POSITIVISM

Positivism

Positivism

History has seen many forms of revolutions and reformation. Great thinkers have existed in the past to bring up the most famous types of reforms and policies. Included among them are the thinkers such as Comte, Durkheim and Spencer who had introduced the historical concepts of positivism. The term positivism refers to a philosophy of science which has given boost to the existence of various thinkers and scholars.

The term 'Positivism' is defined as a set of epistemological viewpoints and beliefs of science and observes that it is the best approach to uncovering the processes of the occurrence of human and physical events. Although, this type of concept has been a repeated subject throughout the history which begins from the western thought from the Ancient Greeks and continues up to the present day. This historical concept was developed by the founding sociologist and philosopher and in the early 19th century (Nagel, 1979, 11).

The principles of Positivism state that the knowledge, which is based on sense, positive verification, and experience, is regarded as the only form of authentic knowledge. Philosophers and thinkers such as Pierre-Simon Laplace, Auguste Comte and Henri de Saint-Simon observed this scientific method by replacing the concepts and values of metaphysics in the history, and an approach to the deriving of enlightenment from the philosophy of science. Later, Émile Durkheim reformulated the sociological positivism as a basis to social research. In 20th century, German sociologists, such as Georg Simmel and Max Weber found the antipositivist tradition in sociology (Phillips, 2000, 89).

Then, in the beginning of the 20th century, the logical positivism became the independent movement introduced by Comte. Then, the concept of "legal positivism” emerged which is, basically, referred to as the denial of natural law, thus, attenuating its common meaning with theoretical positivism and emphasizing the power of human political structures while opposing to the "scientific" view of law. Thus, forming a strong basis, the set of five principles exists as the guiding principles of positivism:

The unity in the logic of inquiry across all sciences.

The purpose of inquiry is to develop law of general understanding by explaining, discovering and predicting.

The deductive research and scientific knowledge is testable and can be proven, not argumentations, but only by empirical means.

The common sense does not discriminate and equate research.

The relation by which the logic produced science should link the theory to practice and reasoning to logic.

The concept of social sciences, commonly known as sociology, refers to all those academic disciplines, which study the development and origin of society, relationships, institutions and ideas which give shape to the social life. The social sciences are shaped by anthropology, political science, economics, geography, archeology criminology and other social science subjects.

The social scientists, who are positivists, utilize the techniques similar to the natural sciences in order to understanding society, and define science in modern sense. The history of the social sciences dates back to the times of ancient philosophy. At that time, the study of history and mathematics did not differ ...