Philosophy of the 20th and 21st Centuries

Philosophy of Positivism

Positivism, as a scientific trend, is challenging to characterize comprehensively, given its significant transformations over 150 years, altering both its content and central issues. The French mathematician Auguste Comte (1798-1857) is considered the founder of positivism. He concluded that human intellect progresses through three stages of development: the theological stage, or fictitious; the metaphysical stage, or abstract; and the scientific stage, or positive. Humanity initially sought to explain phenomena through myth and religion, then advanced to philosophical (metaphysical) interpretations, and from the 19th century onward, philosophy began to yield ground to science or positive knowledge. This shift contributed to a certain negativity among positivists toward philosophy, as they believed philosophy had fulfilled its role and should give way to science. Consequently, positivists held a high regard for science and the scientific approach, viewing science as the sole source of positive knowledge about the world, essential for covering all spheres of human activity and providing a solid foundation.
For Comte, the essence of science lies in facts—solid, indisputable, and stable. The primary task of science is to collect and systematize facts. Comte believed that speculations about causes, whether religious or philosophical, are entirely unreliable, and the most dependable approach is merely to document facts without delving into their possible causes. It is important to note that Comte's ideas had a particular context. The ideas of French Enlightenment thinkers eventually led to the 1789 revolution and the Napoleonic wars. Hegel's doctrine that nature's development is determined by the self-development of the absolute spirit sharply contrasted with the scientific approach to studying nature, fostering suspicion towards any ideas that transcended ordinary observation. Comte's system demonstrated this attitude, which is why positivism spread in science.
Although Comte’s ideas did not receive strong support in France, they were enthusiastically received in England, notably by Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). Spencer aligned science with the common sense of an average citizen who earns a living through intellect and knowledge during the week and attends church on Sunday. For Spencer, science equates to any form of knowledge. Knowledge, in his view, is the awareness of order and the systematic connection of phenomena. Common sense provides this knowledge, and science progresses just slightly ahead, thus extending perception through inference. This alignment of science with everyday common sense appealed to Spencer’s readers, who were pleasantly surprised to find themselves not so distant from Newton or Kant, contributing to the popularity of his work.
According to Spencer, the world evolves. Any system—biological, physical, or social—begins in a relatively unstable state, which either leads to decay or evolution. Evolution involves the transition from simplicity to complexity, where an initial undifferentiated unity transforms into differentiation. The ultimate outcome of evolution is the formation of a certain integrated and stable unity. Viewing science as a realm of continuous growth, any addition to it expands its contact with the unknown. Spencer found a place for religion within this unknown, resolving the issue of reconciling scientific reason and religious faith. If knowledge cannot fill the entire realm of consciousness, if reason always has the capacity to delve into what knowledge cannot reach, then there will always be room in a person for something beyond the sphere of experience.
A new wave of positivism emerged with the Vienna Circle, a group of diverse scientists. Its alternative name is empirio-criticism. Austrian physicist Ernst Mach (1838-1916), who made significant contributions to physics with concepts like "Mach's principle," "Mach cone," and "Mach number," founded this movement. Mach's criticism of classical mechanics’ fundamental concepts laid the groundwork for the theory of relativity and influenced its founder, Albert Einstein.
According to Mach, the world consists of elements that simultaneously represent both physical and psychological phenomena. Thus, in the relationship between the physical world and human consciousness, these elements are neutral and do not belong to any system. These elements are homogeneous and equivalent, with no element being more crucial or fundamental than others. Mach believed this neutral element perspective would resolve the contradictions between materialism and idealism. Since all elements are equally valid, there are no "essence-phenomenon" or "cause-effect" relationships. Natural connections are not simple enough to always point to the same cause and effect. Mach argued that there are neither causes nor effects in nature, and nature is given to us only once. The only type of relation between elements is functional. Since there are no "essence-phenomenon" or "cause-effect" relations, concepts like "cause," "thing-in-itself," and "essence" should be replaced with the mathematical concept of "function." Mach left the concept of cause to purely literary or everyday usage.
