The Order of the Prophets: Series in Early French Social Science and Socialism

Proudhon P.-J. , De la creation de l'ordre dans l'humanité, 1843 (Antony, 2000), i, 244.

Bougle C. Halevy Elie (eds), Doctrine de Saint-Simon: Exposition (Paris, 1924), 4 n. On the impact of the Saint-Simonians on sociology, see Giddens A. (ed.), Durkheim on politics and the State (Palo Alto, 1986), 17.

Buchez J. P. B. , Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire (Paris, 1842), i, 150–78. Buchez's fusion of the animal series, embryonic series, geohistory and human history provoked a reaction from Cuvier. See Isambert F.-A. , De la charbonnerie au saint-simonisme: Étude sur la jeunesse de Buchez (Paris, 1966), 32.

Foucault M. , The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences (New York, 1994), 272, 255, 263.

Manuel F. , “Toward a psychological history of Utopia”, in Manuel (ed.), Utopias and utopian thought (Boston, 1966), 69–98, p. 79; Manuel F. , Prophets of Paris (Cambridge, 1962); Bouglé C. , Chez les prophètes socialistes (Paris, 1918); and Bénichou P. , Le temps des prophètes: Doctrines de l'âge romantique (Paris, 1977). See also Beecher J. , “Fourier and the Saint-Simonians on the shape of history”, in Miller T. (ed.), Given world and time: Temporalities in context (Budapest, 2008), 47–58.

Comte's term 'social physics' was taken up by Quetelet, director of the Observatory of Brussels, who sought statistical laws behind the regular distribution of traits throughout a population and invented the “average man”. On the quantitative social sciences, see Daston L. , Classical probability in the Age of Enlightenment (Princeton, 1988), 106–11, 371–82; Hacking I. , The taming of chance (Cambridge, 1990); Porter T. , Trust in numbers: The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life (Princeton, 1995); Desrosières A. , The politics of large numbers: A history of statistical reasoning (Cambridge, MA, 2002); and Brian E. , La mesure de l'état, recherches sur la division sociale du travail: Statistique aux dix-huitième et dix-neuvième siècles (Paris, 1990). For perspectives on the quantitative social sciences, see Heilbron J. , The rise of social theory (Minneapolis, 1995), and Porter T. , “The social sciences”, in Cahan D. (ed.), From natural philosophy to the sciences (Chicago, 2003), 254–90, which insightfully argues that the definition of a single “scientific method” in this period was in part the achievement of social thinkers who sought (with limited success) to put their work on a par with that of natural scientists and thus enter into the academic establishment.

See Lepenies W. , Between literature and science: The rise of sociology (Cambridge, 1988). Recent work has begun to recognize the vitality and political force of public science in the Restoration and July Monarchy. See Levitt T. , The shadow of Enlightenment: Optical and political transparency in France, 1789–1848 (Oxford, 2009); Crosland M. , “Popular science and the arts: Challenges to cultural authority in France under the Second Empire”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxiv (2001), 2001–22; Bensaude-Vincent B. , “A historical perspective on science and its ‘others’”, Isis, c (2009) 359–68; Belhoste B. , “Arago, les journalistes et l'Académie des Sciences dans les années 1830”, in Harismendy P. (dir.), La France des années 1830 et l'esprit de réforme (Rennes, 2006), 253–66; and Staum M. , “Physiognomy and phrenology at the Paris Athenée”, Journal of the history of ideas, lvi (1995), 1995–62. For a particularly nuanced picture of the academic and independent institutions of French social science in this period and a probing inquiry into the racial views of some of the schools discussed below, see Staum M. , Labeling people: French scholars on society, race, and empire, 1815–1848 (Montreal, 2003).

Proudhon , op. cit. (ref. 1), 300.

Barbara Haines. ” The inter-relations between social, biological, and. medical thought, 1750–1850: Saint-Simon Comte ”, The British journal for the history of science, xi (1978), 19–35. See Musso P. , La religion du monde industriel: Analyse de la pensée de Saint-Simon (Paris, 2006); Mattelart A. , The invention of communication (Minneapolis, 1996); Manuel F. , The new world of Saint-Simon (Cambridge, 1956); Charléty S. , L'histoire du saint-simonisme (Paris, 1896); and Carlisle R. , The proffered crown: Saint-Simonianism and the doctrine of hope (Baltimore, 1987).

