivism atthe Lycée Alexandre in St Petersburg, a school reserved for the nobility.Marked by aristocratic liberalism and the thought of Alexander Herzen, thetwo had been introduced to positivism by their French literature professor,Pommier, who had contributed to Littré’s French dictionary (Zaitseva andLiubina, 2006; Verrier, 1934). After studying medicine and natural sciencesin Moscow and Berlin, Wyrouboff settled in Paris in 1864 and helped found,fund and operate La Philosophie positive.13 Littré was already 66 years oldwhen the journal was started, and it was around Wyrouboff that the mostactive contributors gathered every week to discuss the upcoming issue. Asthe journal of a philosophical doctrine, its stated purpose was ‘to develop




the fundamental ideas of Auguste Comte . . . and apply them to the ques-tions of all kinds that have arisen in the sciences, arts, letters and politics dueto the progress of civilization’.14

‘Positive philosophy’, an expression that the Littréans preferred over ‘posi-tivism’, was understood as the ‘worldview’ opposed in all areas to theologyand metaphysics. While the pages of La Philosophie positive were open tonon-positivist authors,15 it was primarily a revue d’école, and frequently acombative one. Its editors were opposed both to other general doctrines andalso to certain academic specialists whom they believed had too narrow a viewof intellectual pursuits. When Théodule Ribot launched the first universityjournal of philosophy, the Revue philosophique, Wyrouboff criticized the veryidea of a specialized, professional philosophical journal, calling it a ‘chimera’:

It will never produce anything serious. Philosophical schools do nothave the least desire to be reconciled with each other and become indis-tinguishable. Quite the contrary, they can only endure and be fruitfulif they remain consistent and pure. The time for eclecticism is past.(Wyrouboff, 1876: 468–9)

Littré and Wyrouboff, by far the most productive writers for the review (seeTable 1), wrote on nearly all the subjects it covered: scientific, historical,political, artistic. Their adherence to positive philosophy implied both anencyclopedic posture that would allow for critical discussion and judgmentof very diverse questions, and at least partial rejection of specialization andprofessionalization. In scientific matters, for example, Wyrouboff wrote onphysics, thermodynamics, chemistry, medicine, zoology, mineralogy, statistics,geology and geography, all in addition to philosophy, history, politics, anthro-pology and sociology. Hippolyte Stupuy, writer and journalist, also handledmany themes, though he focused mostly on politics, theater and literature.Both he and Littré published poems of a positivist sensibility: Littré on oldage and the earth, Stupuy on altruism and on the notions of cause and law.

Other authors were more specialized. Pierre Petroz, former revolutionaryof 1848 like many other contributors, was the journal’s art critic and an overtpartisan of social art. Louis André and Émile Jourdy, two artillery officers,wrote on technical and scientific questions and on other matters dear to posi-tivists, such as education. Antonin Dubost wrote primarily on politics. AchilleMercier specialized in economic and financial questions. Edouard de Pompérywas particularly interested in moral and social problems.

Still, the dominant theme of La Philosophie positive was politics. The editor-ial classification of published articles shows that in the first series (1867–76)‘politics’ accounts for the highest number of articles (n = 56). Littré hadannounced in the first issue that the journal meant to analyze and assesspolitical events in Europe from the perspective of positive philosophy. Froman account published only in 1914 (and generally ignored by historians) by





Émile Jourdy, a member of the group and former student at the École poly-technique, it may be concluded that the small circle of particularly devotededitors were above all strongly committed to the republican movement(Jourdy, 1914: 14–19). The company that gathered around Wyrouboff everyweek included the journalist and Freemason Antonin Dubost, a close asso-ciate of Gambetta who had a long political career in the Third Republic, andthe young artillery officer Louis André, future general and war minister who

Table 1 Regular collaborators (≥5 contributions) of La Philosophie positive(1867–83)

Number of

Member ofcontributions

the Société 1867–76 1876–83de sociologie 16 vols 15 vols Total

1. Emile Littré (1801–81) yes 120 61 1812. Grégoire Wyrouboff (1843–1913) yes 85 70 1553. Pierre Petroz (1819–91) yes 6 68 744. Hippolyte Stupuy (1832–1900) yes 34 28 625. Adelbert Frout de Fontpertuis – 9 26 355. (1825–)6. Emile Jourdy (1845–1941) yes 16 11 277. Edouard de Pompéry (1812–95) yes 9 14 238. Antonin Dubost (1844–1921) yes 13 4 179. Achille Mercier (1823–91) yes 8 7 15

10. Louis André (1838–1913) yes 12 1 1311. Lucien Arréat (1841–1922) – – 12 1212. Charles Mismer (1823–91) – – 12 1213. Joseph de Bagnaux (1831–82) yes 9 – 914. Antoine Ritti (1844–1922) – 3 6 915. Eugène Noël (1816–99) yes 2 6 816. Albert Castelnau (1823–77) yes 6 1 717. Eugène de Roberty (1843–1915) corresp. 5 2 718. Clémence Royer (1830–1902) – 4 3 719. André Sanson (1826–1902) – 5 2 720. Jean-Marie Caubet (1822–91) yes 4 2 621. Louis-Adolphe Bertillon yes 5 – 521. (1821–83)22. Adolphe Clavel (1815–81) yes 5 – 523. Charles d’Henriet (1829–70) – 5 – 524. Marc Régis – – 5 5

The total number of contributions refers to the total number of publications in the journalincluding all genres (articles, notes, commentary, book reviews, letters). An article published asa series is counted as a single contribution.



had written a short work entitled Le positivisme pour tous (1868). Also therewere the future republican leader Jules Ferry,16 the journalist Hippolyte Stupuy,and another journalist, Jean-Marie Caubet, an active Freemason since 1856.Caubet knew Dubost well and had ‘many relations in the republican party’(Caubet, 1893: 119). Wyrouboff himself, as mentioned, had been schooled atthe Lycée Alexandre of St Petersburg, a training institution for Russia’s seniorfunctionaries, and ‘seemed to have been destined for public office’ by hisstudies, ‘his taste for the fight’ and ‘his oratorical talent’ (Copaux, 1914: 1–21).

