Classification of Sciences Before Comte

Comte did not come up with the idea of “classifying the sciences.” It was around before Comte. Philosophers have made attempts to categorize knowledge from the beginning of time. The first Greek thinkers tried to put everything they knew into three categories: (1) physics, (2) ethics, and (3) politics.

Later on, Francis Bacon established the categorization based on the powers that are unique to humans, which he referred to as (i) memory, (ii) imagination, and (iii) reason, respectively. History is a science-based on memory, poetry is a science based on imagination, and physics, chemistry, and other sciences are based on reason.