Comte coined ‘social physics’ to demand society be studied with natural-science precision.

Evidence

5. The term social physics originates in the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte, who preceded Planck in his programmatic vision of a scientific approach to the study of society that would equal the precision of the natural sciences. In the 1830s Comte wrote the following: “Now that the human mind has founded celestial physics, terrestrial physics… and organic physics… it only remains to complete the system of observational sciences by the foundation of social physics.” See Auguste Comte, Introduction to Positive Philosophy, ed. Frederick Ferré (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988), 13. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 2649

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the genealogy of ‘social physics’ — useful for the foundational understanding of how behavioral deterministic ambitions predate Big Data by two centuries.
• ADDENDUM: The ambition to model society with natural-science precision parallels the prediction-market logic of the trade chapter; relevant to the trees-as-infrastructure piece only weakly, but strongly to the general argument.
• XREF: connects to: Auguste Comte coined the term sociology as a comprehensive theory of society; Social theory depends on insight into society’s nature more than on specialized knowledge. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 730

Broader Connections

• Auguste Comte coined the term sociology as a comprehensive theory of society #expands (0.85)
• Social theory depends on insight into society’s nature more than on specialized knowledge. #responds-to (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 730