The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences provides a remarkable comparative assessment of the variations of positivism and alternative epistemologies in the contemporary human sciences. Often declared obsolete, positivism is alive and well in a number of the fields; in others, its influence is significantly diminished. The essays in this collection investigate its mutations in form and degree across the social science disciplines. Looking at methodological assumptions field by field, individual essays address anthropology, area studies, economics, history, the (...) philosophy of science, political science and political theory, and sociology. Essayists trace disciplinary developments through the long twentieth century, focusing on the decades since World War II. Contributors explore and contrast some of the major alternatives to positivist epistemologies, including Marxism, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, narrative theory, and actor-network theory. Almost all the essays are written by well-known practitioners of the fields discussed. Some essayists approach positivism and anti-positivism via close readings of texts influential in their respective disciplines. Some engage in ethnographies of the present-day human sciences; others are more historical in method. All of them critique contemporary social scientific practice. Together, they trace a trajectory of thought and method running from the past through the present and pointing toward possible futures. Contributors. Andrew Abbott, Daniel Breslau, Michael Burawoy, Andrew Collier , Michael Dutton, Geoff Eley, Anthony Elliott, Stephen Engelmann, Sandra Harding, Emily Hauptmann, Webb Keane, Tony Lawson, Sophia Mihic, Philip Mirowski, Timothy Mitchell, William H. Sewell Jr., Margaret R. Somers, George Steinmetz, Elizabeth Wingrove. (shrink)

Interactions between archaeology and philosophy are traced, from the ‘New Archaeology’s’ use of ideas from logical empiricism, the subsequent loss of confidence in such ideas, the falsificationist alternative, the rise of ‘scientific realism’, and the influence of the ‘new’ philosophies of science of the 1960s on post-processual archaeology. Some recent ideas from philosophy of science are introduced, and that discipline’s recent trajectory, featuring debate between realists and anti-realists, as well as a return to ‘classic’ concerns about explanation, causation, (...) and laws of nature, is described. Many interactions between philosophy of science and archaeology have been based on a misplaced quest for a single ‘off-the-peg’ methodology or other philosophical framework for archaeology. Historical conditions have fostered the damaging idea that archaeologists have to choose between ‘positivism’ and subjectivism. I conclude by suggesting what kinds of contemporary philosophical work might interest archaeologists, and argue that philosophers should recognize the distinctive heterogeneity of archaeology. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the work of several positivists involved with the "Metaphysical Club" of Cambridge, MA in the early 1870s -- John Fiske, Chauncey Wright, and Francis Ellingwood Abbot. Like the logical positivists of the 1930s, these philosophers were forced to answer a key question: with so many of its traditional domains colonized by science and so many of its traditional questions dismissed as metaphysical or useless, what is left for philosophy to do? One answer they gave (...) was that philosophy could unify the sciences. As Fiske put it, "positive philosophy is science organized.". (shrink)

(1995). Positivist discourse and social scientific communities: Towards an epistemological sociology of science. Social Epistemology: Vol. 9, Knowledge (EX) Change, pp. 233-255.

Positivist philosophy is focused on the problem of science and especially on its cognitive results and applications. We can say that Polish intellectual circles of this era glorified science. In her article, Barbara Szotek presents this phenomenon through the figure of Aleksander Świętochowski, the most famous representative and ideologist of scientific positivism. His works best illustrate the evolution of positivist views on science and its social role.

This chapter contains sections titled: References and Further Reading.

Brentano plays a paradoxical role in the history of philosophy. He is the key transitional figure between two antithetical traditions: although a profound influence to phenomenology, Brentano himself was inspired by the positivism of Comte and Mill. While his students found in his teachings both a reason and the means to combat the spirit of positivism, Brentano himself believed "the true method of philosophy was nothing other than the method of the natural sciences." The incoherence of his historical role is (...) reflected in his own development. After his retirement, Brentano developed a psychological theory of apriori knowledge intended to explain how analytic judgments can be ampliative, and he ascribed this kind of knowledge to all sciences. A consensus exists that this squares poorly with the empiricism of his Psychology or his positivist manifesto. But the model Brentano employed to explain the workings of apriori knowledge was nothing other than his own methodology in descriptive psychology, elaborated in the influential lectures of the late 1880's: a mereology of consciousness as a synchronous manifold. And this was only a formalization of the method he had practiced in Book Two of his Psychology, where the basic kinds of mental phenomena and the laws of their coexistence are described. The late theory of apriori knowledge is therefore nothing more than a fine-grained psychological analysis of what was meant by "description" all along. Even in the Psychology this description generates what Brentano would later call apriori knowledge. For among the "parts" of consciousness distinguished by a synchronous mereology are not only "separable parts", but also "inseparable parts" which are distinguishable, but not really capable of existing separately. To each such distinction corresponds a law of necessary interconnection. To describe their mode of interconnection is to know apriori that they cannot exist apart. Thus, it is the theory of "distinctions" which allows an empirical description to have apriori validity. In this respect Brentano is rehabilitating a Scholastic tradition in order to make a positive, but non-trivial science of synchronous manifolds possible. But in so doing, he invents phenomenology: the positive, but apriori valid description of the possible and necessary structures of conscious experience. Continuity in Brentano's own development can therefore be affirmed, and even the subsequent development of phenomenology is seen to have its origin in a radical form of empiricism. (shrink)