See Schmitt S. , “From physiology to classification: Comparative anatomy and Vicq d'Azyr's plan of reform for life sciences and medicine (1774–1794)”, Science in context, xxii (2009), 145–93.

de Saint-Simon Henri , Mémoire sur la science de l'homme (1813), in Œuvres de Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon, v (Paris, 1977), 3–313, p. 172. Richards Compare R. , Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior (Chicago, 1989), and Musso , op. cit. (ref. 9), on the “baroque physiology” (Canguilhem's term) of this period as deployed by Saint-Simon.

For Buffon, science involved “establishing series of facts”; see Sloan P. R. , “The Buffon—Linnaeus controversy”, Isis, lxvii (1976), 356–75.

Saint-Simon , op. cit. (ref. 11), 108, 50. Comte developed a similar theory of human evolution. In Buchez's Science de l'histoire scientific theories are seen as “new faculties acquired by the human species”, and the progress of civilization modifies individual psychology and physiological “organization”: Buchez , op. cit. (ref. 3), 151.

Although he makes references to Scottish stadial historians, his sequence is closest to Condorcet's Outline: See Week R. , Social science and the ignoble savage (Cambridge, 1976), 172–8.

Compare to the evolution of the concept of ‘Fraternité’ in Sewell W. , Work and revolution in France: The language of labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980); and Rancière J. , La nuit des prolétaires (Paris, 1981).

See Belhoste B. Chatzis K. , “From technical corps to technocratic power: French state engineers and their professional and cultural universe in the first half of the 19th century”, History and technology, xxiii (2007), 209–25; and Picon A. , “Générosité sociale et aspirations technocratiques: Les polytechniciens Saint-Simoniens”, in “Pour mémoire”: Revue du Comité d'Histoire, ii (2007), 2007–14.

Doctrine de Saint-Simon: Exposition (Paris, 1854), première année. This disorder was visible in the chaotic competition of industry, in the egotism and melancholy of the arts, in the sterile specialization of the sciences: ” The disorder of minds has invaded the sciences themselves, and one can state that they offer the painful spectacle of a complete anarchy. Let us declare, finally, that we must find the cause of the illness in the absence of a unified social vision, and that it is in the discovery of that unity that we will find the remedy” (Doctrine, 53).

Doctrine (ref. 17), deuxième année, 426–45. Their slogan, ” The organization of labour”, was taken up by Louis Blanc. He was put at the head of the Luxembourg Commission after February 1848 to realize this plan: Its failure helped spark the riots of June 1848.

Doctrine (ref. 17), première année, 81, 154.

Pierre Leroux accused Fourier of plagiarizing the central concept of ‘series’ from Saint-Simon's “serial law” of history: See Leroux P. , “Lettres sur le Fourierisme, IVème Lettre: Le plagiat de Fourier”, Revue sociale, xii (1846), 187.

Dictionnaire de sociologie phalanstérienne: Guide des œuvres complètes de Charles Fourier (Paris, 1911), 398.

Fourier C. , Théorie des quatre mouvements , in Oeuvres complètes, i (Paris, 1846), 36; Beecher J. , Charles Fourier: The visionary and his world (Berkeley, 1987); Scherer R. , Charles Fourier, ou, La contestation globale (Paris, 1996); and Barthes R. , Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Paris, 1971).

Fourier C. , Le nouveau monde industriel ou invention du procédé d'industrie attrayante et naturelle distribuée en séries passionnées (Paris, 1829), 79–93.

Fourier C. , “Du clavier puissanciel des caractères”, La phalange, xvi (1847), 5–47, 97–135.

Fourier , op. cit. (ref. 23), 63, 243.

translations from Beecher J. Bienvenu R. (transl. and eds), The utopian vision of Charles Fourier: Selected texts on work, love, and passionate attraction (Boston, 1971).

Fourier C. , The theory of the four movements, ed. by Jones G. Stedman Patterson I. (Cambridge, 1996), 50.

Considerant V. to Fourier C. , 1832, in Beecher J. , Victor Considerant and the rise and fall of French Romantic socialism (Berkeley, 2001), 45.

“Anonymous letter signed J…” (1833), in Beecher , op. cit. (ref. 28), 49.

La réforme industrielle ou le Phalanstère, i (1832), 132, in Beecher , op. cit. (ref. 28), 49.

Beecher , op. cit. (ref. 28), 118–23.

Beecher , op. cit. (ref. 28), 73, 71.

For instance, see Democratie pacifique, 2 July 1844, which reprints a report in Le moniteur about Louis-Philippe's request for a salary for his sons: “Le Journal des Debats reproduces the article without comment”; “La Presse limits itself to qualifying it as an appeal France's impartiality”; “Le National does not know which is more astounding in this circumstance, the imprudence or the audacity of the cabinet”.

