Introduction

positivism or positivisms?

pp. 1-10

in: Christopher Bryant, Positivism in social theory and research, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1985

Abstract

The terms "positivism" and" sociology" are both commonly supposed to have originated with Comte, and in particular his Cours de philosophie positive (6 vols, 1830–42). Although true of the second, this is misleading with respect to the first term insofar as Comte wrote not about "positivism" (even if his supporters quickly did) but about "the positive philosophy" and "the positive method", and Saint-Simon before him had also advocated a positive philosophy.¹ The correct identification of the origins of the term is, however, but a minor issue, given that to originate a term is not to secure a monopoly on its subsequent usage; both positivism and sociology have long since ceased to be the preserve of Comte and his followers. Indeed positivism in philosophy has come to be associated with epistemologies which make experience the foundation of all knowledge, and also with their complementary ontologies which propose a division between objects which are accessible to observation (about which knowledge is therefore possible) and objects which are not (and about which there can therefore be no knowledge); and positivism in sociology has come to be associated with the very idea of a social science and the quest to make sociology scientific. Inevitably both the philosophical and sociological debates about positivism have proved complicated in that what counts as foundation and as experience, and what counts as science, are themselves highly contentious matters.