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4 unusual facts about Positivism


Fact–value distinction

Other thinkers reject an absolutist fact-value distinction by contending that our senses are impregnated with prior conceptualizations, making it impossible to have any observation that is totally value-free, which is how Hume and the later positivists conceived of facts.

Positive statements make the implicit claim to facts (e.g., water molecules are made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom), whereas normative statements make a claim based on values or norms (e.g., water ought to be protected from pollution).

Thomas B. Greenfield

Greenfield argued against the positivist orientation of the so-called Theory Movement in educational administration and proposed a subjectivist approach to the study of educational administration.

William Henry Ansell

In 1914 Ansell designed a new Temple of Humanity for the Positivists at Upper Parliament Street, Liverpool, built in brick with patterns in tiles.


Adrien-Jean-Pierre Thilorier

The French positivist Auguste Comte was so impressed by Thilorier's investigations of gases that he devoted the twentieth day of the ninth month of his positivist calendar to British chemist John Dalton -- and to Thilorier.

Antipositivism

Edmund Husserl, meanwhile, negated positivism through the rubric of phenomenology.

Ausonio Franchi

Combining Kant's phenomenalism and Comte's positivism, he falls into a sort of relativism and agnosticism.

Baldomero Lillo

He was exposed to the writings of the French author Émile Zola, who used the philosophy of Positivism and the literary current of Naturalism to try to change the terrible conditions of French coal miners.

David Goodman Croly

Croly's published works include Seymour and Blair: Their Lives and Services (1868), about the 19th century politicians Horatio Seymour and Montgomery Blair (which included an appendix containing a "History of Reconstruction"); and a Primer of Positivism (1876).

Diario El Fonógrafo

The newspaper started when the Western World was inspired by the philosophy of Positivism, technological progress, development of modern cities, and innovations like that of Thomas Edison; whose newspaper was named after his invention.

Empiricism

The central theses of logical positivism (verificationism, the analytic-synthetic distinction, reductionism, etc.) came under sharp attack after World War 2 by thinkers such as Nelson Goodman, W.V. Quine, Hilary Putnam, Karl Popper, and Richard Rorty.

History of Egypt under Anwar Sadat

(An example being My Itinerary from Doubt to Belief, an autobiography by a very popular Egyptian writer, Dr. Mustafa Mahmud, who had formerly been a staunch believer in scientific positivism, human engineering, and materialism.

Lauro Müller

A passionate follower of Benjamin Constant's positivism in his youth, he embarked on a military career in his native province after a brief stint in a merchant's office.

Michael Burawoy

 508–525 in George Steinmetz (editor), The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and its Epistemological Others (Durhman, NC: Duke University Press), 2005

Mike Mulkay

Between the scientific positivism of Karl Popper and the revolutionary perspective of the Kuhnian school, Mulkay probably stands on a slightly left ground, follows Robert Merton who has been known partially as the predecessor of Sociology of Scientific Knowledge.

Morris Cohen

Morris Raphael Cohen (1880–1947), American Jewish philosopher who united pragmatism with logical positivism and linguistic analysis

Social Darwinism

In many ways, Spencer's theory of cosmic evolution has much more in common with the works of Lamarck and Auguste Comte's positivism than with Darwin's.

The New Paul and Virginia

The New Paul and Virginia, or Positivism on an Island is a satirical dystopian novel written by William Hurrell Mallock, and first published in 1878.


see also