Positivism

Origins

The term was coined by Auguste Comte, but even for him it has several different connotations. It refers, in part, to a theory of history according to which every branch of knowledge passes through three stages (the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive state—when explanations by appeal to unobservable entities are finally abandoned) and which asserts that improvements in knowledge are responsible for historical progress. For Comte, positivism is also the assertion that there can be a science of society aiming at universal laws akin to those in the natural sciences; the name of a proposed secular religion, involving the worship of society, and with its own priesthood and church; and, less strangely, the label for a unity of science thesis claiming that all the sciences can be integrated into a single system. But perhaps the central thread in Comte's positivism, at least from the point of view of the subsequent history, is its empiricism, the view that the only source of knowledge [Page 647]is experience. This idea is taken from the British empiricists and leads (as it did with John Locke, Bishop Berkeley, and possibly David Hume) to the view that there can be no knowledge of any reality beyond experience. It also led Comte to acknowledge the impossibility of obtaining absolute truth. This knowledge turns out to be a perennial positivist theme and is worth noting in the light of a familiar tendency to claim that positivism involves a commitment to absolute truth as well as knowledge with certainty. At any rate, the pivotal nature of empiricist ideas in positivist thought means that positivism is, in effect, a variant of empiricism.

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