Positivism seems to be having a bit of a moment. To give just one example, last month, COMPACT ran a very interesting essay on Comte's "Religion of Humanity," a nineteenth-century version of a post-Christian faith, complete with priests, a calendar, and rituals, that substituted science for God. The Religion of Humanity failed to take off, but plenty of people seem to think that a new version, a Silicon Valley inspired techno-utopianism of the "brights," may be the civil religion of the American future.
I'm skeptical. One reason is the nineteenth-century experience. Comtean rationalism failed to overcome a basic incoherence: if organized religion is bunk, why start a new one? Also, rationalism fails to respond to a longing for the transcendent that is inherent in the human condition and that has been especially powerful in America, ever since the Puritans.
At First Things today, I review a new book, The Church of Saint Thomas Paine by historian Leigh Eric Schmidt, that explores the failure of nineteenth-century American positivism. It's an interesting book–especially for me, because it recounts the story of my great-granduncle, M.M. Mangasarian, an Armenian immigrant who came to America in the 1870s, went to Princeton, and ultimately founded his own rationalist religion in Chicago. (These things happen in the best of families). Here's an excerpt:
