"In the primitive state of human knowledge there is no regular division of intellectual labour. Every student cultivates all the sciences. As knowledge accrues, the sciences part off; and students devote themselves each to some one branch. It is owing to this division... and concentration of whole minds upon a single department, that science has made so prodigious an advance... But... we cannot be blind to the eminent disadvantages which arise from... limitation... to a particular study. It is inevitable that each should be possessed with exclusive notions, and be therefore incapable of the general superiority of ancient students, who... owed that general superiority to the inferiority of their knowledge. ...[T]his is the weak side of the positive philosophy, by which it may yet be attacked, with some hope of success, by the adherents of the theological and metaphysical systems."
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The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte
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