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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: POL-PRE |
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POSITIVISM (derived from ponere, whence positus, that which is laid down, certain) , a philosophical term, applied some-what loosely to any system which confines itself to the data of experience and declines to recognize a priori or metaphysical speculations. In this sense the term may be applied to empirical philosophers in general. Thus Hume is a positivist in the sense that he specifically restricts philosophy to the sphere of observation, and regards the causal relation as being nothing more than what we have been accustomed to expect. Similarly Mill, Spencer
positivism is both narrower and wider than this. The term is specifically used of the philosophy of Auguste Comte, who applied the term to his system according to which knowledge is based exclusively on the methods and discoveries of the physical or " positive " sciences. According to Comte human thought passes through three stagestheological, metaphysical and positive. The final stage, positivism , is the understanding of the universe not as composed of a multitude of individuals each with volition, but as an ordered organism governed by necessary laws (see further COMTE). The outcome of this positivism is the substitution for revealed religion of a religion of humanityaccording to Huxley " Catholicism minus Christianity "in which God is replaced by Humanity. This religion was to have its special
Positivism has, therefore, two distinct sides, the philosophical and the religious or mystical. Philosophical positivism has had distinguished representatives in France, Germany and England, and in the wider sense indicated above may be regarded as one of the two or three chief
In France the Comtian tradition was maintained with important reservations and the abandonment of the religious aspect by Littre (q.v.), Taine and others. In Germany many of the followers of Kant have in greater or less degree maintained the view that all true knowledge depends upon the observation of objective phenomena. The distinctly religious aspect has been comparatively unimportant, except in so far as modern social evolutionist ethics may be regarded as religious in character. In England, however, a number of prominent Positivists have carried out Comte's original
chief
movement
Hall
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