CRUICKSHANK J. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 71–82 Positioning positivism, critical realism and social constructionism in the health sciences: a philosophical orientationThis article starts by considering the differences within the positivist tradition and then it moves on to compare two of the most prominent schools of postpositivism, namely critical realism and social constructionism. Critical realists hold, with positivism, that knowledge should be positively applied, but reject the positivist method for doing this, arguing that causal explanations have to be based not on (...) empirical regularities but on references to unobservable structures. Social constructionists take a different approach to postpositivism and endorse a relativist rejection of truth and hold that the task of research is to foster a scepticism that undermines any positive truth claim made. It is argued that social constructionism is a contradictory position. (shrink)

The historiographic tradition of the history of science that originated with Auguste Comte bears all the marks of narratives with roots in the Enlightenment, such as a view of religion as an underdeveloped stage in the ascending road in humanity's quest for a more mature understanding. This article explores the development of the peripheral branch of a tradition that developed in Argentina by the mid‐twentieth century with authors such as the Italians Aldo Mieli, José Babini, and the Hungarian Desiderius (...) Papp. It is argued that, contrary to the historiographic program of the conflict thesis developed in English‐speaking countries, those scholars who cultivated the kind of “positivist” history of science that thrived in continental Europe were inclined to see science as a social and epistemological replacement of a fossilized religious outlook. In the final section, I suggest a way to relate the more or less strong versions of the conflict thesis to different patterns of secularization. (shrink)

Logical positivism is widely associated with an illiberal technocratic view of politics. This view is a caricature. Some members of the left Vienna circle were explicit in their criticism of this conception of politics. In particular, Neurath's work attempted to link the internal epistemological pluralism and tolerance of logical empiricism with political pluralism and the rejection of a technocratic politics. This paper examines the role that unified science played in Neurath's defence of political and social pluralism. Neurath's project of (...) unified science addressed problems that lie at the centre of recent debates around liberalism concerning the possibility of social co-operation in conditions of pluralism. His response is distinctive in calling upon an empiricist tradition that differs from Kantian proceduralist approaches that have predominated in recent liberalism. While Neurath's position has problems, it deserves reconsideration, especially in so far as it questions the Kantian assumption that a thin language of abstract rights provides the best basis for the cosmopolital lingua franca required by conditions of social pluralism. An investigation of the role that unified science plays in Neurath's politics also gives reasons for revising common misconceptions about the nature of the unity of science programme itself. (shrink)

Recent controversy over whether the Vienna Circle can provide a model for today’s political turn in the philosophy of science indicates the need to clarify just what is meant by the term political philosophy of science. This paper finds fourteen different meanings of the term, including both descriptive and normative usages, having to do with the roles of political values in the sciences, the political consequences and significance of the sciences and scientific modes of thought, and political processes (...) within the sciences. These different senses are exemplified by the history of nineteenth century French philosophy of science, including Comte and Renouvier, as well as twentieth century logical positivists such as Neurath and more recent philosophers of science such as Kitcher and Longino. The paper also addresses the issue of how there could be a positivist political philosophy of science, given positivisms’ questioning of values, and considers Renouvier’s social contract approach to a political philosophy of science more promising than either Comte’s naturalism or the logical positivists’ non-cognitivism. (shrink)

