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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.
Modern positivism
The key features of positivism as of the 1950s, 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,"
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," 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," and even that "social processes are reducible to
relationships between and actions of individuals," or that "biological organisms are
reducible to physical systems."
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