The History of Positivism From Comte to Carnap: Part I

The philosophy of positivism is sometimes thought to be a distinctly 20th century phenomenon, i.e. Logical Positivism or Logical Empiricism. But the Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle in the 1920s understood themselves to be building on and refining a tradition that began in the 19th century with the founder of Positivism, Auguste Comte. The positivist worldview was, in large part, carried forward by JS Mill and later Ernst Mach (there were many others, but these are among the most famous and influential positivists of the 19th century). In the Logical Positivist Manifesto of 1929, The Scientific Conception of the World, authored by Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn and Rudolf Carnap, there is an explicit acknowledgment of the connection to Comtean positivism, Mill and Mach, as well as Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein (1929; p.4) It is from the latter three that they took their Formal Logic, hence *Logical* Positivism. Therefore, to understand positivism as a whole, it is best to treat logical positivism as part of the overall history of positivism. Part I focuses on 19th century positivism beginning with the founder of the movement-- Auguste Comte.

I. The Course On Positivism:

Auguste Comte founded Positivism as a political, cultural and philosophical movement which emphasized the philosophy of science-- maybe the first "philosophy of science" as the term is used today. He had an excellent education in the sciences of his day as a student at The Ecole Polytechnique , but also had worked as an assistant to the famous Utopian Socialist, St. Simon before breaking with him in the 1820s.

The tenets of Comte's philosophy were explicated in a six volume work called Course on Positive Philosophy (1830-1842); but the main principles can already be seen in his early essays collected in Early Writings (1820-1827). Comte begins by diagnosing the state of European Society politically and culturally. Living in France in the aftermath of the failed French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire, Comte surmises that 19th century Europe was no longer moored to Christian Religion or the tradition of what he saw as "armchair philosophy"-- i.e. unscientific or non-empirical philosophy, which included most previous philosophers. He saw his society as one that was in crisis, lacked direction and an overarching belief system by which Europeans could orient themselves. On the other hand, he thought that the Enlightenment had done much to liberate European thought from its former thraldom to Religion and the old Nobility. This liberation was seen by Comte as a step forward in Social Evolution. But it left a vacuum where the ancien regime (the old monarchistic and feudal systems) had been. These historical considerations bring us to Comte's 3 Stage Theory of History.

The first stage of history is "The Religious Stage." Beginning in the ancient past with animistic religions and gradually evolving into the monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), this was the most "primitive" stage of history. Magical and superstitious ideas were called on to deal with uncertainties and threats that arose. Instead of employing rational, empirical inquiry to make sense of the world and guide action, obedience to Priests and other supernatural specialists was thought to be the wisest and most efficient way to benefit oneself and society. The religious stage usually featured societies in which political power was either completely or largely in the hands of a Priestly class or religious elite. Europe during the High Middle Ages was one such system, with power shared by The Holy Roman Church and Monarchs who ruled by Divine Rights, and who routinely sought the blessings of Popes.

The second stage is called "The Metaphysical Stage" in which speculative philosophy replaced, largely and sometimes completely, the Religious basis for knowledge and legitimate power. It is seen by Comte as an impersonal version of the religious impulse. It is also seen as a short and transitional period that leads to the modern age of scientific civilization (The Age of Positive Knowledge) In the metaphysical stage, instead of deities and spirits acting on and in the world we get essences, powers and forces beyond explanation (he cites Newton's positing aether as necessary for gravity). There is also an ethical domain which is said to be based on "metaphysical grounds" (e.g. Kant) or natural rights (Locke, Paine, Jefferson). Indeed The French Revolution itself had been an attempt to put philosophical principles into action, replacing the Church with a "Rational" Civic Religion basedon the Enlightenment ideals of Egalitarianism, Liberty, and Fraternity. These, in turn, had much to do with metaphysical speculations about the (natural) Rights of Man, which were knowable through "intuition." "The Rights of Man" composed by French Revolutionaries were not true articles of knowledge as science yields, but metaphysically informed ideals, products of the human mind without the rigorous checks and restraints of empiricism. They were hollow, and they failed, in Comte's view. With their failure came the beginning of the end of what Comte thought was a short and transitional Metaphysical Stage.