The presence of several journalists and politicians, three of whom wouldbecome ministers (André, Dubost, Ferry), seems as typical of the initial groupas the absence of scholars who were primarily involved in academic careers.The fact that Charles Robin, a close friend and associate of Littré’s and aresolute partisan of positive philosophy, did not participate in the editorialmeetings is particularly remarkable. Robin was one of the very few membersof Littré’s network to have made a scientific career. In 1849 he co-founded theSociety of Biology, and from 1862 to 1885 held the first chair in histology.He edited the Journal de l’anatomie et de la physiologie, and in 1858 becamea member of the Academy of Medicine, joining the Academy of Sciences in1866. Robin published primarily scientific and epistemological studies and,although close to Littré, seldom wrote for La Philosophie positive.17

La Philosophie positive was not a scholarly journal, strictly speaking, andwith hardly any exceptions it did not publish research articles.18 Everythingseems to indicate that it was from the outset a political-intellectual journalclose to certain republican networks and relatively far removed from genuinelyacademic circles.19 The defeat of the Paris Commune bolstered the editors’already firm political commitment, and political themes were still more presentin the second series, published from 1876 to 1883, while the republicans werein power, than in the first.

The ‘sciences’ (45 articles) and ‘philosophy’ (38 articles) were sections whichwere not quite as full as ‘politics’. The other sections, in descending order ofimportance, were ‘political economy and statistics’ (n = 24), ‘literature andthe arts’ (n = 21) and ‘sociology’ (n = 20). The reason for the relative import-ance of political economy and literary matters was Littré’s understanding thatthey constituted ‘great gaps’ in Comtean positivism (Littré, 1863: 674–8).20

Handling political economy from a positive philosophy perspective was, ashe saw it, ‘an urgent and important matter’. In the second issue of the journal,Jules Ferry wrote that ‘nothing’ could be more important in the developmentof positive philosophy than ‘to incorporate political economy into socialscience’ and thereby renew the former. The point as he saw it was to find asolution for the ‘immense problem’ of the conflict between laissez-faire econ-omics and the necessary ‘social discipline’ (Ferry, 1867: 289–312).

The high proportion of articles on arts and literature was linked to another‘gap’ identified by Littré, what he called the ‘subjective theory of humanity’.




This theory as he saw it should include morality, aesthetics and psychology;the idea was that it would serve as a substitute for Comte’s late ‘subjectivesynthesis’, but Littré did not develop it much. Sociology articles came slightlybehind those on art and literature, and all of them derived from the func-tioning of the Société de Sociologie.

Book reviews were also an important section of the journal; many articleswere in fact reviews or essays on recent works. Given the journal’s doctrinallogic, the books reviewed were either major philosophic or scientific works(books by Bain, Buckle, Darwin or Mill, for example) or works by groupmembers themselves. Littré, for example, reviewed books and shorter worksby Bourdet, Dubost, Mahy, Régis, Ritti, Stupuy, Taberlet and Wyrouboff, allof whom were journal contributors or members of the Société de Sociologie.The activist dimension of the journal is most visible in the ‘varieties’ section,containing information on current polemics in the press and the internationalpositivist movement.

LITTRÉ AND THE RECONCEPTUALIZATION OFSOCIOLOGY

In early 1872, shortly after the humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian Warand the Paris Commune that had ended in a blood bath, the circle around Littréfounded the first-ever sociology society. The purpose was to promote ‘thescientific study of social and political problems’.21 Its 26 founding members,its meetings scheduled for alternate Thursday evenings, and the make-up of itsadministrative bureau attest to how ambitious the undertaking was. Littré waspresident, Robin and Wyrouboff vice-presidents, Dubost and Cathelineausecretaries, Caubet treasurer-archivist. John Stuart Mill and Eugène de Robertywere correspondents respectively for England and Russia. To join the societyone had to have the support of two founding members and present a printedwork, or at least a manuscript related to a question of interest to the society.Due in part to the latter requirement, and in contrast to the orthodox positivistnetwork, the Société de Sociologie counted no workers or craftsmen among itsmembers. Nearly all of the founding members had pursued advanced studiesand belonged to the intellectual or liberal professions. The two main groupswere physicians and jurists. The physicians often had ties to Robin, while thejurists were part of the republican networks; Littré was probably the inter-mediary between the two. Yet despite the society’s relatively high aspirationsand relatively high-level recruitment, it operated for barely two years.

To understand the meaning of the founding of this society and its briefhistory requires moving beyond the texts read during its meetings. First, it isimportant to examine how Littré’s understanding of sociology evolved. Littréspoke more explicitly than any other society member about the nature and




function of the new science. His point of departure was, as usual, Comte’sCours de philosophie positive and the theory of science developed in it. Thistheory held that the six fundamental sciences constituted a series that increasedin complexity as it decreased in generality, in accordance with the propertiesof those sciences’ respective objects. The object of biology was both morecomplicated and less general than physics: more complicated because of thegreater interdependence of phenomena of life, and less general because limitedto living nature. As a more complex science, biology could not be reduced tophysics. Contrary to later forms of positivism (such as the logical positivismof the Vienna circle), the epistemology operative in the Cours de philosophiepositive did not aim to define the logical or methodological unity of science,but was instead a differential epistemology that accounted and allowed forthe founding of relatively autonomous new sciences such as biology and soci-ology.22 It was hardly by chance that the program drafted by the youngCharles Robin for the Society of Biology, founded in 1849, was based entirelyon Comte’s conception of the life sciences.23

Comte had conceptualized sociology in analogous fashion. Given its spe-cific object – human society; a whole still more complex and less general thanthe preceding science’s object – sociology could be founded only on a specificmethod appropriate to that specific object: the historical method. Accordingto Comte, the specific property of humans was ‘the gradual, continual influ-ence of human generations on each other’. A historical law, therefore – thelaw of the three stages – was what, in Comte’s schema, constituted sociology’sspecific foundation and epistemological originality.