Recent research has brought to light numerous facts that go against received views of the development of philosophy of science. One encounters several concepts, claims, or projects much earlier than is generally acknowledged. Auguste Comte was careful to distinguish each major science with respect to method and object, speaking of mathematical philosophy, biological philosophy, sociological philosophy, and so forth. He thereby in a sense anticipated the regionalist turn: philosophical analysis should be carried out with respect to a specific (...) body of knowledge. He also adopted a general perspective, a scientific philosophy. In the light of new discoveries, later thinkers such as Pierre Duhem, Gaston Milhaud, and Abel Rey endeavored to reformulate Comte’s doctrine as a neopositivism, a logical positivism, or an absolute positivism. The aim of this article is to examine the constitutive concepts mentioned and the controversies that hinge on them, in an effort to reach a precise understanding of the aim, scope, and import of philosophy of science in the context of nineteenth-century France. (shrink)

I outline the theoretical framework of, and three research programs within American speculative philosophy of science during the period 1900-1931. One program applies verificationism to research in psychology, one investigates the methodology of research programs, and one analyses scientific explanation and other scientific concepts. The primary sources for my outline are works by Morris Raphael Cohen, Grace Andrus de Laguna, Theodore de Laguna, Edgar Arthur Singer Jr., Harold Robert Smart, and Marie Collins Swabey. I also use my outline to (...) provide a partial comparison of American speculative philosophy of science and 1930s logical positivism. My comparison suggests that logical positivism was a proposal for substantially narrowing down and winding back American philosophy of science and was based on positions that were already problematized in the American context. -/- . (shrink)

The emphasis on the fact that the philosophy of science is not always the philosophy of physics, and the use of immunology as the main example makes it possible for Robert Klee to clearly demonstrate that the essence of introduction is not only and not so much to show the development of problems in a historical context, but to point out to the fact that even the most fundamental assumptions and basic intuitions are not immune to criticism. Wide coverage (...) - from formal presentation of theories, Duhem - Quine thesis and the problem of explanation to social constructivism and the feminist philosophy of science, together with the relentless justification of the need for scientific realism, makes the textbook one of the best in its genre. Reflections on the book: Klee R. Introduction to the Philosophy of Science: Cutting Nature at Its Seams. Oxford University Press, 1997. (shrink)

This essay considers the nature of conceptual frameworks in science, and suggests a reconsideration of the role played by philosophy in radical conceptual change. On Kuhn's view of conceptual conflict, the scientist's appeal to philosophical principles is an obvious symptom of incommensurability; philosophical preferences are merely “subjective factors” that play a part in the “necessarily circular” arguments that scientists offer for their own conceptual commitments. Recent work by Friedman has persuasively challenged this view, revealing the roles that philosophical concerns (...) have played in preparing the way for conceptual change, creating an enlarged conceptual space in which alternatives to the prevailing framework become intelligible and can be rationally discussed. If we shift our focus from philosophical themes or preferences to the process of philosophical analysis, however, we can see philosophy in a different and much more significant historic role: not merely as an external source of general heuristic principles and new conceptual possibilities, but, at least in the most important revolutionary developments, as an objective tool of scientific inquiry. I suggest that this approach offers some insight into the philosophical significance of Newton's and Einstein's revolutionary work in physics, and of the interpretation of their work by (respectively) Kant and the logical positivists. It also offers insight into the connections between modern philosophy of science and some traditional philosophical concerns about the nature of a priori knowledge. (shrink)

In Unifying Biology, Smocovitis offers a series of claimsregarding the relationship between key actors in the synthesisperiod of evolutionary studies and positivism, especially claimsentailing Joseph Henry Woodger and the Unity of Science Movement.This commentary examines Woodger''s possible relevance to key synthesis actors and challenges Smocovitis'' arguments for theexplanatory relevance of logical positivism, and positivism moregenerally, to synthesis history. Under scrutiny, these arguments areshort on evidence and subject to substantial conceptual confusion.Though plausible, Smocovitis'' minimal interpretation – that somegeneralised form of (...) Comtean positivism had a role in synthesishistory – requires more of an evidential basis and must engageexisting scholarship on epistemic reforms in the biological sciencesprior to the synthesis period. Smocovitis is right to investigateepistemology in the synthesis period of evolutionary studies and tolook for links to wider changes in science and philosophy. However,in its present form, Unifying Biology fails to support herbasic interpretation. (shrink)

