ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the conception of the nature of scientific sociology which has had the greatest influence both on the practice of social scientists and on their conceptions of what they do. This is the positivist philosophy or 'positivism', usually associated with the name of Auguste Comte. The aspect of Comte's philosophy with which the chapter centrally concerned is his contribution to 'epistemology', or the philosophical theory of knowledge. The major philosophical tendency to which positivism belongs is empiricism. Positivism is a variant form of empiricism, along with phenomenalism, pragmatism, operationalism, empirio-criticism, logical empiricism and others. In the eighteenth century the centre of the stage, philosophically speaking, is taken by Enlightenment France. Here the rationalist epistemology and the cosmology of Descartes rapidly came under challenge from the physical theory and empiricist epistemology connected with the names of Newton and John Locke.