Littré recalled this line of reasoning in one of his first writings on sociol-ogy, ‘De la condition essentielle qui sépare la sociologie de la biologie’ (1868).In that text he stressed the significance of Comte’s reasoning for the develop-ment of the new science, defending sociology’s specificity and autonomyagainst recent attempts to conceive of societies as biological entities, and againstmonists and materialists, who sought to found social science on the sharedproperties of matter.24 The essential property of human societies, in his view,was historical evolution. Evolution was not a biological fact – ‘The views ofLamarck and Darwin have not yet emerged from the status of a hypothesis’– but the sociological reality par excellence:

The fundamental condition for producing evolution in the human speciesis societies’ faculty for creating sets of things that can and must be learned.(Littré, 1873: 348–75)

The article closes thus:

Humanity’s collective spirit had the task of unconsciously producing. . . an entire civilizational organism. This organism was quite small atfirst; it grew slowly, and it now maintains itself and continues to grow




through the incessant labor of all that is best in humanity. It inheresentirely in the necessary set of linkages that carries it from satisfactionof the most humble needs to the lofty heights of morality, art and science.(Littré, 1873: 375)

In Littré’s view, sociology since Comte – that is, since it had been endowedwith a systematic conception – was founded on ‘the law of history, the direc-tion of progress, the march of civilization, the aim of humanity’ (Littré, 1873:7). But while sociology could be thought of as already ‘constituted’, it wasobviously underdeveloped in comparison to the other positive sciences, andin several works written after 1870 Littré set about remedying that state ofaffairs. These works indicated two different strategies for developing soci-ology. One continued the earlier text on the separation of biology and sociol-ogy, and was basically lexicographic: Littré proposed a specific vocabularywhose purpose was to ensure that sociology would remain autonomous frombiology. The other was essentially political: sociology was redefined as theintellectual accompaniment to republican political action during and after thefall of the Second Empire.

In the aim of developing sociology into a full-fledged, autonomous science,Littré proposed an outline for what was to become a sociological treatise.This project was part of a plan for collective intervention by the heterodoxpositivists in the debate around educational reform. Around 1870, Littré,Robin and Wyrouboff intended to publish six treatises, one for each of thefundamental sciences; this would provide the material for encyclopedicinstruction of the sort called for by positive philosophy (Littré, 1870b:441–8). None of the treatises was ever published, but Littré did publish hisoutline for a treatise on sociology. It was a short text focused on the questionof sociological language. He eventually read it to the Société de Sociologieshortly after its founding in 1872 and published it in the same year. It has itsplace in the society’s first discussions that centered on the place of sociologyin the classification of sciences and how it should be subdivided. Severalgeneral schemes were proposed, each inspired more or less by Comte’s distinc-tions. Wyrouboff maintained, for example, that the static part of sociologyshould include the study of families, classes, nations and races, while thedynamic part would study the four types of human activity – intelligence,morality, art, industry – themselves the respective objects of what were to bethe four branches of dynamic sociology: philosophy, law and politics, aes-thetics and social economy.25

During these discussions, Littré had noted the unfortunate tendency to useand accept biological language:

Every application of a biological term in sociology is either a simpleanalogy or a metaphor. Neither organs nor functions in sociology arewhat they are in biology. Some of the confusion and error comes from




this transfer of meanings. This cause of misunderstanding must bepromptly removed. As soon as sociology has its own technical language,we will get used to thinking sociologically. (Littré, 1872: 153–60)

Accordingly, Littré proposed a set of technical terms meant to ‘promptly’replace biological or biologizing vocabulary as well as ordinary language.Starting like Comte from the statics–dynamics distinction, he divided sociol-ogy into two main branches, sociodynamie (dynamics) and sociomérie (statics).Sociodynamie was divided into two parts, one concerned with maintainingsociety (socioergie), the other with its evolution (sociauxie). These subdivi-sions, which corresponded to chapters and chapter subheadings in his treatiseoutline, were themselves subdivided once more, each sub-subdivision re-ceiving a name constructed with the prefix ‘socio-’. At the end of the outlinehe added a third main branch – on social disturbances or pathology, to becalled sociotaraxie – to the fundamental distinction between sociodynamieand sociomérie.

Littré’s socio-lexicographic inventions remained a dead letter not so muchbecause he abandoned sociology, but because at approximately the same timehe indicated another strategy of moving forward, one that soon came todominate his concerns. In an article entitled ‘De la méthode sociologique’,published in the spring of 1870, in the midst of a ‘new’ and particularly ‘un-stable’ phase of national history, Littré had proposed to redefine sociology’sspecificity, and to conceive its task in another way. He did not include thistext in his anthologies and it has not attracted specialists’ attention. However,this is quite a significant document because it was written prior to the repres-sion of the Commune while containing all the characteristic features of hislater works. According to Comte’s theory of science, writes Littré, the morecomplex a science is, the more alien and resistant it is to deductive reasoning.In mathematics, the possibilities of deduction are unlimited; in biology, how-ever, deduction is rather suspect as long as its results have not been confirmedby empirical evidence. Since social science was the most complex of all sciences,it was also the one that least admitted of deductive reasoning, and in whichit was least possible to predict ‘distant consequences’ or rigorously construct‘systems’. He adds: ‘I know that habits and pretensions in this matter all goagainst this, but I absolutely refuse to’ (Littré, 1870a: 291–301).

The strategic consequences of establishing this ‘essential point’ of the socio-logical method were extremely important, and Littré moves on in the articleto discuss its implications for positive politics, observing that in France‘revolutions have followed on one another in vain. Twice the republican formprevailed – in vain; twice all was crushed by personal power – in vain’ (Littré,1870a: 292).

This grim history implied that instead of imagining ‘general systems’ andperpetuating theoretical discussions, it was necessary to begin with an




irrefutable fact, i.e. the gradual nature of science, education and socialmorality. The fact that change occurred only gradually, and that society hadto be improved, meant that political work and the tasks of sociology had tobe reevaluated. It had to be admitted that what had enabled social situationsto advance was ‘the empirical wisdom’ of statesmen and the contributions of‘publicists’. Social situations developed ‘little by little, step by step, alwaystaking the present as their point of departure’. Contrary to utopian visionsand a priori assumptions, what confirmed the specificity of the method ofsociology was political practice, and political practice was none other thanthe sociological method ‘in action’, or at least ‘the empirical confirmation ofits truth and power’.

