Positivism

12 Key excerpts on "Positivism"

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  Research Methods in Education

  • Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion, Keith Morrison(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  With its emphasis on observational evidence and the scientific method, Positivism accords significance to sensory experience (empiricism), observational description (e.g. ruling our inferences about actors’ intentions, thoughts or attitudes), operationalism, ‘methodical control’, measurement, hypothesis testing and replicability through the specification of explicit and transparent procedures for conducting research (Hammersley, 2013, pp. 23–4). Hammersley notes that the terms ‘Positivism’ and ‘empiricism’ are often regarded as synonymous with each other (p. 23), but to equate Positivism simply with quantitative approaches is misguided, as qualitative data are equally well embraced within empiricism. Indeed he notes that ethnographers and discourse analysts rely on careful observational data (pp. 24–5).

  Though the term Positivism is used by philosophers and social scientists, a residual meaning derives from an acceptance of natural science as the paradigm of human knowledge (Duncan, 1968). This includes the following connected suppositions, identified by Giddens (1975). First, the methodological procedures of natural science may be directly applied to the social sciences. Positivism here implies a particular stance concerning the social scientist as an observer of social reality. Second, the end-product of investigations by social scientists can be formulated in terms parallel to those of natural science. This means that their analyses must be expressed in laws or law-like generalizations of the same kind that have been established in relation to natural phenomena. Positivism claims that science provides us with the clearest possible ideal of knowledge.

  Where Positivism is less successful, however, is in its application to the study of human behaviour, where the immense complexity of human nature and the elusive and intangible quality of social phenomena contrast strikingly with the order and regularity of the natural world. This point is apparent in the contexts of classrooms and schools where the problems of teaching, learning and human interaction present the positivistic researcher with a mammoth challenge.

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  Critical Realism

  Basics and Beyond

  • Hubert Buch-Hansen, Peter Nielsen(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Our focus in what follows is, however, limited to Positivism as a philosophy of science perspective. 16 Critical Realism Positivism VERSUS CRITICAL REALISM Whereas the classical empiricists focused on natural science, Positivism is a perspective that also relates to the social sciences. According to Bhaskar (2011a: 49), empiricism is a central component of this perspective. He even suggests that “[m]ost of Positivism is already contained [and] elegantly expounded in the writings of Hume” (2009: 226). Bhaskar (2009: 227–228) associates posi-tivism with scholars such as Auguste Comte (1798–1857), John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) and Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) as well as with the so-called logical Positivism of the Vienna Circle, which emerged in the interwar period. It expounded a rather extreme form of Positivism, which became the dominant perspective in the philosophy of science in the mid-twentieth century. The members of the Circle – for instance, Otto Neurath (1882–1945) and Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) – embraced formal logic, believing that it would be possi-ble to solve major philosophical problems by formulating them in mathemati-cal terms. Yet like the empiricists, they regarded observation to be the foundation of knowledge. In the words of some of the leading logical positivist thinkers, “there is knowledge only from experience, which rests on what is immediately given” (Hahn et al. 1929). In this context, logical positivists cham-pioned the so-called ‘verification principle’ according to which all scientific propositions can be broken down to more basic elements that are verifiable (i.e., can be proved right) by observation. Propositions that are not ultimately verifiable are to be considered unscientific and metaphysical. Other traditions that, according to Bhaskar (2009: 120), can be seen to be members of the wider positivist family include structuralism, functionalism and behaviourism.

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  Studies in Social and Political Theory (RLE Social Theory)

  • Anthony Giddens(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  1

  Positivism and its critics

       

  ‘Positivism’ has today become more a term of abuse than a technical term of philosophy. The indiscriminate way in which the term has been used in a variety of different polemical interchanges in the past few years, however, makes all the more urgent a study of the influence of positivistic philosophies in the social sciences.

