Posted by Jay Livingston
My wife was reading Comfort Me With Apples, a memoir by foodie Ruth Reichl. “When she got to Paris, she stayed in an apartment on the rue Auguste Comte. Do you know where that is?”
Not only did I not know where, but much to my embarrassment as a sociologist, I didn’t even know that such a street existed. I checked the map and discovered that it runs along the south edge of the Jardin du Luxembourg.
I have walked through the Jardin a few times, butI never noticed a street sign with the name of the man who coined the term sociology. Of that I’m positive.
Here’s a photo taken in 1870, barely a decade after Comte died.
For a more recent and elegant view, go to Flickr (here -- I’m honoring the photo copyright and not reprinting it). Or go to Paris . . . after this retirement-age thing is settled).
The French name streets after sociologists (several other cities in France have rues Auguste Comte), philsophers, writers, composers, et. al. American tastes run to other areas. I grew up on MacArthur Drive, which came just after Eisenhower Drive and Wainwright Drive in our peaceful town.
I doubt that a US city will ever have a sociologist street. Just about every city in the US has a Park Street (or Park Place or, in the city where I live, Park Avenue), and I suppose we can take some secret pride in this, even though the link to sociology is coincidental.
3 comments:
I'm sure Comte would've taken a backseat to a French military commander if the French had many military victories to celebrate in the past 150 years. Knowledge will never have the same appeal of military valor.
"Of that I’m positive."
pun noted, and duly groaned at
There's also a Emile Durkheim Street (next to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France...) : http://uneheuredepeine.blogspot.com/2009/04/un-post-lutilite-douteuse.html
@Man of Letters : there are always military victories to find where you are patriot... and we have a lot of street about Verdun, la Marne, Austerlitz and so (and each french city have a Stalingrad Street, not a French victory, but well...).
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