Positivism

Definitions

When positivism as a term is used in the history of historiography, it tends to refer to the work of scholars in the Third Republic in France; positivistic historians in this context means scholars who produced historical research that followed a rigorous method of systematic investigation of sources (what historians of the Annales school pejoratively called histoire historisante). In social sciences, positivism has become a synonym for a rejection of metaphysics and a heightened concern for observable and measurable phenomena in the natural and social world. Likewise, in language studies, the term positivism has come to mean a failed attempt to compare and transplant methods of physical sciences to the realm of human language-based communication. Until recently, in all these cases, when the word positivism is used, it was normally used in a negative sense to allow for [Page 1054]criticism of the approach or method in question (Karl Popper having been one of the main opponents of Comte's philosophy of science in the 20th century).

The word positivism was incorporated into the vocabulary of human sciences, and it currently has different meanings for modern scholars. Georg Iggers claimed that positivism means a belief that historical facts are self-explanatory and do not require mediation of hypothesis, interpretation, or operational definitions. Wilson Simon claimed that only Comte's positivism could truly be called by that name, as it was based on a personal conviction that human behavior could be examined using the same laws of physical and natural sciences. Donald Charlton, Norman Cantor, and Richard Schneider promoted the idea of positivism replaced with a “scientific nominalism,” meaning textual criticism and hostility to hidden meaning and interpretation was a more apt term than positivism. For William Keylor, positivism means a theory of fact-oriented science.

Applications

Any initial definition of the term positivism, however, should relate it to Comte's work. Comte's oeuvre sought to establish an understanding of how humanity had evolved from the first stage of its development (theological) to the second (metaphysical) and would further progress until it finally reached its most perfect state (the positive stage). Positivism—or science positive—is Comte's ambitious attempt to synthesize all the conflicting philosophies of his time through a new philosophy of history capable of explaining human experience as a function of the development of the human mind. Through this and through the epistemological assumption that only through direct observation can knowledge be attained, Comte envisioned human history in somewhat utopian terms as culminating in a flawlessly well-integrated society. In order to capture all of human experience (historical, social, political, and intellectual), Comte founded the science of sociology.

Combining “social positivism” (the science that studied the human race, focusing on the social relationships between individuals); the “religion of humanity” (the ethical, nontheistic religion based on the collective and the individual aspects of humankind); and a theory of knowledge (based on the assumption that humans evolve from the theological stage into the metaphysical one and then to the positive one, not yet fully achieved), positivism forms the basis of modern science, at which stage science gains supremacy over philosophy (or metaphysics). In this context, positivism can be seen as an attempt to incorporate and improve the pre−19th-century theories of knowledge, which based some or all of their arguments on a priori knowledge and relied upon metaphysical, religious, or moralistic assumptions, not simply on material reality. The purpose of Comte's work was to offer a satisfactory explanation for the crisis in French politics and society, which had started with the French Revolution in 1789, and to suggest that by understanding social phenomena, one could understand political occurrences and, as a result, start the process of social reconstruction that would eventually eliminate politics from society.

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