  I shall distinguish two main ways in which ‘Positivism’ may be taken, one quite specific, the other much more general. In the more restrictive sense, the term may be taken to apply to the writings of those who have actively called themselves positivists, or at least have been prepared to accept the appellation. This yields two major phases in the development of Positivism, one centred mainly in social theory, the other concerned more specifically with epistemology. The earlier phase is that dominated by the works of the author who coined the term ‘positive philosophy’, Auguste Comte. Although there are obvious contrasts between Comte’s Positivism and the ‘logical Positivism’ of the Vienna Circle, there are equally clear connections – both historical and intellectual – between the two. Second, the term may be employed more broadly and diffusely to refer to the writings of philosophers who have adopted most or all of a series of connected perspectives: phenomenalism – the thesis, which can be expressed in various ways, that ‘reality’ consists in sense-impressions; an aversion to metaphysics, the latter being condemned as sophistry or illusion; the representation of philosophy as a method of analysis, clearly separable from, yet at the same time parasitic upon, the findings of science; the duality of fact and value – the thesis that empirical knowledge is logically discrepant from the pursuit of moral aims or the implementation of ethical standards; and the notion of the ‘unity of science’: the idea that the natural and social sciences share a common logical and perhaps even methodological foundation. Below I shall use the term Positivism without qualification to refer, in the appropriate context, to the views of Comte and subsequently to those of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle, i.e. to those who have been prepared to call themselves positivists. I shall use positivistic philosophy

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  The Philosophy of Social Research

  • John A. Hughes, W. W. Sharrock(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 3 Positivism and the language of social research

  As mentioned, much of Positivism's motivation came from a strongly held view that the social sciences should endeavour to emulate the most advanced of the natural sciences. Accepting this ambition was one thing, realising it another. It was not clear what it was about the natural sciences which made them apparently so superior as forms of knowledge. It was generally accepted that physics was the most advanced of the natural sciences and so embodied most clearly what must be the scientific method, but quite what it was about physics which marked it out was a matter of debate. However, not much attention was given to the actual practices of the natural sciences by those who would follow their example. Social scientists, in the main, took their ideas about the natural sciences from the philosophy of science, with Positivism as their main inspiration. Following the supposed 'scientific method' as described by Positivism was the main route through which social scientists, through the 1930s to 1960s hoped to move in the direction pioneered by the most successful of the natural sciences and, eventually, equal their achievements.

  It must be noted, however, that among positivistically inspired social scientists there were debates (as there still are, for although direct allegiance to Positivism has declined since the 1960s, it continues to have influence and adherents) over such questions as the nature of scientific explanation, whether social science theories could attain the categorical certainty of natural science theories or could only reach probabilistic conclusions, whether falsification or verification was the fundamental criterion distinguishing scientific statements from nonscientific ones, and so on. These debates, at one time, formed some of the core issues in the philosophy of social science (see, e.g. Papineau 1978, Ryan 1970). However, some positivists were interested in converting the programme into practice and doing some of the empirical research which their philosophy deemed so all-important. They tried to design proper scientific instruments for social research. It is with these attempts to figure out how to do this that this chapter is concerned. If the example of the natural sciences was to be followed, then how was this to be done? In what way could the positivist's general idea of scientific method be applied to social life?

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  Science and the Quest for Meaning

  • Alfred I. Tauber(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Baylor University Press

    (Publisher)

  This general approach was not limited to the study of the natural world, for by the 1850s, Positivism came to be understood as a philo-sophical belief which held that the methods of natural science offer the only viable way of thinking correctly about human affairs. Human sub-jectivity now resided under a new lens of inquiry, and with this mandate, the human sciences emerged (a matter discussed below [Smith 1997, 2007]). Accordingly, empiricism, processed with a self-conscious fear of subjective contamination, served as the basis of all knowledge. Facts, the products of sensory experience and, by extrapolation, the data derived from machines and instruments built as extensions of perceptive facul-ties, were presented as self-sufficient entities; “hypothesis” was defined as the expectation of observing facts of a certain kind under certain condi-tions; and a scientific “law” was understood as the proposition that under certain conditions of a certain kind, facts of a certain kind were uni-formly observable. Any hypothesis or law that scientists could not define in terms such as these would be written off as “pseudo-hypothesis” or “pseudo-law.” A newly construed attitude would regulate the use of such terms as knowledge , science , cognition , and information . Thus the sciences separated themselves from older traditions of inquiry. In summary, nineteenth-century positivist proponents, who regarded scientific growth as synonymous with modernity and progress, embraced a method whose values have not only bequeathed an increasing capacity to control nature and raise human standards of living, but also provided a powerful, albeit particular, means for understanding the world and human nature. Dogging that promotion, a critical chorus saw science as distort-ing human life and imperialistically dominating other modes of experi-ence. In its endeavor to seek some final truth (defined by its parochial methods) and to embrace its own mode of rational discourse, critics with

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  Methodological Individualism

  Background, History and Meaning

  • Lars Udehn(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  6 Positivism in philosophy and social science

  As we have seen (p. 27), the term ‘Positivism’ was coined by Auguste Comte, who was not a methodological individualist. Nor were the other positivists among the classical sociologists, with the possible exception of Herbert Spencer. This indicates that there is not a necessary connection between these two doctrines. More recent positivist social science, however, is more indebted to British empiricism and the logical Positivism of the Vienna Circle. This influence works in a more individualistic direction.