Charles Baudelaire first read Edgar Poe in Democratie pacifique, in Isabelle Meunier's translation of ” The black cat”.

See Bénichou , op. cit. (ref. 5); McCalla A. , A Romantic historiosophy: The philosophy of history of Pierre-Simon Ballanche (Leiden, 1998); Schwab R. , The oriental renaissance: Europe's rediscovery of India and the East, 1680–1880 (New York, 1984); Busst A. J. L. , “Ballanche and Saint-Simonianism”, Australian journal of French studies, ix (1972), 1972–307.

Ballanche P.-S. , Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1833), iv, 29; McCalla A. , “Palingenesie philosophique to palingenesie sociale: From a scientific ideology to a historical ideology”, Journal of the history of ideas, lv (1994), 1994–39.

Ballanche in McCalla , op. cit. (ref. 36), 435. On the impact of embryology on Marx, see Wouters A. , “Marx's embryology of society”, Philosophy of the social sciences, xxiii (1993), 149–79, which reaches for a connection with Von Baer. I would argue that more pertinent sources can be found in the works of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Serres, which would have been familiar to social philosophers of Paris in the 1830s and 1840s.

Le Guyader Hervé , Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire: A visionary naturalist (Chicago, 2004), 118. Rumours of the death of the great chain of being around 1800, whether blamed on Cuvier ( Foucault , op. cit. (ref. 4)) or on romantic irrationality ( Lovejoy A. O. , The great chain of being: A study of the history of an idea (Cambridge, MA, 1936)), have been greatly exaggerated. On primarily English continuations into the nineteenth century see Bynum W. , “The great chain of being after forty years: An appraisal”, History of science, xiii (1975), 1975–28.

Appel T. , The Cuvier—Geoffroy debate: French biology in the decades before Darwin (New York, 1987); and Bourdier F. , “Le prophète Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, George Sand et les Saint-Simoniens”, Histoire et nature, i (1973), 1973–66.

Serres approvingly quoted Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's argument for “parallel series”, in which varieties of a single species would occupy the same row in the series, instead of lining them up in the single column of the scale: “since it repeats itself in the creation of the diverse parts of the same being, nature repeats itself again in the creation of diverse partial series out of which, in reality, the animal series is composed” ( Saint-Hilaire I. Geoffroy , in Considérations sur les caractères employés en ornithologie (1832), quoted in Serres E. , “Organogénie”, Encyclopédie nouvelle, vii (Paris, 1843), 1–64, p. 50). Serres's article “Organogénie” had a massive impact on Jules Michelet: See Viard J. , “George Sand et Michelet: Disciples de Pierre Leroux”, Revue d'histoire litteraire de la France, lxxv (1975), 1975–73; and Mitzman A. , “Michelet and social Romanticism: Religion, revolution, nature”, Journal of the history of ideas, lvii (1996), 1996–82.

E. Serres's funeral speech for Geoffroy, cited in Le Guyader , op. cit. (ref. 38), 239. Despite promoting both the animal series and Geoffroy's unity of plan, Serres denied that species could ever ascend from their rank in the series (although they could certainly be modified over time), and was an opponent of Darwin in France. See Conry Y. , Darwin en perspective (Paris, 1987), 48.

From Leroux's preface to the Revue encyclopédique (“De la doctrine du progress continu”) (Paris, 1833), pp. i–lxxi, p. xvii. Compare p. xx: “Politics, as a philosophy, is nothing but the knowledge of the continuous development of the life of humanity under the relation of sentiments and of association. Art is nothing but the successive and prophetic expression of the epochs of humanity. Physical science is nothing but the knowledge of the successive creations that nature engenders following necessary laws over the course of the ages”.

Geoffroy to Sand , 13 July 1838, quoted in Bourdier , op. cit. (ref. 40), 62.

Leroux, in Andrews N. , Socialism's muse (Lanhan, 2006), 38.

Leroux P. , De l'humanité (Paris, 1845), i, 205.

Leroux , op. cit. (ref. 45), i, 203. On Leroux's metaphysics see MacHerey P. , “Pierre Leroux dans le querelle du panthéisme”, Cahiers de Fontenay, xxxvi—xxxviii (1985), 215–22.

Schwab , op. cit. (ref. 35). See Evans D. , Le socialisme romantique: Pierre Leroux et ses contemporains (Paris, 1948); and Viard J. , Pierre Leroux et les socialistes européens (Paris, 1982). On the Encyclopédie nouvelle, see Griffiths D. , Jean Reynaud, encyclopédiste de l'époque romantique, d'après sa correspondance inédite (Paris, 1965).

