Just an odd fact here. Pictures of atoms have been in existence from at least
1967. In my old textbook, Russell Wehr and James Richards, _Physics of the
Atom_, Addison Wesley, 1967, p. 188, is a picture of the atoms in marcasite,
FeS2. It is a black and white photo (color photos are meaningless for this
scale) and clearly shows the larger iron and smaller sulfur atoms. I don't
know who Comte is, but since at least 1967, he has had the evidence to
disprove his position.
glenn