POSITIVISM

in philosophy, generally, any system that confines itself to the data of experience and excludes a priori or metaphysical speculations. More narrowly, the term designates the thought of the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857). As a philosophical ideology and movement, Positivism first assumed its distinctive features in the work of Comte, who also named and systematized the science of sociology. It then developed through several stages known by various names, such as Empiriocriticism, Logical Positivism, and Logical Empiricism, and finally, in the mid-20th century, flowed into the movement known as Analytic and Linguistic philosophy. The basic affirmations of Positivism are (1) that all knowledge regarding matters of fact is based on the "positive" data of experience, and (2) that beyond the realm of fact is that of pure logic and pure mathematics, which were already recognized by the Scottish Empiricist and Skeptic David Hume as concerned with the "relations of ideas" and, in a later phase of Positivism, were classified as purely formal sciences. On the negative and critical side, the Positivists became noted for their repudiation of metaphysics; i.e., of speculation regarding the nature of reality that radically goes beyond any possible evidence that could either support or refute such "transcendent" knowledge claims. In its basic ideological posture, Positivism is thus worldly, secular, antitheological, and antimetaphysical. Strict adherence to the testimony of observation and experience is the all-important imperative of the Positivists. This imperative is reflected also in their contributions to ethics and moral philosophy, and most Positivists have been Utilitarians to the extent that something like "the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people" was their ethical maxim. It is notable, in this connection, that Auguste Comte was the founder of a short-lived religion, in which the object of worship was not the deity of the monotheistic faiths but humanity. There are distinct anticipations of Positivism in ancient philosophy. Though the relationship of Protagoras-a 5th-century-BC Sophist-for example, to later Positivistic thought was only a distant one, there was a much more pronounced similarity in the classical Skeptic Sextus Empiricus, who lived at the turn of the 3rd century AD, and in Pierre Bayle, his 17th-century reviver. Moreover, the medieval Nominalist William of Ockham had clear affinities with modern Positivism. An 18th-century forerunner who had much in common with the Positivistic antimetaphysics of the following century was the German thinker Georg Lichtenberg. Positivism clearly has its proximate roots, however, in the French Enlightenment, which stressed the clear light of reason, and in the 18th-century British Empiricism, particularly that of Hume and of Bishop George Berkeley, which stressed the role of sense experience. Comte was influenced specifically by the Enlightenment Encyclopaedists (such as Denis Diderot, Jean d'Alembert, and others) and, especially in his social thinking, was decisively influenced by the founder of French Socialism, Claude-Henri, comte de Saint-Simon, whose disciple he had been in his early years and from whom the very designation Positivism stems. Additional reading Literature on Classical Positivism includes J. Watson, Comte, Mill and Spencer (1895); W.M. Simon, European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century (1963); John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism (1865); Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, 6 vol. (1830-42; Eng. trans. and cond. by H. Martineau, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, 2 vol., 1853). For further references to the ethical views of the classical Positivists, see the bibliography of Utilitarianism in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Many of the original classics of Logical Positivism, both books and articles, are listed in the ample bibliography of A.J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism (1959), an anthology that contains, among other important essays, Rudolf Carnap's "Psychology in Physical Language." The early history of Viennese Positivism is well told in Victor Kraft, Der Wiener Kreis: Der Ursprung des Neopositivismus (1950, 2nd ed. 1968; Eng. trans., The Vienna Circle, 1953, reprinted 1969). Another important source is J. Joergensen, The Development of Logical Empiricism, vol. 2, no. 9 of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (1951). For a brief account of the European movement of Logical Positivism and its migration and impact in the United States, see H. Feigl, "The Wiener Kreis in America," in D. Fleming and B. Baylin (eds.), The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America 1930-1960 (1969). Books, mainly in the foundations of the sciences, but also in philosophy of language and epistemology, many by the leading Logical Empiricists, are listed in the ample Bibliography and Index, in Herbert Feigl and Charles Morris (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, vol. 2, no. 10 (1969). Of direct relevance are the major works of R. Carnap, O. Neurath, M. Schlick, P. Frank, H. Reichenbach, E. Nagel, C.G. Hempel, R. von Mises, and Charles Morris. For criticisms, those of Karl R. Popper may be used; and the intellectual autobiography of Carnap, the 26 descriptive and critical essays, and his replies, in P.A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (1963). For later evaluations and reactions, see P. Achinstein and S.F. Barker (eds.), The Legacy of Logical Positivism: Studies in the Philosophy of Science (1969); and Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 1-5 (1956-70).