Positivism

Positivism, as it sounds is related to positive thinking but in scholarly terms it denotes a set of epistemological perspectives which relies on the concept of science to gain knowledge and have questions answered the right way. In other terms, it is said that to uncover the process of the world where events related to humans and physical objects occur can only be done by philosophies of science which holds the ultimate scientific methods to calculate the outcome or results. A positive approach to any occurrence is by using means of science which had been a recurring ideology for ages. The same motto had been followed even by the ancient Greeks to the modern day western approach for finding the answers.

The process of applying positivism is based on direct contact with the object or event said as sense experience and positive verification to make sure that it had occurred without relative doubts on the outcome. Some of the eminent personalities and philosophers who contributed their thoughts to the idea were Henri de Saint-Simon and Pierre-Simon Laplace, Auguste Comte. According to their conclusion, metaphysics replaced scientific methods which observed the circular dependence of theory and observation in science that is a part of the history of thought. When it thrived for a long time, the new emergence of sociological positivism and anti-positivist tradition emerged in the late 20^th century. Emile Durkheim contributed to social research but German sociologists Max Weber and Georg Simmel created critical theorists trend by rejecting the doctrine. It was during the period that positive thinking got merged with scientism with science as an ideology.

Positivism didn’t remain the same throughout history as it underwent various changes and got split based on different perspective of people. Neopositivists gave birth to logical positivism which stressed on the logical reasoning while rejecting metaphysical theories and relied on logic to get relevant answers. The same was also divided as behavioralism and operationalism in the world of psychology. The legal positivism in jurisprudence was another development which rejected natural law that implies of human authorization on political structures as contradictory to the scientific view of a law. The influence and fervor shown in the topic slowly faded off with the end of philosophers who preached them. In contemporary times, it had lost almost all of its essence and those who study it believe in observer bias and structural limitations.

Questions:

• What is positivism?
• How do you define the changes that occurred along centuries?