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Positivism
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Positivism has been declared dead in sociological theory circles, yet questions remain as to its viability among researchers. The authors present diagnostic evidence about positivism in sociological practice through a content analysis of journal articles published in the late 1960s and the late 1980s in the sociological journals of the USA and Britain. Using an index based on seven elements of positivism that were characteristic of the 'theory construction' movement of the late 1960s, the authors find evidence of the effects of time and nation on the use of positivism. Disaggregation of the index reveals that most of the observed change is associated with the elements of 'instrumental' positivism, particularly statistics. The results raise questions about the relationship between theory and research and about sociologists' philosophies of science.
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Positivism was a literary period in Poland that lasted approximately from c.1863 until 1890. The term Positivism comes from the title of a philosophical treatise by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857), Cours de philosphie positive (1830-42). Comte claimed that the only verifiable means of "knowing" the world was through science.
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Positivism, sewn (attached) to the coat-tails of a Prophet, remains fixed in the admiration of the Middle Ages. Auguste Comte, at the time of this transitory passion, laid down the foundations of his heavy sociological construction. It would have been better if the disciples had buried themselves in the brickwork of their Master. They distort, they cripple history to make it fit in with the ravings of the new holy books. The Bible was a divine inspiration. The volumes of Auguste Count are revealed science.
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The fundamental principle of Positivism is, as already said, that sense experience is the only object of human knowledge as well as its sole and supreme criterion. Hence abstract notions or general ideas are nothing more than collective notions; judgments are mere empirical colligations of facts. Reasoning includes induction and the syllogism: induction has for its conclusion a proposition which contains nothing more than the collection of a certain number of sense experiences, and the syllogism, taking this conclusion as its major proposition is necessarily sterile or even results in a vicious circle. Thus, according to Positivism, science cannot be, as Aristotle conceived it, the knowledge of things through their ultimate causes, since material and formal causes are unknowable, final causes illusions, and efficient causes simply invariable antecedents, while metaphysics, under any form, is illegitimate. Positivism is ... a continuation of crude Empiricism, Associationism, and Nominalism. The arguments advanced by Positivism, besides the assertion that sense experiences are the only object of human knowledge, are chiefly two: the first is that psychological analysis shows that all human knowledge can be ultimately reduced to sense experiences and empirical associations; the second, insisted upon by Comte, is historical, and is based on his famous "law of the three stages", according to which the human mind in its progress is supposed to have been successively influenced by theological preoccupations and metaphysical speculation, and to have finally reached at the present time the positive stage, which marks, according to Comte, its full and perfect development (cf.
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Positivism is just one long series of tricks. The first and best are its name, which grabs for itself the right to all that is truth and reality! It is joined with science from the beginning and endorses it by this marriage. “Positive science,” say the vulgar. “Before Comte there only existed negative science.”
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Positivism has been criticized for its harshness. Some critics of positivism have argued that not every law enacted by a legislature should be accepted as legitimate and binding. For example, laws depriving African Americans and Native Americans of various rights have been passed by governments but later overturned as unjust or unconstitutional. Critics conclude that written law ceases to be legitimate when it offends principles of fairness, justice, and morality. The American colonists based their revolt against the tyranny of British law on this point.
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Positivism