An argument about the question of method in sociology thus became acommentary on the French political situation and a plea for more ‘modest’political practice (a practice that would be more attentive to details), as wellas a call for recognizing and carefully assessing the possibilities of the moment:

Let us take good advantage of the time that lies before us. Let each partyuse the respite granted to study how it may become better. No futureis closed: republican, socialist, positive ideas are gaining ground; mon-archical ones are not. (Littré, 1870)

This reconceptualization of sociology is consistent with the political andtheoretical position Littré held until the end of his life. Contemporary politi-cal questions are always close at hand in the many articles he wrote for LaPhilosophie positive. They were the work of a man who was once again directlyinvolved in the country’s political life, first as a parliament deputy (1871–5),later as a lifetime senator (1875–81). Politically close to politicians such asThiers, Ferry and Gambetta, Littré’s contribution to the politics of the ‘oppor-tunists’ is well known. Claude Nicolet maintained that what is commonlycalled ‘opportunism’ was ‘very much of positivist origin’ (Nicolet, 1982: 225).26

While it may be objected that Nicolet granted too much weight to positivismin republican ideology (Blais, 2000) and while we may also question theassumption that politicians are theoretically consistent, there is no contestingthe fact that Littré was an important political adviser to republican leaders.The articles he published in La Philosophie positive during those years areinfused with his commitment to a sense of ‘measure and what is opportune’,as he himself put it (Littré, 1880b: 432–40). In his anthologies, Fragments dephilosophie positive et de sociologie contemporaine (1876), Conservation, révo-lution et positivisme (2nd edition 1879) and De l’établissement de la TroisièmeRépublique (1880a), sociology appears only in a very particular form. Littrérecognized this himself, since in using the notion of sociology, he added adjec-tives to indicate that this was no longer the fundamental science of humansociety but rather ‘practical sociology’ or ‘contemporary sociology’; that is,sociology applied to the political and social issues of the moment.




THE POLITICS OF THE SOCIÉTÉ DE SOCIOLOGIE

If we consider the Société de Sociologie from this perspective, we mighthypothesize that Littré’s new political engagement after 1870 determinedboth the origin of the society and its early end: its origin because it was mostlikely conceived more as a political than a learned society; its end because thepapers read during its sessions practically all suffered from the abstractnessand esprit de système that Littré had so resolutely criticized in his text on ‘themethod in sociology’. Founded primarily to organize thinking on the politi-cal problems facing the new republic, the Société de Sociologie seemed tohave fallen into the trap of abstract meta-theoretical discussions, as sterilefor sociological research as they were for political thinking. While Littré wasprobably at the origin of the Société de Sociologie, he may also have beenresponsible for putting an end to its activities.

The position of Littré himself in this process was not entirely unambiguous,since around 1870 he had outlined two diverging strategies for the develop-ment of sociology. Although he read an older text during the first meetingsof sociological society, it does seem clear that his objectives by that time hadalready changed in line with the proposals he had elaborated in his article onthe sociological method. The society was founded shortly after Littré waselected to parliament, and there are several indications that the function it wasto fulfil was first and foremost, although perhaps not exclusively, political.Its stated purpose, for example, was much more practical and ‘applied’ thanmight be expected: not to elaborate sociology as a ‘science of the develop-ment and constitution of human societies’, as Littré had been wont to put it,but rather ‘the scientific study of social and political problems’. The referenceto ‘social and political problems’ is consistent with what Littré had proposedin his text on method in sociology, whereas the project for developing soci-ology as a fundamental and autonomous science is left aside.

The recruitment of founding members confirms that the society was notconceived as a learned society, in contrast to the Society of Biology, forexample, founded in 1849 and quite familiar to Robin and Littré. Hardly anyof its members was engaged in an academic or scholarly career (see Table 2).27

Charles Robin was the only university academic; he and Littré were the onlyAcademicians. The absence of graduates from the École normale supérieureconfirms the distance from the university, and it is highly significant thatthe few positivist scholars close to Littré, such as Antoine Ritti and AndréSanson, both regular contributors to La Philosophie positive, were not societymembers.28

Given the absence of a specifically scientific program, the most importantcommon trait among Société de Sociologie members was republican politicalcommitment. Their average age – 46 – was relatively high for a new journal; asmentioned, many of the members were former ‘’48ers’. Several had experienced




exile (Boysett, Castelnau, Hubbard, Noël), and the vast majority had parti-cipated in one way or another in opposition networks during the SecondEmpire. Nearly all the biographical notes I was able to find mention thatthe subject was a ‘republican’, and in most cases a ‘fervent’ or ‘ardent’ one.Antonin Dubost, whose political career was the longest and most significant,was not only secretary of the Société de Sociologie but also, following Jourdy’saccount, its ‘most diligent worker’ (Jourdy, 1914).29 Working first as a solici-tor’s clerk, Dubost became a Freemason in 1865, went to work as a journalistand became secretary to the politician Bancel. At the end of the Second Empirehe moved to Paris and subsequently became prefect (1871), conseiller d’Etat,parliament deputy (1880–97), minister (1893–4) and senator (1897–1921),before becoming president of the Senate (1906–20) at the end of his career.Dubost wrote regularly for La Philosophie positive, and his book Desconditions du gouvernement en France (1875) brought him recognition as atheorist of ‘opportunism’. According to Jourdy’s account, Dubost first intro-duced Gambetta to the positive method, and he adds: ‘It is an unknown fact,but this is surely how opportunism was born’ (Jourdy, 1914). It was hardlyby chance that Dubost was involved in creating the first chair for the historyof science at the Collège de France, held primarily by the orthodox positivistPierre Laffitte, then by Wyrouboff.30

For many members of the Société de Sociologie, initial political commit-ment extended into a political-administrative career in the Third Republic.A subgroup of eight persons – nearly a third of the society’s members –attained high political office. Six were parliamentary representatives. Boysset,Castelnau, Littré, Mahy and Taberlet were all elected in 1871; Dubost, whowas younger, entered the Chamber in 1880. Several of them remained inparliament for more than two decades (Boysset, Mahy, Dubost). Two parlia-mentary representatives, Mahy and Taberlet, were admitted as Société deSociologie founding members even though they had never published in LaPhilosophie positive – an indication of the predominance of political affiliationsin society recruitment. During a considerable number of years three formermembers of the sociological society were senators: Littré (1875–81), Robin(1876–85) and Dubost (1897–1921), and three eventually became ministers:Mahy (1882–3, 1887–8), Dubost (1893–4) and André (1900–4).

