Encyclopedia of Philosophy: HYPOTHESES AND SOCIAL LAWS - COMTE

Despite his difficulties with the notions of observation, cause, verification and law of nature, Comte was one of the earliest social thinkers to stress the indispensability in social scientific work of the appropriate use of theories and hypotheses. In his essay ‘Philosophical Considerations on the Sciences and Savants’ (1825), he wrote:  Unless man connects facts with some explanation, he is naturally incapable not merely of combining and making deductions from them, but even of observing and recollecting them. In a word, it is as impossible to make continuous observations without a theory of some kind, as to construct a positive theory without continuous observations.