The Positive Philosophy

Theological stage
Metaphysical stage
Positivity stage

Comte, Auguste (1853 / 2009). The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte. Vol. 2. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. S.546.

By the establishment of sociology we now witness the systematic fullfillment of the eternal conditions of the originality and pre-eminence of social speculations, which theology and metaphysics have instinctively struggled to maintain, though very insufficiently since the positive method began to prevail more and more in the modern mental evolution. In the name of positivism and rationality we have demanded and reconstructed the philosophical ascendancy of social speculation, by undoing the work of the theological and metaphysical schools, which strove to isolate moral and political research from that system of natural philosophy with which we have now incorporated it. We see that the coalescing logical and scientific needs prescribe the subordination of this final science to all the rest, over which it then becomes preponderant by its philosophical reaction.