Encyclopedia of Environmental Science and Engineering Book

The first part of the book is a good introduction to positivist philosophy with all its ups and downs. Of course, to Mill, the ups and downs of Comte's school of thought are really different than what a modern reader might percieve these to be. To me, the flaws of this philosophy vastly outnumber the positove traits, but to get a grasp of this school of thought, one must read what it's about in the first place. That's fine and all in the first part, and I would've given the book a better score had I only read Part 1, but the second part of the book is so utterly ridiculous it's laughable at best, a droning read at worst. I skipped pages hoping it would stop being nonsense, only to find it get even worse. It consists of a lengthy exposition of Comte's most speculative babble regarding the ideal positivist society. No longer a philosophical perspective weighing in on what humanity's progressive accumulation and optimization of knowledge means, Comste now tackles a question: "How do we organize a society that maximizes positivist thought?" This does not sound too absurd to think about, but Comte's answer to this question is not simply a general idea of what this idealized positivist society should strive for and it's possible advantages, but rather, it's structured as a literal blueprint of how every single branch of society should be structured for his plan to "work." It's ridiculous to read as he passes all of this as factual. It's no longer philosophical inquiry, but feels rather like some bizarre high-fantasy or sci-fi world-building for some unnamed fictional civilization.