On Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:56:46 -0500 Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes:
> ravi wrote:
> >
> > P.S: given all my prior rants about "science", I should clarify
> that I
> > am using "science" here in the traditional sense.
>
> Probably one needs to clarify the resemblances/differences between
> "psitivism" and "science." They are linked but do not coincide, and
> to
> attempt to identify social theory as a purely positivist science is,
> I
> suspect, disastrous. Paul Paolucci has an article in Vol. 11 of
> Historical Materialism which focuses on the extent to which Marx
> was
> positivist. I haven't read it yet, but it looks valuable.
>
> Carrol
>
>
Well to discuss the relationship between positivism and science we would have to clarify what we mean by positivism. In a post that I wrote a couple of years ago on the Marxism-Thaxis list http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu/msg03848.h tml I wrote the following: ---------------------------------------------- I would suggest that in following discussions concerning whether such and such a thinker is a positivist it might be useful to keep in mind the typology of positivism that Russell Keat presented in his 1981 book *The Politics of Social Theory*. There, he provided the following typology of positivist 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 the last 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 nonscientific influences. This view can be traced back to Lord Bacon. In the 19th century Saint-Simon and August Comte were very notable exponents of scientific politics, and in the 20th 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 - the '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. ____________________________________________________________ Compare rates from top companies. Save up to 70% on life insurance. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/HiMzbGk9uG29F4nI71jhjsXzZdfHWpuwBspkydo8iWZ4Ism5DL/