  Positivist philosophy

  By ‘Positivism’, I understand a philosophy with two basic characteristics: (1) Methodological monism, which is the doctrine that the method of all sciences is one and the same. More specifically, methodological monism means that the social sciences must use the same method as the natural sciences. (2) Empiricism, which means that all knowledge ultimately derives from observation, or experience.

  From the very beginning, Positivism was advanced as an alternative to metaphysics and this remained an essential feature of this philosophy. In the case of logical Positivism, the demarcation of science from metaphysics was made with the help of the empiricist criterion of verifiability. Methodological individualism sometimes looks like just another variant of the empiricist attack on metaphysics: a bit less radical than phenomenalism and, perhaps, also than physicalism, but, nevertheless, motivated by the same kind of epistemological considerations. It could be argued that flesh and blood human beings are the only directly observable entities in society – if we exclude human artefacts such as buildings, machines, books, etc. – while social wholes and collectives are not in the same way directly given to the senses.1 It would seem, therefore, that empiricism implies or, at least suggests, methodological individualism.2 This relation is asymmetric, however, and does not hold the other way around. Methodological individualism does not imply empiricism and, as a matter of fact, few of the most well-known advocates of methodological individualism have been empiricists. As we have seen in previous chapters, most of them have been hermeneuticians, neo-Kantians, phenomenologists and existentialists. As such, they have adopted a subjectivist version of methodological individualism, which conflicts with the physicalism and behaviourism of most empiricist philosophers.3

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  Philosophy and the Sciences of Exercise, Health and Sport

  Critical Perspectives on Research Methods

  • Mike McNamee(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make. If we take in our hand any volume; of divine or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask: Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. (Cited in Hacking 1983:44.)

  Among the things that Hacking notes from this quote is the positivistic penchant for slogans. That spirit survives today in those who assert blindly that unless problems have some quantificationist or experimental basis, they cannot claim scientific status. That which is not wrought from the scientific method must therefore surrender all pretence to science (thereby to proper objectivity). Of course a whole host of unscientific biases are in operation here (see Parry, Chapter 2 , on the ideological elements of positivistic thinking). What we can retain here is the positivist’s strong sense of antipathy to metaphysics, on which I shall comment below.

  Of the term ‘Positivism’ specifically, Halfpenny (1982:15) notes not one but three senses or conceptions of the term in Comte’s writing. First, Positivism refers to a theory of historical development in which the growth of knowledge contributes to the development of progress and social stability. This conception of positivistic philosophy sounds very much a product of its age, while the second and third conceptions have a more modern ring.2 Second, Positivism refers to a claim that only a certain kind of knowledge counts as scientific and that it must be based upon observation of publicly available entities. Finally, Positivism entails the claim that all science proper can be integrated into a unified system.

  Even if academics were faithful to Comte’s original work, confusion might arise in the applications of a term that slid between the three different senses. Yet modern natural and social scientific research methods talk in exercise, health and sport research is sometimes so loose that the term itself falls into disrepute. Nowhere is this more the case than with the all-pervasive term ‘paradigm’ (discussed below), which is typically cited without any precise meaning in mind. Likewise, calling a researcher or research design ‘positivistic’ often indicates little more than mild and unspecific abuse. When content seems to attach to the ascription, it might mean little more than a predilection for statistics, or a privileging of experimental method, or a dependence on hypothesis testing as a sine qua non