Background Positivism is sometimes rejected for the wrong reasons. Influential textbooks on nursing research and in other disciplines tend to reinforce the misconceptions underlying these rejections. This is problematic, since it provides students of these disciplines with a poor basis for making epistemological and methodological decisions. It is particularly common for positivist views on reality and causation to be obscured. Objectives and design The first part of this discussion paper identifies and explains the misconceptions about positivism as they appear in (...) two influential textbooks. The second part pinpoints five mistakes these misconceptions easily result in when the researcher adopts an epistemological and methodological standpoint. What is already known about the topic? There are several impeccable descriptions of positivism in nursing research literature; but a relatively large number of inaccurate or confused views of positivism appear in the nursing research literature as well. Mistakes of the kind identified in this paper have been noted before—for instance, in Shadish. What this paper adds: This paper provides a detailed analysis of two particularly common and influential misconceptions about positivism. It traces the historical roots of these misconceptions and characterizes them more carefully than many earlier attempts have done. The paper shows how and why these misconceptions affect epistemological and methodological decisions negatively, regardless of one’s interest in positivism. (shrink)

In Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics, Deirdre Nansen McCloskey zeroes in on the authoritarian cast of recent economics, arguing for a re-focusing on the liberated human. The behaviorist positivism fashionable in the field since the 1930s treats people from the outside. It yielded in Williamson and North a manipulative neoinstitutionalism. McCloskey argues that institutions as causes are mainly temporary and intermediate, not ultimate. They are human-made, depending on words, myth, ethics, ideology, history, identity, professionalism, gossip, movies, what your (...) mother taught you. Humans create conversations as they go, in the economy as in the rest of life. In engaging and erudite prose, McCloskey exhibits in detail the scientific failures of neoinstitutionalism. She proposes a "humanomics," an economics with the humans left in. Humanomics keeps theory, quantification, experiment, mathematics, econometrics, though insisting on more true rigor than is usual. It adds what can be learned about the economy from history, philosophy, literature, and all the sciences of humans. McCloskey reaffirms the durability of "market-tested innovation" against the imagined imperfections to be corrected by a perfect government. With her trademark zeal and incisive wit, she rebuilds the foundations of economics. (shrink)

Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-226-97861-3 (alk. paper) — isbn 0-226-97862-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Science — Philosophy. 2. Science — History. 3. Progress. I. Title. Q175 .Z25 2004 501 — dc2i 200301 1970 ...

Logical positivism is often characterized as a set of naive doctrines on meaning, method, and metaphysics. In recent decades, however, historians have dismissed this view as a gross misinterpretation. This new scholarship raises a number of questions. When did the standard reading emerge? Why did it become so popular? And how could commentators have been so wrong? This essay reconstructs the history of a “caricature” and rejects the hypothesis that it was developed by ill-informed Anglophone scholars who failed to appreciate (...) the subtleties of European scientific philosophy. It argues that the received view has a more complicated history and was frequently promoted by the European positivists themselves. The essay shows that the view has roots in both American and European scientific philosophy and emerged as a result of the complex interplay between the two communities in the years before the intellectual migration. (shrink)

In France, the newly designed life and earth sciences programs for the Première Générale (second year of lycée) now include a segment dedicated to ecosystem services. The primary objective is to transition from an anthropocentric approach to an ecocentric approach, integrating the notion of ecosystem services (ES). Our article conducts an epistemological examination of the ES concept, scrutinizing its definition, the array of examples and services, the human role in the environment, monetization, and connections to environmental ethics. The analysis was (...) conducted using a corpus comprising life and earth sciences curricula, textbooks, and online resources, which unveiled diverse examples and materials pertaining to ES. The ensuing discussion emphasizes the need to embrace uncertainty and complexity in order to transcend a positivist rationalization of the human-nature relationship. (shrink)

Positivism is the view that the only way to obtain knowledge of the world is by means of sense perception and introspection and the methods of the empirical sciences. Positivists believe that it is futile to attempt to deduce or demonstrate truths about the world from alleged self-evident premisses that are not based primarily on sense perception. They consider, on the contrary, that knowledge of things can only be advanced by framing hypotheses, testing them by observation and experiment, and reshaping (...) them in the light of what these reveal. Thus they regard metaphysics, in so far as it is the effort to find out about the world by methods other than those employed in the empirical sciences, as a hopelessly misdirected activity. The method of hypothesis, they hold, is applicable to any field of factual enquiry, although they admit that differences of subject-matter may call for very considerable variations of emphasis. Such variations, however, important though they be, are, on their view, matters of detail, and do not detract from the essential sameness of the effective method. This method was first consciously analysed by reference to the sciences of nature, where its use has led to impressive results both in the theoretical and practical sphere. (shrink)