Positivism Essay, Research Paper
Positivism is a system of doctrine based on experience and experimental cognition of natural esthesis, in which metaphysics and divinity are regarded as inadequate and imperfect systems of cognition. ( www.eb.com ) The 19th-century Gallic mathematician and philosopher Auguste Comte foremost called the philosophy positivism, but some of the rationalist constructs may be traced to the British philosopher David Hume, the Gallic philosopher Duc de Saint-Simon, and the German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Comte chose the word positivism on the land that it indicated the & # 8220 ; world & # 8221 ; and & # 8220 ; constructive inclination & # 8221 ; that he claimed for the theory facet of the philosophy. He was, in the chief, interested in a reorganisation of societal life for the good of humanity through scientific cognition, and therefore controls of natural forces. The two primary constituents of positivism, the doctrine and the civil order ( or plan of single and societal behavior ) , were subsequently combined by Comte into a whole under the construct of a faith, in which humanity was the object of worship. A figure of Comte & # 8217 ; s adherents refused, nevertheless, to accept this spiritual development of his doctrine, because it seemed to belie the original rationalist doctrine.
Many of Comte’s philosophies were subsequently adapted and developed by the British societal philosophers John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer and by the Austrian philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach. ( www.encyclopedia.com )
During the early twentieth century a group of philosophers who were concerned with developments in modern scientific discipline rejected the traditional rationalist thoughts that held personal experience to be the footing of true cognition and emphasized the importance of scientific confirmation. This group came to be known as logical rationalists, and it included the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein and the British Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore. It was Wittgenstein & # 8217 ; s Tractatus Logico-philosophicus ( 1921 ; German-English analogue text, 1922 ) that proved to be of decisive influence in the rejection of metaphysical philosophies for their nonsense and the credence of empiricist philosophy as a affair of logical necessity. ( www.eb.com )
The rationalists today, who have rejected this alleged Vienna school of doctrine, prefer to name themselves logical empiricists in order to divide themselves from the emphasis of the earlier minds on scientific confirmation. They maintain that the confirmation rule itself is philosophically unobjective. ( World Book Encyclopedia )
