Download The Legacy of Positivism by Michael Singer PDF

By Michael Singer

ISBN-10: 0230288529

ISBN-13: 9780230288522

ISBN-10: 1349544205

ISBN-13: 9781349544202

This ebook offers a special ancient and interpretive research of a broadly pervasive mode of inspiration that it describes because the legacy of positivism. Viewing Auguste Comte as a pivotal determine, it charts the historic origins of his positivism and follows its later improvement via John Stuart Mill and Émile Littré. It indicates how epistemological shifts in positivism stimulated parallel advancements within the human and felony sciences, and thereby treats felony positivism and positivism because it is known within the human sciences inside a standard framework.

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She may now verify the law by checking that it holds in further situations that (she argues) are similar in appropriate respects to those from which the law has been derived. If the law survives the verification process it is deemed valid, at least in the current state of scientific knowledge. I consider the issues raised by these processes of induction and verification in Chapter 4, in relation to the epistemological differences between Comte and Mill. The scientist has now derived a law that describes a structure of connections between phenomena or events.

There would clearly be no effective way to set about discovering natural laws. But the use of this powerful device must be constantly subject to a fundamental condition . . 29 Combining this with Comte’s views on laws and causes, as I discussed in the previous section, shows that under positivism it is acceptable, and indeed indispensable, to hypothesize about the laws governing phenomena. The observations or experiments that ensue will subject the hypotheses to positive verification. However, it is not acceptable to hypothesize about primary or ultimate causes.

Although all relevant events are in the past, we can still apply the law to tell us what must have happened at that past time. Thus, for example, if I dropped a stone from a tower yesterday morning the law tells me that it must have fallen to earth yesterday. The Structure of a Positive Science 29 This analysis is the foundation of Comte’s view of scientific prediction ( prévision), which, as he understands it, is not confined to foretelling the future from the past. 33 And we can say yet more.

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