If we consider a broader range of political activity, five other members maybe added, who after 1871 became conseillers d’Etat (Bagnaux) or city council-lors (Caubet, Clavel, Deroisin, Stupuy). Bagnaux was also involved in foundingthe Cercle Républicain; Caubet fulfilled several political-administrative func-tions and became police chief of the city of Paris at the end of his career;Clavel and Hubbard were known to be friends of Gambetta; Deroisin, amagistrate’s son, introduced Jules Ferry to positivism and finished his careeras mayor of Versailles. The two military officers, André and Jourdy, bothbecame generals. Louis André, author of Le positivisme pour tous (1868),





Table 2 Members of the Société de sociologie (1872)

Contributions toLa Philosophie positive

Age in first second1872 series series Education Career

Louis André (1838–1913) 34 X X Ecole General, ministerpolytechnique

Joseph de Bagnaux (1831–82) 41 X – Law Civil servant,educator

Louis-Adolphe Bertillon 51 X – Medicine Doctor, (1821–83) demographer,

director ofmunicipal statisticsin Paris

Pierre-Eugène Bourdet 54 X X Medicine Doctor, publicist (1818–79)

Charles Boysset (1817–1901) 55 X – Law Lawyer, journalist,parliamentarydeputy

Albert Castelnau (1823–77) 49 X X Law Journalist,parliamentarydeputy

P. E. Cathelineau X – ? ?

Jean-Marie Caubet (1822–91) 50 X X No higher Journalist, educ. (?) Freemason, director

of Paris police

Adolphe Clavel (1815–81) 57 X – Medicine Doctor, publicist,city councillor

Philémon Deroisin 47 X – Law Lawyer, (1825–1910) journalist, mayor

Antonin Dubost (1844–1921) 30 X X Law Solicitor’s clerk,journalist,parliamentarydeputy, senator,minister

Léopold Graffin – – ? ‘Positivist socialist’

Gustave Hubbard (1828–88) 44 X X Law Journalist, secretaryof parliamentarybudget commission

Emile Jourdy (1845–1941) 27 X X Ecole General, geologistpolytechnique

Maximin Legrand (1819–) 53 – – Medicine Doctor




worked during his term as minister from 1900 to 1904, shortly after theDreyfus affair, to republicanize the officers’ corps. At least one of the othermembers, Graffin, was a political candidate – he identified himself as a ‘posi-tivist socialist’ – while another, Onimus, belonged to the Cercle Républicain.

As is generally recalled in the biographical notes, the republican victoryproved a means for certain network members to accede to high office (inaddition to those who became ministers). As mentioned, Caubet became headof the Paris police; Bertillon was appointed head of the Paris statistics depart-ment; Deroisin was elected mayor of Versailles; the journalist Noël becamedirector of the library of Rouen; Hubbard returned to Paris after exile inSpain and thanks to Gambetta became secretary of the budget commissionin the Chambre des Députés (1876) and secretary-general of the administrativeand financial commission (1879).31 Wyrouboff’s appointment to the historyof sciences chair at the Collège de France, in place of the candidate preferred

Table 2 Continued

Contributions toLa Philosophie positive

Age in first second1872 series series Education Career

Emile Littré (1801–81) 71 X X Medicine Publicist,Academician,parliament deputy,senator

François de Mahy 42 – – Medicine Parliamentary (1830–1906) deputy, minister

Achille Mercier (1823–91) 49 X X Law Notary, librarian

Eugène Noël (1816–99) 56 X X Law Journalist, librarian

Ernest Onimus (1840–) 32 X – Medicine Doctor

Pierre Petroz (1819–91) 53 X X No higher Journalist, art criticeduc. ( ?)

Edouard de Pompéry 60 X X Law Lawyer, publicist(1812–95)

Charles Robin (1821–85) 51 X X Medicine Professor,Academician, senator

Hippolyte Stupuy 40 X X No higher Journalist, writer,(1832–1900) educ. city councillor

François Taberlet (1836–) 36 – – Medicine Doctor, parliamentdeputy

Grégoire Wyrouboff 29 X X Medicine/nat. Publicist, professor (1843–1913) sciences at Collège de France



by both the Collège de France and the Academy of Sciences, is perhaps themost eloquent indication of Littré’s companions’ political capital. Louis Andréwas minister in Émile Combes’ anti-clerical government when Wyrouboffgot the appointment; Combes himself had written his thesis under CharlesRobin’s direction.

For most of these men, republican affiliations went hand in hand with jour-nalism activities, and this was perfectly typical of political work at the time.Some – the physician Adolphe Clavel, the law-faculty librarian AchilleMercier, and the solicitor Edouard de Pompéry – were known above all aspolitical publicists. With the exception of those on whom I could find no infor-mation (Cathelineau, Legrand), the officer and geologist Émile Jourdy is theonly society member who seems to have had no directly political activities.

An additional indication of the weight of the political capital of the membersof the society is the fact that a high proportion of them – nine, more than athird – were Légion d’honneur recipients.32 A similar significant trait is Free-masonry: at least seven members of the Société de Sociologie were Freemasons.Given that there is no exhaustive list of Freemason members, it is likely thatthe real number is even higher. Caubet, administrator of La Philosophie posi-tive and treasurer of the society, had important Freemason responsibilities;he was member of the Conseil du Grand Orient and ran the review Le mondemaçonnique. When Littré was initiated into the Freemasons in 1875, at thesame time as Jules Ferry, both joining Boysset, Dubost, Mahy, Onimus andWyrouboff, it was a public event that contempories readily compared toVoltaire’s initiation a century earlier.