The aftermath of the Revolution and Napoleon left a cultural vacuum in European culture and society. But it also led to a period associated with increasingly mature science and technological applications, both of which would define future civilization. Comte wanted to use the methods and tools of science to coordinate social policies so as to minimize the disharmony he perceived in his own day. He was no egalitarian, though. He believed that societies must be hierarchically arranged in order to be functional. So in the third stage The Positive Stage problems are understood and remedied by means of empirical science and technology. He saw this as the "normal stage" because in it we use our higher faculties rather than imagination and occult thinking to predict and order natural and social events in our best interests.In order to coordinate Scientific research so that it might benefit society and culture, Comte held that the Queen Science was to be the Science of Society itself-- a discipline he named Sociology. So among other things, Comte was the founder of Sociology.

Though his sociology is very much unlike modern sociology, it deeply influenced French sociologist Emile Durkheim who is one of the 3 founders of modern sociology along with Weber and Marx. At any rate, Comte, in later life, came to believe that sociologists would become social engineers endowed with political power and an almost religious status. These later works are generally viewed as misguided at best by later commentators. JS Mill, who praised Comte's lectures on positivism and whose System of Logic contained no fewer than 100 references to Comte's Course On Positive Science, stated that Comte's works could be divided into a "good Comte and a bad Comte," the latter corresponding to his later views on sociology as a basis for social engineering. The earlier Comte of The Course On Positivism stressed scientific epistemology both in natural science and social science (which he invented in the form of sociology, deliberately breaking away from social and political philosophy which were for him part of an earlier speculative metaphysical age).

Philosophy of Science:
Comte's philosophy of science emphasizes observation and classification of things observed. Things are to be classed in terms of succession and similarity. The scientist looks for regularities, patterns characterizing data sets. These are the basis for inductively reached hypotheses which yield predictions that can be tested in experimentally. If we can "control and predict" natural events then we have respectable working science. The laws of nature are understood as invariant patterns, sequences or regularities observed in the world. What we cannot have is an ultimate understanding of the nature of the world or universe beyond or behind the phenomena we observe. We are stuck with only human experience or phenomena. That which cannot be observed or recorded should not have a place in theory. For example, taking David Hume very seriously Comte held that the very idea of cause and effect (causation) is a metaphysical assumption based merely on successive observations. As Hume stressed, we never perceive cause itself, only successive events. Cause is a hypothetical postulate to explain phenomena and connect events. Comte's austere philosophy of science categorizes it (like Newtonian aether theory of gravity) as a "metaphysical posit" and not a genuine product of empirical inquiry. To say X causes Y is to speak of sequences and correlations observed. Later positivism will also emphasize the primacy of our observations and the reluctance to posit entities or explanations that cannot be verified empirically. Comte's insistence on such verification had a lasting influence on positivist thought.

Finally, science for Comte is a unified whole, not a set of unrelated specialties. There is a hierarchy of scientific divisions or disciplines ranging from the most fundamental and basic (mathematics, astronomy and physics) up through increasingly complex divisions like chemistry and biology. Each of these sciences was discussed at great length in the 6 volumes of Course On Positivism. After these 5 sciences, Comte develops his own original science calling it Sociology. Its most important function is to coordinate scientific research in the social domain as well as the other 5 sciences for purposes of social application and policy.

This view of science as hierarchically ordered in terms of ascending and descending complexity has had a more lasting influence on philosophy and science than his theory of the 3 historical stages, as does the idea of "scientific social planning," which survives to this day in technocratic approaches to policy formation, "scientific management," and other forms of social engineering.

