Comtian positivism affirms the incompatibility between metaphysics and the positive sciences: all metaphysics is obsolete. Comte's disciples, while subscribing to this guiding thesis, went on to develop successive and competing trends, each endowed with its own journal. Littre was responsible for a dissident school, which rejected religious consequences; but the orthodox school was not without dissensions. Both confront the struggles between science and metaphysics, by situating themselves in relation to academic philosophy.