Crossword clues for positivism
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Positivism \Pos"i*tiv*ism\, n. A system of philosophy originated by M. Auguste Comte, which deals only with positives. It excludes from philosophy everything but the natural phenomena or properties of knowable things, together with their invariable relations of coexistence and succession, as occurring in time and space. Such relations are denominated laws, which are to be discovered by observation, experiment, and comparison. This philosophy holds all inquiry into causes, both efficient and final, to be useless and unprofitable.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context philosophy English) A doctrine that states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method, refusing every form of metaphysics. 2 (rfv-sense) practical spirit, sense of reality, concreteness. 3 (context legal English) A school of thought in jurisprudence in which the law is seen as separated from moral values, i.e. the law is ''posited'' by lawmakers (humans); legal positivism.
WordNet
n. the form of empiricism that bases all knowledge on perceptual experience (not on intuition or revelation) [syn: logical positivism]
a quality or state characterized by certainty or acceptance or affirmation [syn: positivity] [ant: negativism]
Wikipedia
Positivism is a philosophy which states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge. Positivism was central to the foundation of academic sociology.
Positivism may also refer to:
- Logical positivism, a school of philosophy that combines empiricism with a version of rationalism
- Sociological positivism, a sociological paradigm
- Legal positivism, a school of thought in jurisprudence and the philosophy of law
- The positivist school of criminology
- Positivism in Poland, a socio-cultural movement in Poland after the 1863 January Uprising
- Political positivism, a theory founded in early 21st century by Ljubiša Bojić
- Positivism (international relations), school of thought in international relations theory
Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations. Thus, information derived from sensory experience, interpreted through reason and logic, forms the exclusive source of all authoritative knowledge. Positivism holds that valid knowledge (certitude or truth) is found only in this derived knowledge.
Verified data (positive facts) received from the senses are known as empirical evidence; thus positivism is based on empiricism.
Positivism also holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws. Introspective and intuitive knowledge is rejected, as is metaphysics and theology. Although the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of western thought, the modern sense of the approach was formulated by the philosopher Auguste Comte in the early 19th century. Comte argued that, much as the physical world operates according to gravity and other absolute laws, so does society, and further developed positivism into a Religion of Humanity.
Usage examples of "positivism".
Some of them stopped at various intermediate stages on the march away from agnosticism and positivism.
Orientalism has been subjected to imperialism, positivism, utopianism, historicism, Darwinism, racism, Freudianism, Marxism, Spenglerism.
Kosmos does indeed have some sort of correlates in the Right-Hand dimension, it thus understandably appeared that scientific positivism and naturalism could and would cover all possible bases, because science does indeed register so many significant alterations in the Right-Hand world.
This new world of his, with its mysterious connecting strings and mutually reflected poles, attracted the tastes of a public that had been for generations fed on the small beer of idealistically colored positivism.
By the bright light of the leaping flames, Theos had no difficulty in recognizing the pallid countenance of his late acquaintance, the learned Professor of Positivism, Mira-Khabur, who was evidently very near his woeful and most positive end!
Under the influence of Positivism, however, the Scientific field is being rapidly cleared of unestablished theories which formerly mingled with it, claiming to be an integral part of its area, and the boundaries of Science are becoming more closely defined.
Harriet was already well along the road from her early primitive Unitarianism toward eventual, comfortable free-thought and Comtian positivism.
This new world of his, with its mysterious connecting strings and mutually reflected poles, attracted the tastes of a public that had been for generations fed on the small beer of idealistically colored positivism.
Coven-cum-ecological-action-group-cum-Ralfiecult-cum-what-may called the Sisterhood of Man who believed that it had all gone wrong when the Omphalos of logical positivism first violated the Sacred Womb of Life by leading the Monkey People out of the trees or inventing carnivoristic phallocratic capitalism, whichever came first.
Here, we may say, really is the genuine positivism, which reinstates all spiritual reality.
Under the 'scientistic' influence of positivism and empiricism, there were claims of a unified empirical science that encompasses all 'real' knowledge, excluding the various attempts to claim an autonomous status for the emerging human sciences of cultural and subjective reality"
All we really know is what we register inside our skulls -- a theory which used to be called logical positivism.
He was a vicarious follower of the English philosopher Bertrand Russell and dreamed of applying the principles of logical positivism to art criticism.
If relativity and quantum mechanics have proven that the observer is inseparable from the world he observes, if logical positivism has demonstrated how many of our supposedly solid facts are mere constructs and conventions, if the psychic researchers have shown man's mind to possess unsuspected powers, it begins to look as if some of those old myths and sorceries were a bit more than superstition.
If relativity and quantum mechanics have proven that the observer is inseparable from the world he observes, if logical positivism has demonstrated how many of our supposedly solid facts are mere constructs and conventions, if the psychic researchers have shown man’.