Positivism

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For other meanings of positivism, see positivism (disambiguation).

Contents 1 Comte's positivism 2 Other positive thinkers 3 Modern positivism 4 Philosophical issues 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References

Positivism is a philosophy that states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method. It was developed by Auguste Comte (widely regarded as the first true sociologist) in the middle of the 19th century. The positivist view is sometimes referred to as a scientist ideology, and is often shared by technocrats who believe in the necessary progress through scientific progress, and by naturalists, who argue that any method for gaining knowledge should be limited to natural, physical, and material approaches. As an approach to the philosophy of science deriving from Enlightenment thinkers like Pierre-Simon Laplace (and many others), positivism was first systematically theorized by Comte, who saw the scientific method as replacing metaphysics in the history of thought, and who observed the circular dependence of theory and observation in science. Comte was thus one of the leading thinkers of the social evolutionism thought. Brazil's national motto, Ordem e Progresso ("Order and Progress") was taken from Comte's positivism, also influential in Poland. Positivism is the most evolved stage of society in anthropological Evolutionism, the point where science and rational explanation for scientific phenomena develops.

Marxism and predictive dialectics are highly positivist systems of theory; however Marxism rejects positivism and views it as subjective idealism, because it limits itself only to facts and does not examine the underlying causes of things.

[edit] Comte's positivism

According to Auguste Comte, society undergoes three different phases in its quest for the truth. These three phases are the Theological, the Metaphysical and the Positive Phases.^[1]

The Theological Phase of man is based on whole-hearted belief in all things with reference to God. God, he says, had reigned supreme over human existence pre-Enlightenment. Man’s place in society was governed by his association with the divine presences and with the church. The Theological Phase deals with mankind accepting the doctrines of the church and not questioning the world. It dealt with the restrictions put in place by the religious organization at the time and the total acceptance of any “fact” placed forth for society to believe.^[2]

Comte describes the Metaphysical Phase of man as the time since the Enlightenment, a time steeped in logical rationalism, to the time right after the French Revolution. This second phase states that the universal rights of man are most important. The central idea is that man is born with certain rights, that should not and cannot be taken away, which must be respected. With this in mind democracies and dictators rose and fell in attempt to maintain the innate rights of man.^[3]

The final stage of the trilogy of Comte’s universal law is the Scientific, or Positive Stage. The central idea of this phase is the idea that individual rights are more important than the rule of any one person. Comte stated the idea that man is able to govern himself is what makes this stage innately different from the rest. There is no higher power governing the masses and the intrigue of any one person than the idea that he can achieve anything based on his individual free will and authority. The third principle is most important in the positive stage.^[4]

These three phases are what Comte calls the Universal Rule – in relation to society and its development. Neither the second nor the third phase can be reached without the completion and understanding of the preceding stage. All stages must be completed in progress.^[5]

The irony of this series of phases is that though Comte attempted to prove that human development has to go through these three stages it seems that the Positivist stage is far from becoming a realization. This is due to two truths. The Positivist Phase requires having complete understanding of the universe and world around us and requires that society should never know if it is in this Positivist Phase. One may argue that the Positivist phase could not be reached unless one were God thus reverting to the first and initial phase; or that man is constantly using science to discover and research new things leading one back to the second Metaphysical Phase. Thus, some believe Comte’s Positivism to be circular.^[6]

Comte believed that the appreciation of the past and the ability to build on it towards the future was key in transitioning from the theological and metaphysical phases. The idea of progress was central to Comte's new science, Sociology. Sociology would "lead to the historical consideration of every science" because "the history of one science, including pure political history, would make no sense unless it were attached to the study of the general progress of all of humanity".^[7] As Comte would say, "from science comes prediction; from prediction comes action".^[8] It is a philosophy of human intelectual development that culminated in science.

[edit] Other positive thinkers

Comte's ideas of Positivism have intrigued many. Within years of his book A General View Of Positivism(1856) other scientific and philosophical thinkers began creating their own definitions for Positivism. They included Emile Hennequin, Wilhelm Scherer, and Dmitrii Pisarev.

Emile Hennequin was a Parisian publisher and writer, who wrote on theoretical and critical pieces. He was a man who, "exemplified the tension between the positivist drive to sypsteize literary criticism and the unfettered imagination inherent in literature". He is brilliant in his approach to Positivism because he is one of the few thinkers that disagrees with the notion that subjectivity invalidates observation, judgments and predictions. Unlike many Positivist thinkers before him he cannot agree that subjectivity does not play a role in science or any other form in society. His contribution to Positivism is not one of science and its objectivity but rather the subjectivity of art and the way the artist, work, and audience view each other. Hennequin tried to analyze Positivism strictly on the predictions, and the mechanical processes, but was perplexed due to the contradictions of the reactions of patrons to artwork that showed no scientific inclinations.

