The science crowning the list,
the science that depended most on all the other sciences was sociology.
And in between from the bottom to the top,
Comte discerned astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology.
The sciences that are located lower on that ladder are less complex than
the sciences that you find high on the ladder and
that is why he calls it a hierarchical classification.
This is his law of the classification of the sciences from simple to complex,
from general to specific, from independent to dependent.
And the science on top of his construction, sociology is therefore,
the most dependent science.
It needs all the other sciences.
It lacks the generality of, for example, mathematics.
But because it is the science that we find at the highest floor
of his building, he calls it the queen of the sciences.
And of course, later sociologists have been very grateful with that expression.
In this way, Comte tried to bring intellectual order,
in what seemed to many to be a hodgepodge of scientific branches and subbranches.
For the first time, a scientist drew a map on which you could
locate the main sciences and indicate who influences who and in what ways?