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Positivism

Positivism: Positivists believe that the problems of mankind will reduce with the advent of science and logical thinking.

What is Positivism?

Positivism’s, as a philosophy, has its foundation in science and mathematics. This philosophy is under the belief that that whatever exists can be proved and verified through experiments, observation and everything else, which cannot be the over by these methods are non-existent.

Modern Positivism

Modern Positivism was developed in the 17th century. It became very popular in the 20th century when the British and the Americans began to integrate both philosophy and science. 

Positivists see themselves as realists and atheists. They believe in objective truth which means that anything which a person experiences in the world. Positivists also do not believe how theoretical and cultural biases which reprove science. 

Positivism is Divided into Three Categories

  1. True
  2. False
  3. Neither true nor false (meaningless)

The third category, ‘meaningless’, means that a statement can not be proven through scientific means or is not clear enough to be tested. 

Positivism Philosophy

Positivism became very popular in the 20th century. Later on, the post-positivists began to find problems with the Positivism’s theory. One of the major criticisms this school of philosophy faced was that positivism sees facts as either true or false. There is a strong distinction between those two.

However, this philosophy does not take into account the cultural, political and psychological factors which affect the statement and the situation when the statement is made. The criticism is based on the fact that there is no relationship established between the observer and the truth.

Post-Positivism

Post-positivists say that positivism is based solely on the fact that a statement is true only if it can be verified by science. Other statements are false or meaningless.

The post-positivists arguer that there is no room for a grey area. Many positivists realized the flaws of their philosophy and decided to abandon it by developing new schools of thought.

The Post-positivists, who criticized many ideologies of Positivisms still held on to some thoughts of the Positivists. Some of them are the concepts of ‘objective truth’, and the process of understanding the truth. 

Study Of Auguste Comte

Auguste Comte said “From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all directions, and through all times, the discovery arises of a great fundamental law, [which is that] each branch of our knowledge passes successively through three different theoretical conditions:

Positivism Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte

The theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the scientific, or positive.” Comte was a French philosopher from the 19th century who was strongly associated with positivism. 

When it comes to the belief in God, Positivists believed that it was impossible to prove if God existed or not. However, historically, positivists have been atheists since they could not prove or negate the existence of God.