there's no such thing as positivism

James Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Tue Dec 29 12:11:24 PST 1998


On Tue, 29 Dec 1998 13:30:02 -0500 d-m-c at worldnet.att.net writes:
>
>>such as? i don't know of any self-declared sociologists who don't
>have a
>commitment
>>to a positivist or empiricist view - care to name some?
>
>
>There are a few: Norman Denzin, Steven Seidman, and some others whose
>names escape me at the moment.
>
>
>
>>more importantly, exactly
>>what is this critique of positivism that logical positivists have
>made?
>
>Yes, i've quite forgotten all this stuff, it seemed so utterly
>irrelevant
>at them time; care to remind Jim?
>
>>> To sociologists 'positivism' means roughly the same thing as
>scientific
>>> objectivity. Which is automatically suspect.
>
>Well, no. There are many different versions of positivism and of the
>positivism that sociologists reject. For instance, I know of one
>fellow
>who thinks that it's just the idea that we can look and see what's out
>there. For others, positivism is the claim that there must be an
>absolute
>dissociation between the logic of discovery and the logic of
>justification.
> Others are simply out to reject the notion that there is a unity
>between
>natural and social science. Now, I'm hazily recalling Hempel's
>concession
>speech re that topic, but I do think that he clearly adhered to the
>ultimate possibility that everything could be reduced to physics.
>Btw,
>there are a number of sociologists in the US who proudly proclaim
>their
>positivism, Randall Collins is one who comes readily to mind. Oh and
>Jonathan Turner.

Russell Keat in his 1981 book _The Politics of Social Theory_ provided the following typology of positist theses in social theory:

1). The 'scientist' thesis which asserts that science alone represents

a genuine form of human knowledge. That all legitimate human

knowledge is science.

2). The positivist conception of science which holds that science aims

at the explanation and prediction of observable phenomena by

treating them as instances of universal natural laws. What Carl

Hempel referred to as the covering-law model of scientific

explanation is adhered to. The scientific validity of statements

describing natural laws is assessed solely in terms of their

logical relationships to other statements describing observation

data. The positivist conception of science was developed over

the years by such thinkers as Berkeley, Hume, Comte, J.S. Mill,

Ernst Mach and in this century by the logical positivists including

Schlick, Carnap, Feigl, Reichenbach and Frank amongst others

3). The advocacy of a scientific politics, that is the ideal that science

can provide rational solutions to all problems concerning the

organization of society and that such decisions can be freed from

non-scientific influences. This view can be traced back to Lord

Bacon. In the last century Saint-Simon and August Comte were

very notable exponents of acientific politics, and in this century

there have been a host of thinkers who have subscribed to it.

4). The doctrine of value-freedom which is the doctrine that is both

possible and necessary to separate out the realm of science

from the realms of moral and political values. The validity of

scientific theories does not depend on the acceptance or

rejection of any particular moral or political commitments.

Science is therefore 'value-free.' This doctrine can be found

the writings of Hume, Kant and Mill but its greatest exponent

in the social sciences was probably Max Weber.

These four positivist theses are logically independent of each other. There have been many thinkers who subscribed to only one or two of these theses while rejecting the others. Thus, Popper rejected the first thesis - thes 'scientist' thesis while subscribing to a modified version of the second one and largely rejecting the ideal of a scientific politics as being incompatible with an "open society." Many people have subscribed to a positivist conception of science while rejecting the 'scientist' thesis. Althusser seems to have largely subscribed to the first thesis but seems to have rejected a positivist conception of science while subscribing to a variant of the ideal of a scientific politics. Weber as pointed out before defended the third thesis (the value-freedom thesis) and he held to a positivist conception of science but he rejected the possibility of a scientific politics in favor of a decisionsm.

Jim Farmelant


>
>>no one has claimed that facts are 'arbitrary verbal constructs'. if
>you're thinking
>>of saussure, then this is about the relation between the signifier
>and the
>>signified, nothing to do with facts, unless you somehow - in your
>peculiar
>>vocabulary -
>
>Yeah....and wasn't Saussure trying to create a science out of
>semiotics.
>And honest to good red blooded Science?
>
>>> But lo and behold! Were did we learn such things? Why, from the
>logical
>>> positivists themselves. It was not Adorno or Horkheimer who coined
>the
>>> phrase 'anti-essentialism' as a pejorative rejection of
>objectivity, it
>>> was Karl Popper.
>
>
>
>Oh and btw I seem to recall that Horkheimer did refer to Popper's
>critique
>as useful to his own. Horkheimer seems to have been rejecting the
>attempt
>to reduce justification to the process of empirically testing
>theories.
>For Horkheimer, "If the truth of the pudding is in the eating, then
>the
>eating is still in the future" (paraphrased) He was rejecting
>Popper's
>'plaints about politics and science, though again it's been a long
>time.
>
>
>

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