Wilhelm Scherer, was a German philologist, a university professor, and a popular literary historian. He was known as a Positivist because he based much of his worked on "hypotheses on detailed historical research, and rooted every literary phenomenon in 'objective' historical or philological facts". His positivism is different due to his involvement with his nationalist goals; because of this his thoughts are more imaginative and creative than most thinkers of the time. His major contribution to the movement was his speculation that culture cycled in a six-hundred-year period.

Dimitri Pisarev was a Russian, publiste, shows the greatest contradictions with his belief in Positivism. His ideas focused around an imagination and style though he does not believe in romantic ideas because it reminds him of the tsarist oppressive government he lives in. His basic beliefs were "an extreme anti-aesthetic scientistic position". His efforts were focused on defining the relation between literature and the environment.

[edit] Modern positivism

The key features of positivism as of the 1950s, as defined in the "received view"^[9], are:

1. A focus on science as a product, a linguistic or numerical set of statements;
2. A concern with axiomatization, that is, with demonstrating the logical structure and coherence of these statements;
3. An insistence on at least some of these statements being testable, that is amenable to being verified, confirmed, or falsified by the empirical observation of reality; statements that would, by their nature, be regarded as untestable included the teleological; (Thus positivism rejects much of classical metaphysics.)
4. The belief that science is markedly cumulative;
5. The belief that science is predominantly transcultural;
6. The belief that science rests on specific results that are dissociated from the personality and social position of the investigator;
7. The belief that science contains theories or research traditions that are largely commensurable;
8. The belief that science sometimes incorporates new ideas that are discontinuous from old ones;
9. The belief that science involves the idea of the unity of science, that there is, underlying the various scientific disciplines, basically one science about one real world.

Positivism is also depicted as "the view that all true knowledge is scientific,"^[10] and that all things are ultimately measurable. Positivism is closely related to reductionism, both involve the view that "entities of one kind... are reducible to entities of another,"^[10] such as societies to numbers, or mental events to chemical events. It also involves the contention that "processes are reducible to physiological, physical or chemical events,"^[10] and even that "social processes are reducible to relationships between and actions of individuals,"^[10] or that "biological organisms are reducible to physical systems."^[10]

[edit] Philosophical issues

Certain problems arise with the positivist belief system once it is accepted:

1. Since all of our most certain knowledge, namely, that of our ourselves and our own mental states, is inaccessible to objective science (being personal), how is positivism to account for what we know? And since our inferences about what we do not directly know, but only surmise on the basis of our actual experiences, comprise the objective world of scientific entities imagined by positivist philosophy, how is it supposed to be possible to account for any knowledge at all positivistically?;
2. Since the self and its knowledge is known and experienced (not only subjectively but) qualitatively not quantitatively, how is it supposed to be possible to give an objective quantitative account of the source and core of all knowledge--scientific and otherwise--namely the scientist himself?;
3. If an experience is 'reduced' to something else, does it cease to exist as a subjective qualitative thing, or not? If not, doesn't it remain in a crucial sense unreduced to a 'scientific' object? If so, what inspired the 'reduction'?; and
4. Since ideology is unscientific, how is a 'scientific' ideology supposed to escape internal contradiction?

[edit] See also

• Auguste Comte's positivist philosophy
• London Positivist Society
• Positivism in Poland
• History of philosophy in Poland
• Legal positivism
• Logical positivism
• Psychological positivism: Behaviourism
• Social positivism
• Scientism ("positivism" in a pejorative meaning)
• The positivist calendar was a calendar reform proposal by Comte in 1849.
• Metaphysical naturalism
• Technocracy

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Giddens, Positivism and Sociology, 1)
2. ^ Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism 3
3. ^ Mises, Positivism: A Study In Human Understanding,5
4. ^ Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, 4
5. ^ Giddens, Positivism and Sociology, 9
6. ^ Giddens, Positivism and Sociology, 9
7. ^ Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, Volume I, 622
8. ^ Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, Volume I, 566
9. ^ Hacking, I. (ed.) 1981. Scientific revolutions. - Oxford Univ. Press, New York.
10. ^ ^{a b c d e} Alan Bullock and Stephen Trombley, [Eds] The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, London: Harper-Collins, 1999, pp.669-737

[edit] References

• Giddens, Anthony. Positivism and Sociology. Heinemann. London. 1974.
• LeGouis, Catherine. Positivism and Imagination: Scientism and Its Limits in Emile Hennequin, Wilhelm Scherer and Dmitril Pisarev. Bucknell University Press. London: 1997.
• Mill, John Stuart. August Comte and Positivism. web-books.com <http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Nonfiction/Philosophy/Mill_Comte/Home.htm>.
• Mises, Richard von. Positivism: A Study In Human Understanding. Harvard University Press. Cambridge; Massachusets: 1951.
• Pickering, Mary. Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, England; 1993.