Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte (19 February 1798 – 5 September 1857), better known as Auguste Comte, is a French philosopher.
He is a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism.
He may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term.
Strongly influenced by the utopian socialist Henri Saint-Simon, Comte develops the positive philosophy in an attempt to remedy the social malaise of the French Revolution, calling for a new social doctrine based on the sciences.
Comte is a major influence on 19th-century thought, influencing the work of social thinkers such as Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot.
His concept of sociologie and social evolutionism, though now outdated, sets the tone for early social theorists and anthropologists such as Harriet Martineau and Herbert Spencer, evolving into modern academic sociology presented by Émile Durkheim as practical and objective social research.
Comte's social theories culminate n the "Religion of Humanity", which influences the development of religious humanist and secular humanist organizations in the 19th century.
Comte likewise coins the word altruisme (altruism).