Positivism

From Geography

This page is in progress by Thijs Koolhof.

Positivism is a set of philosophical approaches that seeks to apply scientific principles and methods, drawn from the natural and hard sciences, to social phenomena in order to explain them.

The term positivism designates the thought of the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Comte argued that social research was, until the nineteenth century, speculative, emotive and romantic and that as a result it lacked rigour and analytical reasoning. He posited to concentrate on facts and truths then on the imaginary.

There are various forms of positivism. The two most discussed are logical positivism and critical rationalism.