Talk:Auguste Comte

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 Definition (1798-1857), a French philosopher and sociologist, was the so-called 'father' of 'positivism, the theory of society. [d] [e]
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Perhaps a nit...

But I cringe whenever I see "so-called" or similar prefixes, or usages where putting a term in quotes can suggest it is being deprecated at best. While I have absolutely no idea of the candidates for father, mother, aunt, uncle, etc., of philosophy, if the "father of positivism" term is in reasonably common use, I'd tend to look for a sourced quote where I can attribute it and avoid "so-called".

"Comte was called the father of positivism by some-noted-philosopher [ source ]" should work. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:26, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I agree with you, Howard. But what to do about it is another matter. Will have a think - but please edit the 'ghastly phrase' out if you get there ahead of me!

Martin Cohen 20:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

LOL...I am the first to admit when I don't know much about a subject and am not qualified to add text, as opposed to lower-case edit. Hmmm...make that ultra-lower case edit, when I am not acting as a subject matter expert Editor, not acting as a subject matter author doing substantive editing, as opposed to just doing text/flow editing.
I do expect to learn things here about philosophy. Now, there are some challenges I take, when something was described as not "rocket science", I went ahead and created rocket science -- even though that's really engineering, and I'm now stuck in not knowing how to format some of the equations (unless I do them offline and upload as graphics). Now, when Larry told me I wasn't properly creating a dialectic landscape, I had to say I only knew, in detail, about lectures by political officers about their interpretation of Marxist-Leninist dialectic. Howard C. Berkowitz 20:16, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

another nit to pick

I've taken care of the "so-called" and put BE into the metadata. But now I wonder: I see 'father of' in the lede, but then "American quotation system" throughout the rest of the article. Should be we using the Brit ' or the 'Merkin "? And if the latter, should BE be changed to AE? Will it take a philosopher to decide, or just a copyeditor? Hayford Peirce 22:08, 17 November 2008 (UTC)