While republican politics and participation in the various republican net-works constituted the common denominator of Societé de Sociologie members,it is important not to overestimate the group’s political coherence. Littréand Dubost undoubtedly played important roles in advising republican politi-cal leaders such as Ferry and Gambetta, and several other society members– Clavel, Deroisin, Hubbard, Mahy and Onimus – shared their political con-victions. But still other members had slightly different trajectories and politi-cal positions. Boysset, a Paris solicitor, was a public prosecutor (procureurde la République) in 1848; in 1850 he co-founded Le Peuple with Proudhon.When he returned from exile he co-founded the gauche radicale parlia-mentary group and was a deputy for nearly 30 years, but struck no allianceswith Ferry or Gambetta because he was opposed to French colonial policy.Petroz and Pompéry were also ‘48ers,’ but came from groups other than thepositivist circle: Petroz had been a Saint-Simonian, Pompéry a Fourierist.Wyrouboff’s political positions were not always the same as Littré’s; he seemsto have been more skeptical in political matters. When the École Libre desSciences Politiques was founded in 1871, Wyrouboff’s comment was thatpolitical science did not exist: ‘Politics has never been and never will be ascience’ (Wyrouboff, 1873: 115–23). Nor did Wyrouboff, ‘a democrat by




conviction and an aristocrat by temperament’ (Copaux, 1914: 1–21), makeany allusions to ‘wise political empiricism’ as Littré did, and he consideredLouis Blanc and Gambetta metaphysicians (Wyrouboff, 1883a: 300–9). AfterLittré’s death, Wyrouboff resumed his research in crystallography and chem-istry and defended his thesis in 1886. Though he sometimes returned topolitical and philosophical questions, his remarks invariably went in thesame direction. In his preface to Caubet’s memoirs, he praised the generationof 1848 for having kept their convictions ‘intact and pure’ and opposed‘modern doctrines, so elastic and convenient, doctrines that, in referring toopportune contingencies, exclude all general ideas’ (Wyrouboff, 1893: 7). OnPetroz’s death in 1891, Wyrouboff commented similarly on the ‘fine gener-ation of 1848’, who ‘spared neither effort nor sacrifice’ to attain their ideal(Wyrouboff, 1891).

THE END OF THE SOCIÉTÉ DE SOCIOLOGIE

There is, therefore, every indication that the Société de Sociologie was createdfirst and foremost as a political club around Émile Littré, the idea being tomobilize positive philosophy in historical circumstances that were once againfavorable to the republicans. While this makes the foundation of the societyintelligible, we must still explain its early demise. Wyrouboff was the only con-temporary to offer an explanation. Taking up the question of the society’s briefhistory in 1881, he cited the lack of consensus on the question of how toclassify sociology, affirming that this had made all collective work impossible:

After long and interesting discussions, it was acknowledged that noneof the opinions expressed or classifications proposed was the right one,that they were all flawed in one way or another, and that the solutionwould have to be found elsewhere and in another way. From that pointforward, collective work became impossible and individual work, usingall possible means in all imaginable directions, became urgent, indis-pensable. (Wyrouboff, 1881: 5–25)

While this explanation is plausible, it is not entirely sufficient because itoverlooks the discrepancy between Littré’s reconceptualization of sociologyaround 1870 and the content of many of the society papers. Here we en-counter not only an issue of interpretation, but also one of method. Althoughthe foundation of the Société de Sociologie and the recruitment of its memberswere the realization of what was primarily a political project, probably devisedby Littré and his closest associates, it is misleading to interpret the society’send solely on the basis of the content of papers read during meetings. Thecase of the Société de Sociologie clearly shows that it is important – in directcontrast to the usual way of proceeding in the history of ideas – to widen the




scope of texts to be taken into consideration. By including texts perceived asminor and occasional, texts that do not have the consistency of fully elabor-ated works and that are particularly marked by the circumstances in whichthey were produced, one may reveal more explicitly than others the intentionsand objectives of their authors. Understanding the meaning of this enlargedcorpus of texts in relation to the conditions in which it was produced is anext step in the analysis. The particularity of the context I have sought toreconstruct resided in the fact that the content of many society papers waspartially in contradiction with the aspirations and expectations of certainleading society members, namely Dubost and Littré. Rather than having thesociety function as a forum for discussing how sociology should be subdivided,they wanted to irrigate political thinking by way of ‘practical sociology’ or‘contemporary sociology’. This hidden tension may explain why the sessionswere so quickly interrupted and why all trace of the society disappears fromthe pages of La Philosophie positive.

But if it was conceived primarily as a political club that was closed downwhen it became clear that it could not deliver on its political promises, howcan we explain the fact that sociological articles continued to be published inLa Philosophie positive? As Geiger and Yamashita have noted, Littré’s reviewcontinued to publish texts on what constitutes sociology, and these texts werea continuation of the debate on the principles and subdivisions of sociologythat were the matter of the society’s first papers. In 1875 and 1876, Guarin deVitry published a series of articles entitled Considérations sur la constitutionde la science sociale; in 1876–7 Eugène de Roberty published ‘Notes soci-ologiques’; and in 1881 Charles Mismer published a set of papers entitledEssais sociologiques. Mismer’s and Roberty’s articles were later republishedin some of the first books explicitly devoted to sociology (Mismer, 1882;Roberty, 1881). But these publications do not contradict the explanationgiven above, because they were written by some of the most marginal membersof Littré’s network. Mismer and Vitry were not even society members; Robertywas only a correspondent. The fact that none of them seems to have lived inFrance at the time clearly illustrates the distance from Littré’s Parisian circle.

Guarin de Vitry (1823–86) was a businessman who headed the Compagniedu Gaz in Geneva. His articles in La Philosophie positive constituted nearlyall of what he published. Roberty (1843–1915), Wyrouboff’s lycée comrade,came to Paris only in 1887, well after his compatriot. After teaching at theUniversité Nouvelle in Brussels and the Collège Libre des Sciences Sociales inParis, he returned to Russia in 1904, where he became sociology professor inSt Petersburg. His interests and concerns were more academic than political,as is clearly shown by his works, published by one of the leading academicpublishing houses of the time, Alcan. Roberty was quite close to Félix Alcanhimself, as attested by the fact that he entrusted him with the management ofhis personal fortune (Tesnière, 2001: 141–2, 192). Charles Mismer (1832–91)




was a military officer, traveler and publicist, who made rather superficialclaims to support positive philosophy33 and whose work, Principes soci-ologiques (1882), was harshly criticized by Wyrouboff despite the fact thatthe most substantial parts of it had first appeared in La Philosophie positive(Wyrouboff, 1883b: 467–70).