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  Handbook of Social Theory

  • George Ritzer, Barry Smart, George Ritzer, Barry Smart(Authors)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  For the Frankfurt School and the Hegelian–Marxist tradition, problems in the social sciences are manifestations of the frac-tured and contradictory nature of the social structures within which they are practised and they are to be overcome by radical transforma-tions in society. This fundamental difference goes back to the rival views of Comte and Marx, the former concerned with orderly progress, the latter with revolutionary social transformation. Quantitative research and statistical analysis A unity of science thesis or naturalism has been an enduring strand of Positivism and the discussion above has revealed that it has taken a variety of bases, including a common ground-ing of all sciences in sensory experience, a unified logical structure for the language of science, a common lexicon as in physicalism, a shared Positivism IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 375 model of explanation, and the same method of enquiry, either inductive or hypothetico-deduc-tive. A more prosaic form of naturalism is the claim that scientific enquiry involves the collec-tion and manipulation of quantified facts, a view that has become closely associated with positiv-ism, especially in the social sciences. Neverthe-less, the practice of counting features of societies, their citizens and their resources – what we now call descriptive social statistics – goes back to antiquity and followed a trajectory quite separate from the other strands of Positivism until the twentieth century (Lazarsfeld, 1961). In particular, the administrators and social refor-mers who gathered numerical information on a wider and wider range of issues in the nineteenth century, either to administer the state or to document their concerns about the fate of the urbanized industrial workers, largely limited themselves to immediate practical issues and did not construct general social theories about the processes they documented so thoroughly.

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  Readability (1/2)

  Birth of the Cluster text, Introduction to the Art of Learning.

  • - Annandreas(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Books on Demand

    (Publisher)

  Empirical Positivism . Logical Positivism was early termed as logical empiricism. One can perceive it as an interlacing of empiricism and rationalism where logic stands for the rationalist component. In empirical Positivism, you have not fully learnt logic. You are active within your science without mastering logic. You value empirical surveys, as a true positivist, but not logic. It could lead to a weak pre-theoretical work. There are many empirical studies in psychology, education, and many other social sciences for which you really wonder why they were done. There is a pressure to do empirical surveys in scientific practices. Experience can be a good teacher, but it could also lead to problems. Empirical Positivism is another way to be semipositivistic.

  Methodological Positivism . In this Positivism, you tend to appreciate methods and procedures. You develop standard procedures to follow, you emphasise a comprehensive introduction to methodology, and you are devoted to formulating methodological advice. This may mean that you develop thoughts on scientific methods and, e.g., different statistical tools, but care less about philosophical thought, theories of science, and the nature of theories. Instead, you are interested in research methodology. This is a third example of semiPositivism.

  Quantitative or Mathematical Positivism . In this Positivism, you really appreciate mathematical relationships. You use mathematics and look for mathematical relationships. You do not use logic and philosophy to clarify things, which a strict positivist would have to do. The practices are much about finding quantifiable relationships, and you are not working as actively with the qualitative basis for different phenomena. What matters is that which can be measured and explained in numerical relationships. You can tie the statements ›everything can be measured‹ and ›everything can be quantified‹ to this semiPositivism.

  Scientism

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  Teachers as Researchers

  Qualitative Inquiry as a Path to Empowerment

  • Joe L. Kincheloe(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 4 Exploring Assumptions Behind Educational Research; Defining Positivism in a Neo-Positivist Era

  Equipped with an understanding of the Cartesian tradition, we are prepared to understand its epistemological extension—Positivism. Few epistemological orientations have exerted so much influence or have been so little understood. An historical overview is in order to begin our exploration of Positivism. The Enlightenment (Age of Reason) of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries realized its rational self-fulfillment with the advent of modern science. True reality, the Enlightenment thinkers posited, was founded upon scientific understanding—the world could be comprehended only via science and scientific methodology. This form of science was universal in the sense that it applied to all subjects of study and was based on mathematics. With the realization of this type of scientific enterprise during the Enlightenment, Western thought was prepared for the advent of what many have called ‘the era of Positivism’ (Held, 1980; Giroux, 1997; Kincheloe, 2001).

  The History of Positivism

  The label, Positivism, was popularized by Auguste Comte, the nineteenth-century French philosopher, who argued that human thought had progressed through three stages: the theological stage, the metaphysical stage, and the scientific or positivistic stage. One could only designate scientific findings as certain in the scientific stage. Comte sought to discredit the legitimacy of thinking which did not take sense experience into account, that is, a priori modes of thought. Advocating such a position, Comte extended the scientific orientation of the Enlightenment (J.Smith, 1983; Kneller, 1984).

