L ’influence de la pensée positiviste sur « l’esprit scientifique » d’Émile Zola

Abstract

The development of industry, the scientific and the technical progress and the economical changes registered in France at the beginning of the XIXth century are determining factors for the dismissal of the old fashioned human mentality and ideas and the focus on new moral, religious and artistic values. Auguste
Comte’s Positivism (1798 – 1857) dominates the intellectual’s philosophy in the Second French Empire. They focus on the supremacy of science and respectively on a manner of thinking devoid of conventions and prejudices. Also, Emile Zola considers that the “observation” of facts and then their “experimentation” are
indispensable stages in the “modification of circumstances and mediums”.