It is worth noting that psychology doesn't make the list. This will be characteristic of most positivism that comes later until the advent of behaviorism, which is seen as strictly empirical. What positivists reject is any role for introspection and speculation as opposed to observation of measurable events. While Comte's sociology looks outward towards observable behaviors, most psychology purports to look "within" to interior regions that cannot be observed in any direct or demonstrable way. There is no place for "Introspectionism" which then claims to discover psychic forces and causes that are mysterious and invisible. This rejection of psychology and "mentalism" (explanations of phenomena couched in terms of unobservable inner processes) will constitute a major fork in the road of philosophy and science right up to the 1960s and beyond. The only forms of psychology that will be acceptable to later positivists are Experimental Psychology (which Mill will do much to inaugurate) and Behaviorism, which didn't exist in Comte's day. Appeals to intuition and introspection will remain anathema to future positivists. This is why behaviorism will have some appeal later on. Because, like Comte, the behaviorist rejects invisible inner forces, terming the psyche or mind itself a "black box" which yields no knowledge. (This was before neuroscience opened the "box" to some extent). The notion of inner drives, forces and causes is just speculative metaphysics to be roundly condemned as nonsense or pseudo-science.

So we have the seeds of later positivism here. There is no knowledge of the world except empirical knowledge; our empirical knowledge is not absolute nor is it certain; causal explanations are problematic; the standard by which theories are to be judged is their ability to control and predict phenomena under specified conditions; all sciences are unified in a hierarchical relation where the more complex (e.g. biology) can, in principle, be reduced to the less complex (chemistry and physics); the study of the mind or psyche is shunned as "psyche" is a term that fails to name any observable entity. The goal of science is to improve the human lot through technology and sociological analysis.

Late in life, this last point became an obsession for Comte who came to see himself as a Priest of the "Religion of Humanity"-- i.e. positivism as defined above but with an added sentimental element such that as he often put it "the head must be guided by the heart." Perhaps Comte was returning, in part, to St. Simon's utopian socialism where he began. St. Simon thought that socialism could acquire a religious quality in order to motivate the masses. Comte also came under the influence of Clotilde de Vaux, a married woman with whom he fell in love. Her Catholic faith and sense of morality inspired the older Comte to build a secular religion with "high morals" reflecting those of de Vaux. His odd cult-like "Religion" had followers and even several "Churches" at the time, but it has not survived as anything but a curiosity for historians. It is the early philosophy that was hugely influential on such giants as JS Mill (whose correspondences with Comte lasted 6 years until Comte began to obsessively reference his new religion to Mill's dismay). It is to John Stuart Mill and Ernst Mach that the next post will be devoted. Again, both feature in the Vienna Manifesto of 1929.

Basic Principles of Early Positivism:

The basic principles and tenets of 19th century positivism were adumbrated by Comte, appropriated and transformed by Mill and others, and they culminated in Mach's philosophy of science. Comte's legacy includes the following principles: 1) Only science can ground knowledge, while religion and metaphysics are not valid as bases of knowledge claims 2) scientifically derived knowledge is to be the basis of social and political improvement not ethical systems derived from either religion or metaphysical philosophy. (e.g. Natural Law and Natural Rights philosophy) 3) Science is to be anti-metaphysical. It is not capable of giving us "Absolute Knowledge" or "Ultimate Knowledge" of reality (whether causal or descriptive). Rather scientific theories are established on the basis of observation, experiment, hypothesis and evidence for hypotheses. 4) Science is seen as a more or less linear march of progress from greater to lesser ignorance, and from lesser to greater abilities to make predictions about and control much of the natural world for the benefit of humanity. Although his 6 volume Course On Pragmatism includes other principles, these 4 are sufficient to give an idea of the positivist mindset. For those who have studied Logical Positivism, there should be some fairly evident similarities between these views and those of the Logical Positivists.

In the next part of this series on Positivism, I will summarize some of the contributions Mill and Mach made to the Positivist tradition. Part 3 will be devoted to the Logical Positivists of the 20th century who began as the Vienna Circle and the Berlin Circle, but ended up largely in England and the US as the dominant force within Anglo-American philosophy during the mid 20th century, and whose impact is still felt both in philosophy and in science today.

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References:

-Nineteenth-Century Philosophy: Readings in the History of Philosophy, ed. Patrick Gardiner; Free Press, NY, 1969

-European Intellectual History Since 1789, Roland N. Stromberg; Prentice Hall, NJ, 1986

-The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle; Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn and Rudolf Carnap: Available as pdf here: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477.4758&rep=rep1&type=pdf