Full Idea
The development of positivism was caused by the concept of metaphysical agents gradually becoming so empty through oversubtle qualification that all right-minded persons considered them to be only the abstract names of the phenomena in question.
Gist of Idea
Metaphysics is just the oversubtle qualification of abstract names for phenomena
Source
Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1)
Book Reference
Comte,Auguste: 'Introduction to Positive Philosophy', ed/tr. Ferré,Frederick [Hackett 1988], p.8
A Reaction
I have quite a lot of sympathy with this thesis, but not couched in this negative way. I take abstraction to be essential to scientific thought, and wisdom to occur amongst the higher reaches of the abstractions.