  Comte did not see a distinction between the methods used for research in the physical and the human sciences. Thus, from Comte’s perspective, sociology was a reflection of biology. Society came to be viewed as a body of neutral facts governed by immutable laws. These facts and laws could be researched in the same manner as any physical object could be researched. Like nature, society is governed by natural necessity. It therefore followed that social movements would proceed with law-like predictability (Held, 1980).

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  The Positive Mind

  Its Development and Impact on Modernity and Postmodernity

  • Evaldas Nekrašas(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Central European University Press

    (Publisher)

  This reason is related to Hume’s political philosophy. He always emphasized the fact that political institutions are established by human beings. They cannot possibly func-tion perfectly because man himself is an imperfect being. We can safely conclude that Hume’s views concerning a possible link between the scientific and social progress are consistently cautious and reserved. He clearly lacks enthusiasm regarding the advance of human-kind, which was so characteristic of later positivists. Even though Hume was a bit more moderate than the classical positiv-ists of the nineteenth century, I believe I have provided enough evidence that Hume and not Auguste Comte should be considered as the first posi- Chapter 1. Early Positivism 35 tivist. Let us briefly recall the concept of Positivism presented in the be-ginning of this book. Positivism is an antimetaphysical branch of philoso-phy, which seeks to develop philosophy as a science. Admittedly, not every idea raised by a positivist was a scientific one in a strict sense of the word. However, it would be hard to deny that they attempted to develop philosophy as a scientific discipline. They have been consistently making these ideas known and they have been widely supported by scientists es-tablished in various scientific fields, including physics and mathematics. It is somewhat paradoxical that some thinkers question the scientific charac-ter of positivist philosophy, invoking precisely those standards of science that have been defined or codified by positivist philosophers themselves. Gradually those standards have been changing. This is a reason why some logical positivists were not satisfied with some earlier positivist ideas. However, one must bear in mind that the positivist focus on science and especially physics has never wavered. This focus should be considered as the main trait of the positivist philosophy irrespective of what we think about the scientific or general intellectual value of positivist ideas.

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  A General View of Positivism

  • Auguste Comte, J.H. Bridges(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Here, then, we are met by a serious difficulty. The construction of the objective basis for the Positive synthesis imposes two conditions which seem, at first sight, incompatible. On the one hand we must allow the intellect to be free, or else we shall not have the full benefit of its services; and, on the other, we must control its natural tendency to unlimited digressions. The problem was insoluble, so long as the study of the natural economy did not include Sociology. But as soon as the Positive spirit extends to the treatment of social questions, these at once take precedence of all others, and thus the moral point of view becomes paramount. Objective science, proceeding from without inwards, falls at last into natural harmony with the subjective or moral principle, the superiority of which it had for so long a time resisted. As a mere speculative question it may be considered as proved to the satisfaction of every true thinker, that the social point of view is logically and scientifically supreme over all others, being the only point from which all our scientific conceptions can be regarded as a whole. Yet its influence can never be injurious to the progress of other Positive studies; for these, whether for the sake of their method or of their subject matter, will always continue to be necessary as an introduction to the final science. Indeed the Positive system gives the highest sanction and the most powerful stimulus to all preliminary sciences, by insisting on the relation which each of them bears to the great whole, Humanity.

  Thus the foundation of social science bears out the statement made at the beginning of this work, that the intellect would, under Positivism, accept its proper position of subordination to the heart. The recognition of this, which is the subjective principle of Positivism, renders the construction of a complete system of human life possible. The antagonism which, since the close of the Middle Ages, has arisen between Reason and Feeling, was an anomalous though inevitable condition. It is now for ever at an end; and the only system which can really satisfy the wants of our nature, individually or collectively, is therefore ready for our acceptance. As long as the antagonism existed, it was hopeless to expect that Social Sympathy could do much to modify the preponderance of self-love in the affairs of life. But the case is different as soon as reason and sympathy are brought into active co-operation. Separately, their influence in our imperfect organization is very feeble; but combined it may extend indefinitely. It will never, indeed, be able to do away with the fact that practical life must, to a large extent, be regulated by interested motives; yet it may introduce a standard of morality inconceivably higher than any that has existed in the past, before these two modifying forces could be made to combine their action upon our stronger and lower instincts.

  Distinction between Abstract and Concrete laws. It is the former only that we require for the purpose before us

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