 Among 19th-century thinkers, the French sociologist Auguste Comte (1798–1857) puts relatively little emphasis on violence and struggle as a source of change.  Comte actually coined the term “Sociology” (1853 v. 2, 201) to describe the scientific treatment of human societies and their development.  Comte saw himself as giving sociology its content in addition to its name.  But many of his arguments are not particularly original, including his most fundamental claim, that intellectual improvement drives progress (v. 2, 307).  His real contribution is to claim that intellectual development should be understood as change in the form of explanation employed by individuals seeking to understand the world.  The form of explanation affects social life insofar as it corresponds to a way of predicting and manipulating events.  It is true that this argument is implicit in the writings of earlier thinkers such as Turgot and Condorcet.  But, unlike his predecessors, Comte works it out systematically. 