Positivism was a world-encompassing project of the 19^th and 20^th centuries whose global impact, political significance and historical trajectory my project seeks to highlight for the first time. Taking their cues from Auguste Comte (1798–1857) at Paris, positivists across the globe sought to end the severe crisis that ravaged the planet since the French Revolution of 1789. Comtean positivists drew three lessons from the Revolution: The metaphysical sciences were self-defeating and disruptive, European imperialism was a disgrace, and society as a novel historical force with massive agency required a fresh form of intellectual analysis as well as newly forged affective bonds. Positivism thus paved the way for a critical self-interrogation of the West as well as of science. The positivist “Religion of Humanity” with sites from Calcutta to Rio de Janeiro transformed Jacobin festivals and rituals into a secular, inter-cultural eschatology.       

Comte has long been written off as a curmudgeonly, hermit-like system-builder who had lost touch with the world he sought to reform. Yet Russian scientists, Japanese Meiji reformers, Brazilian educators, and Ottoman engineers creatively appropriated Comtean positivism across the globe. Positivism was unique in that it established humanity as a collective subject that replaced both the civilising mission of the West and “nature” as the source of scientific laws. Time is ripe for a reappraisal of positivism as a crucial catalyst and critical foil of modernity.

Photo: © Wall calendar of the Brazilian positivists (1893? Amaro de Silveira, Rio de Janeiro © Aurelia Giusti)