POSITIVISM

A theory of knowledge which contends that what should count as knowledge can be validated only through methods of observation which are derived from the example set by the physical sciences. Thus, positivists hold to the view that what counts as knowledge is solely a matter of senseexperience. The roots of positivism can be traced at least as far back as the writings of Auguste Comte (1798-1857), although the seventeenth-century philosopher Francis Bacon (who propounded an account of knowledge in his Novum Organum (1620) which stressed the importance of empirical observation) might also be cited in connection with this approach. In the twentieth century, a number of thinkers have espoused what has been termed ‘logical positivism’, an approach derived from the early work of LudwigWittgenstein, as well as that of Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege. A.J. Ayer’s book Language, Truth and Logic is often seen as a key work in the articulation of the basic tenets of logical positivism. In this work he argued that all propositions could be characterised as either true, false or meaningless. In other words, if a proposition does not assert something which can, in principle, be either validated or disproved by way of observation according to the standards of scientific verification, then, it is held, that proposition is devoid of meaning. This attempt to clarify the meaning of propositions/sentences, in these terms, represented an attempt at a kind of ‘ground clearing’ within philosophy, in so far as it was contended that many sorts of questions (e.g. those concerned with issues of religion or metaphysics) were in fact meaningless. There have been numerous critics of positivism, including Thomas

Kuhn, W.V.O. Quine, Karl Popper and Frankfurt School thinker Max Horkheimer. Amongst other things, Horkheimer’s attack on positivism argues that methods adapted from the sciences cannot be taken as the sole criterion for knowledge, since positivists ignore the fact that the social and cultural domains within which scientific investigation is undertaken represent a fundamental factor in the construction of knowledge. By reducing the meaning of the term ‘knowledge’ to being equivalent to ‘method’, Horkheimer says, positivists conceptualise knowledge according to the precepts of a socially determined instrumentalism (i.e. the view that knowledge is a matter of the appropriate means for a given end) which characterises the tendency in modern industrial culture towards an abandonment of critical reflection with regard to its own nature and constitution.