Pozitivizmi

Pozitivizmi is a philosophical doctrine that asserts that meaningful knowledge derives from empirical observation of the natural world and its regularities, while metaphysical or theological speculation is rejected or minimized. It originated in 19th-century Europe and is most closely associated with Auguste Comte, who coined the term and proposed that the sciences form a single, hierarchical system advancing from mathematics to astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology.

Classical positivism holds that science seeks explanatory laws grounded in observable facts. Social science, in particular, should study social facts, patterns, and regularities to explain social order and progress; Comte imagined a reformist program for a secular, scientifically organized society in which knowledge guides policy.

In the 20th century, logical positivism or neopositivism shifted focus to language and meaning. The Vienna Circle held that a statement is meaningful only if it can be empirically verified or is analytically true; this approach influenced analytic philosophy and the philosophy of science but faced later criticism for its verification principle and demarcation problems.

Impact and reception: positivism influenced research methods, survey design, statistics, and social policy. It faced criticisms from phenomenology, hermeneutics, and post-positivist movements that argue for the role of interpretation, theory, and context in knowledge. Today, positivist ideas persist in data-driven scientific approaches, while acknowledging limits of observation and the theory-ladenness of data.