The fact that Vitry, Mismer and Roberty published in La Philosophiepositive in no way implies that the review’s chief editors or the more selectgroup of contributors agreed with their ideas. Wyrouboff wrote that hisreview wished to show itself highly tolerant in matters pertaining to a scienceas undeveloped and uncertain as sociology: La Philosophie positive preferredto offer ‘hospitality to ten errors rather than close the door on what mightone day be a truth’ (Wyrouboff, 1883b: 467).

THE LEGACY OF THE LITTRÉ NETWORK ANDTHE FUTURE OF SOCIOLOGY

Two diverging conceptions of sociology developed around the Société deSociologie and La Philosophie positive. Émile Littré and a few of his associ-ates developed a reinterpretation of positive philosophy wherein the politi-cal dimension was central. Occupying positions in the fields of politics andjournalism and outside that of higher education, they forefronted the com-plexity of human societies and the difficulty of establishing laws or predic-tions that might be deduced from those laws. Their ‘practical sociology’,which represented the positivist version of a form of political pragmatism,implied surrendering the idea of sociology as a fundamental science. Theirmore liberal and democratic political orientation made possible a rapproche-ment with other political-intellectual currents and positivism’s integrationinto what then constituted legitimate republican thinking. The other networkmembers who wrote on sociology (Vitry, Mismer, Roberty) did not haveuniversity positions either, but they had fewer political resources, occupieda peripheral position in the Littré network, and in addition represented adispersed fraction of that network. They published only general thoughts onsocial science, attaining to neither positive theories nor empirical research.

There are virtually no indications that Littré’s conception or that of theother fraction of his network has contributed much to academic sociologyas it developed later. Though Durkheim does not refer directly to Littré’snetwork, he does allude to the heterodox positivists in certain passages.Sociologists themselves, he wrote in 1895, helped discredit their science bytaking a ‘uselessly aggressive attitude’ toward certain philosophical doctrines,whereas sociology as a positive science was independent of all metaphysicsand had no need to ‘interfere in battles between systems’. These same ‘soci-ologists’ also had a rather superficial conception of both science and politics,





as Durkheim saw it. The fact that they provided little information and lackedprecise results made scholars attached to precision wary of them, while theirassumption that practical reforms could be based on their theory was hardlylikely to win them ‘the sympathy or men of action, for whom social realitycannot be constructed or reconstructed so easily’ (Durkheim, 1975: 73). Muchlater, Marcel Mauss made similar comments. Referring to the first version ofDurkheim’s De la division du travail social, which dated from the mid-1880s,he noted that sociology was hardly in vogue at the time, ‘especially not inFrance, where the excesses of the last Comtists had made it ridiculous’ (Mauss,1969: 506).

The sociological studies done in connection with the Société de Sociologieand La Philosophie positive did not leave much of a trace in the subsequentdevelopment of the discipline. Their failure is one of a relatively hetero-geneous group situated outside higher education institutions and without themeans for attaining the autonomy required to move beyond preliminarygeneralities and political strategy. But though we can speak of failure from ascientific perspective, the whole undertaking was not without historical signi-ficance. The Littréans were among the very first intellectuals to have soughtto develop a form of sociology, and they not only helped diffuse the worditself and the project of the new science, but also developed two forms ofsociology coherent enough to be rejected by future academic sociologists,who then took up more successfully the project of creating a genuine scienceof human societies.

NOTES

1 Worms also took the occasion to recall that his own Paris Société de Sociologieincluded two former members of Littré’s, Louis André and Eugène de Roberty.

2 Because Yamashita ignores Comte’s theory of science and conception of soci-ology, this has led him to attribute an originality to Guarin de Vitry that seemsto me largely illusory. The very definition of what makes human societies specificand irreducible – what Yamashita understands as Vitry’s particular contribution– is in fact the basis of sociology in Comte’s thinking. On the meaning of Comte’swritings on the subject, see Heilbron (1993, 1995).

3 In The Rules of Art (1996) among other texts, Bourdieu hypothesized homologybetween the space of cultural products and the space of their producers.

4 The fact that the memoirs of two society members do not even mention it isperhaps an indication of how thoroughly its failure was internalized (Caubet,1893; Noel, 1902).

5 The other reason Robin and Wyrouboff gave for suspending publication was thefact that positive philosophy had ‘entered into the public domain, the greatcurrent of ideas that are in circulation nearly everywhere’.

6 On the positivist movement, see Simon (1963), Plé (1996) and Petit (1993).




7 Tocqueville, Michelet, Littré, Jules Simon, Jules Barni and Etienne Vacherot wereregularly present at Daniel Stern’s salon.

8 For a clarifying review of relations between ‘materialists’, ‘positivists’ and theanthropological school, see Blanckaert (2003: 253–83). As we move away from thescholarly pole of the intellectual field, the confusion among the various currentsbecomes greater still, and the stereotypes attached to the labels tend to dominatethe discourse. In the Goncourt brothers’ journal, for example, the positivist Robinis described as the ‘gendarme du matérialisme’ when in fact the positivists activelyopposed materialism for being a ‘neo-metaphysical’ philosophy. In his Diction-naire des idées reçues, Flaubert associated Littré with evolutionist doctrines:‘Littré – snigger when you hear the name. The gentleman who says we descendfrom apes.’

9 Taine and Renan were actually quite removed from Comtean positivism; seeGaulmier (1978: 7–20), Petit (2003: 73–101) and Nordmann (1978: 21–33).

10 On the positivist view of materialism as a new form of metaphysics see, forexample, Nuytz (1868: 28) and the harsh critique of Lefèvre’s book byWyrouboff in La Philosophie positive (1879: 23–49).

11 For another such dichotomous opposition see Le Blais (1865), a work prefacedby Littré.

12 The only existing study of La Philosophie positive is Restaino’s chapter ‘E. Littrée “La Philosophie positive”’ (Restaino, 1981: 104–33).

