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 positivism designates the philosophy of Auguste Comte (1798-1857). In its general sense the term is commonly applied to the empiricist philosophers, although in fact reservations ought to be made (John Locke and David Hume accept mathematics, Locke and George Berkeley accept a knowledge of the soul and of God, on nonempirical grounds). John Stuart Mill's "experience philosophy" is positivistic in this sense. Positivists have usually held that theological and metaphysical questions arise but cannot in fact be answered by any method available to men. Other positivists, however, have dismissed such questions as meaningless. This second view connects with pragmatism and with logical positivism and also with the hints to be found in Berkeley and in Hume of an experience test of meaning. Positivism emphasizes the achievements of science, but questions arise even within the sciences that do not seem to be answerable by experimental methods. Ernst Mach attempted to assign an experience meaning to such theoretical questions and to relate theories directly to the evidence for them. The positivism of Auguste Comte held that human thought had passed inevitably through a theological stage into a metaphysical stage and was passing into a positive, or scientific, stage. Comte held that the religious impulse would survive the decay of revealed religion and ought to have an object. He projected a worship of man, with churches, calendar, and hierarchy. Disciples (Frederic Harrison, Richard Congreve, and others) founded such a church in England, but Mill, who inclined to accept the religion, repudiated Comte's organization.