See Alexandrian Sarane , Le socialisme romantique (Paris, 1979).

Leroux P. , in Sewell , op. cit. (ref. 15), 274.

He also entertained doctrines of reincarnation and metempsychosis, like Ballanche and his colleague Reynaud: See Sharp Lynne , “Metempsychosis and social reform: The individual and the collective in romantic socialism”, French historical studies, xxvii (2004), 349–79.

Leroux P. , “D'une nouvelle typographie”, Revue indépendante, 25 January 1843, 259.

“Aux Artistes: De la poésie de notre époque”, in Leroux P. , Aux philosophes, aux artistes, aux politiques: Trois discours et autres textes, ed. by Lacassange J.-P. (Paris, 1994); Breckman Warren , “Politics in a symbolic key: Pierre Leroux, romantic socialism, and the Schelling affair”, Modern intellectual history, ii (2005), 2005–86; and Simmons D. , “Waste not, want not: Excrement and economy in nineteenth-century France”, Representations, xcvi (2006), 2006–98.

Proudhon , op. cit. (ref. 1), i, 137, 244.

Proudhon , op. cit. (ref. 1), ii, 149.

Proudhon , op. cit. (ref. 1), ii, 192.

Saint-Louis F. , Georges Gurvitch et la société autogestionnaire (Paris, 2005); and Dagonent F. , Trois philosophies réconsiderées: Saint-Simon, Proudhon, Fourier (Hildesheim, 1997).

Schweber Sylvan S. , “Auguste Comte and the nebular hypothesis”, in Bienvenu R. Feingold M. (eds), In the presence of the past: Essays in honor of Frank Manuel (Dordrecht, 1991), 280–365; Merleau-Ponty J. , La science de l'univers à l'âge du positivisme: Étude sur les origines de la cosmologie contemporaine (Paris, 1983); and Schaffer S. , “The nebular hypothesis and the science of progress”, in Moore J. R. (ed), History, humanity, and evolution: Essays for John C. Greene (Cambridge, 1989), 131–64.

Karsenti B. , Politique de l'esprit: Auguste Comte et la naissance de la science sociale (Paris, 2006).

Comte A. , Cours de philosophie positive, ed. by Serres M. Dagognet F. Sinaceur A. (Paris, 1998), 569 (Lesson 35).

Comte , op. cit. (ref. 59), 680, 675–8 (Lesson 40).

Comte , op. cit. (ref. 59), 773–4 (Lesson 42). Three laws of classification determine the animal series: Increasing anatomical complexity; increasing vital activity; and increasing modifiability and power of modification over the natural world.

Comte , op. cit. (ref. 59), 305. See Karsenti , op. cit. (ref. 58); Pickering M. , Auguste Comte: An intellectual biography (Cambridge, 1993).

Comte A. , The catechism of positive religion (London, 1891), 34.

Iggers G. , The cult of authority: The political philosophy of the Saint-Simonians, a chapter in the intellectual history of totalitarianism (The Hague, 1935).

On Comte as ecological thinker, see Grange J. , La philosophie d'Auguste Comte: Science, politique, religion (Paris, 1996).

Comte , System of positive polity (London, 1875 (1851)), i, 500: Chap. 3, “Animal life”.

Bonaparte L.-N. , Les idées Napoléoniennes (Paris, 1839); Marx K. , The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York, 1985).

Many other cards would be needed to complete the collection, including those of Etienne Cabet, planner of the communist utopia of Icaria; Tristan Flora , advocate of the cause of women and of mutualism; Blanc Louis , theorist of the Organization of Labour; the mystical reformer Abbé Constant; the innovative social Catholics Lamennais and Buchez; the Fourierist steam enthusiast Constantin Pecqueur; Toussenel Alphonse , author of both the natural historical allegory L'esprit des bêtes: Le monde des oiseaux, ornithologie passionnelle (Paris, 1853), and the screed against Rothschild and finance capital, Les juifs, rois de l'époque: Histoire de la féodalité financière (Paris, 1847); the insurrectionist Auguste Blanqui; and, of course, Marx Karl , whose economic and political thought owes as much to his Parisian milieu as to German sources. This series could also be shown to intersect with more firmly institutionalized theorists of liberal Political Economy — Say J. B. Dunoyer Charles Chevalier Michel (after he shaved his beard), and Auguste Blanqui's brother Adolphe Blanqui. For a recent survey, see Pilbeam P. , French socialists before Marx: Workers, women and the social question in France (Montreal, 2000).