13 The idea of creating a journal for the positive doctrine was originally MmeComte’s, but Littré refused to handle the task. ‘Mme Comte circumvented theobstacle. For some time a young Russian, M. Wyrouboff, well known to ourreaders, had been living in Paris. He had asked to be received by Mme Comte,who quickly recognized the merit of such a recruit. Thinking that I would nolonger wish to escape a responsibility that would be so ably shared, she conceivedthe project of bringing us together in a common periodical undertaking. Aftersome tentative first steps, the project was realized and the Revue de la Philoso-phie positive came into being’ (Littré, 1877: 294).

14 See ‘Notre prospectus’, La Philosophie positive 1 (1867): 157.15 Several of the most regular contributors were not positivists; e.g. Adelbert Frout

de Fontpertuis, an artillery officer, traveler and author of non-specialist workson geography, and Clémence Royer, a woman scholar and translator of Darwin.Other contributors, such as Lucien Arréat or Charles Mismer, expressed super-ficial support for positive philosophy while remaining quite removed from theParis circle. Occasional contributors also included militant materialists, such asAndré Lefèvre and Charles Letourneau.

16 On Ferry and positivism see Legrand (1961: 225, 234) and Nicolet (1985: 23–48).17 On Robin see especially the text by his primary disciple, Georges Pouchet,

‘Charles Robin (1821–1885), sa vie et son œuvre’ (Pouchet, 1886: 1–184).18 For a rare example of a research study, see the paper first read to the Academy

of Medicine by the demographer Louis-Adolphe Bertillon (Bertillon, 1872). Onthe particular position of Bertillon’s demography in the structure of disciplinesin France see Schweber (1997: 5–28).

19 Historians of political ideas have long thought of positivism as a major componentof Third Republic republican ideology; see Nicolet (1982), Hazareesingh (2001)and Cingolani (2003).



20 The third gap according to Littré was ‘cerebral theory’. Comparing the worksof Comte and Quételet, Wyrouboff argued that Comte’s position on statisticsalso had to be rectified (Wyrouboff, 1870: 23–44).

21 The essential text on the aims and the membership of the société is ‘Fondationd’une Société de sociologie’, La Philosophie positive 8 (1872): 298–301.

22 On this interpretation see the third part of my The Rise of Social Theory(Heilbron, 1995).

23 On Comte and biology in the 19th century see Georges Canguilhem’s classicstudy ‘La philosophie biologique d’Auguste Comte et son influence en Franceau XIXe siècle’ (Canguilhem, 1983: 61–74).

24 My analysis of Littré’s sociology differs on this point from Annie Petit’s (Petit,1992: 15–37).

25 For the first four papers, written respectively by Wyrouboff (‘De la classificationde la sociologie’), Bagnaux (‘Mémoire sur la division de la Société en sections’),Clavel (‘Mémoire de M. le Dr Clavel’) and Hubbard (‘Mémoire de M. G.Hubbard’), see La Philosophie positive 8 (1872): 302–36. For a commentary onthis debate, Geiger’s (1972) and Yamashita’s (1993) works may be consulted. Inlater sessions of the Société de Sociologie, Clavel presented a paper on morality(La Philosophie positive 10 [1873]: 445–65), Guarin de Vitry an outline for atreatise on sociology (La Philosophie positive 12 [1874]: 5–31), while Jourdy (inLa Philosophie positive 10 [1873]: 155–60) and Bertillon (in La Philosophiepositive 9 [1872]: 309–20 and 11 [1873]: 468–73) examined the question of theinfluence of milieu on social life and its effect on a classification of the sciences.What Bertillon called mésologie, the study of the influence of milieu, was a themedear to positivist biologists. In biology, that notion was gradually replaced byecology, put forward by Haeckel in 1866. See Canguilhem (1980) and Braunstein(1997: 557–71).

26 Patrick Cingolani has made the same point, stressing more specifically that ‘therepublican idea in France made use of sociology and combined a number of socialscience concepts in its attempt to ward off the idea of equality and the demandfor democracy’ (Cingolani, 2003: 10).

27 The biographical information I assembled comes from the usual biographicalsources, consulted at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, supplemented byobituaries published in La Philosophie positive and by study of archives of theCollège de France, the Légion d’honneur and the École polytechnique.

28 Antoine Ritti (1844–1922), who always identified himself as a Comtean posi-tivist, was a specialist of ‘la médecine mentale’. After writing a thesis on thephysiology of hallucination (1874), he worked for many years as generalsecretary of the Société Médico-psychologique de Paris and as director of theAnnales médico-psychologiques. André Sanson (1826–1902), a specialist of veter-inary medicine and zoo technology, was one of the most explicitly anti-Darwinian and anti-transformist positivists.

29 On the republicans during the Second Empire see Tchernoff (1906).30 In 1903 Wyrouboff defeated Paul Tannery for the chair, though Tannery was the

favored candidate of both the Collège de France and the Academy of Sciences(Paul, 1976: 376–97; Petit, 1995: 521–56; Petit, 2005: 329–65).

31 On the more general question of renewal and reproduction of French elites inthe late 19th century, see Charle (1987, 2001) and Topalov (1999).





32 André, Caubet, Deroisin, Jourdy, Legrand, Onimus, Robin, Taberlet and Wyrouboffwere received into the Légion d’honneur.

33 ‘Positive politics is based entirely on figures and facts. Whatever is supposition,sentiment or prejudice is banished from its program’ (Mismer, 1871: 80–6).

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Moscow: Nauka.



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

JOHAN HEILBRON is a historical sociologist at the Centre de sociologieeuropéenne (University of Paris-Sorbonne, CNRS, EHESS) in Paris andErasmus University in Rotterdam. Among his research interests are thehistorical sociology of the social sciences, economic sociology and the soci-ology of culture and transnational cultural exchange. Recent publications areThe Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity (co-edited,2001 [paperback edn]), Pour une histoire des sciences sociales. Hommage àPierre Bourdieu (co-edited, 2004), ‘Toward a Transnational History of theSocial Sciences’ (co-authored), Journal of the History of the BehavioralSciences 44(2) (2008): 146–60, and ‘Traditions nationales en sciences sociales’,Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines 18 (2008) [edited special issue].

Address: Centre de Sociologie Européenne, EHESS/MSH, 54 boulevardRaspail, 75270 Paris Cedex 06, France. [email: [email protected]]




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Sociology and Positivism in 19th-Century France

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