The consequence of this view, which sees the world as comprising only homogeneous elements and functional relationships, is descriptivism in epistemology: when all cognitive functions, including scientific ones, are reduced to description. This is understandable since if law and essence are eradicated from the world, explanations and predictions become impossible. Machism, or the second positivism, arose from the crisis of classical natural science, struggling to understand new phenomena with outdated tools that had served science for nearly two centuries.
The third wave of positivism emerged in the mid-1920s with the Vienna Circle members such as Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn, Felix Frank, Georg Kreisel, and Rudolf Carnap. Their new direction, a variant of positivism, was termed "logical positivism" or "logical empiricism." The Viennese philosophers drew on Austrian thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein's (1889-1951) concept presented in his famous "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus."
Wittgenstein believed that the world is structured like the language of classical mathematical logic. According to him, "the world is the totality of facts, not things." Reality breaks down into separate "atomic" facts, which can combine into more complex "molecular" facts. Atomic facts are not interconnected, so the world contains no necessary connections: "the belief in causal connections is superstition." Atomic facts are independent: "something may happen or not, and everything else will remain as it was." Since reality consists of various combinations of elements at one level—facts—science should be a combination of propositions reflecting facts and their combinations. Anything that claims to go beyond this "one-dimensional" world of facts or appeals to the connection of facts and their deeper essence should be excluded from science. Although the language of science contains many sentences that do not directly reflect facts, this is because language itself tends to distort thought. Hence, many sentences in scientific and everyday language lack meaning—they are expressions that do not actually speak about facts. To identify and eliminate such illogical statements, Wittgenstein called for logical analysis of scientific language. This should be the primary task of philosophy.
Wittgenstein’s ideas resonated with the Vienna Circle members, who developed their own concept based on the following fundamental positions:
· All knowledge is knowledge about what is given through sensory perception (Wittgenstein's atomic facts were replaced by sensory experiences by logical positivists).
· What is given to us through sensory perception can be known with absolute certainty.
· All functions of knowledge are reducible to description.
Logical positivism was quite widespread until the late 1950s. From the 1960s onwards, it lost ground to a plethora of diverse philosophical and methodological concepts. One of the most well-known philosophical systems of this period is the falsificationism of Austrian philosopher Karl Popper (1902-1994), who considered himself English.
Early encounters with textbooks suggest that scientific development leads to the accumulation of knowledge. Scientific knowledge accumulates through the discovery of new facts and the development of new theories. It seems that new facts are added to old ones, thereby increasing the volume of scientific knowledge. This view of scientific knowledge growth is reflected in the cumulative concept of science development, which includes:
1. New knowledge in science is built upon previous knowledge.
2. At each stage of development, the valid elements of previous knowledge are retained, while past errors are discarded.
3. Scientific knowledge develops gradually and progressively.
The Vienna Circle positivists associated cumulative growth with the principle of verification (confirmation). As science progresses, the amount of confirmed knowledge increases. Karl Popper challenged this view in the 1930s, arguing that the criterion for scientific knowledge is not verification but falsification (the possibility of refutation). If a statement cannot be pointed out for refutation, it is not scientific. Both verification and falsification were seen by neopositivists as conditions for distinguishing science from non-science, including philosophy from religion, where postulates are insufficient for either refutation or confirmation. According to Popper, science advances by refuting existing theories through the construction of new theories, which must also be open to refutation. Scientists should not strive to propose more probable theories; rather, the bolder, more substantial, and informative a theory is, the less probable it is because it contains more refutable statements. The ongoing falsification of theories in science is a crucial condition for the growth of scientific knowledge in terms of its multiplication and complexity. For Popper, the development of science involves the birth and demise of theories under the fire of critical scrutiny, leading to an increase in "impossible" scientific knowledge because the more information we have about the world, the easier it is to refute it. Although Popper supports the cumulative claim about the growth of knowledge in science, he rejects the thesis of scientific knowledge accumulation: each step in science involves discarding old knowledge and replacing it with new knowledge. In this view, scientific inheritance is irrelevant; what matters is that the new theory contains more information than the old one.
British science methodology scholar Imre Lakatos (1922-1974), a student of Popper, believed that scientific knowledge develops not by discarding theories but through a more complex process. According to Lakatos, a theory, or a "research program," comprises:
1. A hard core of unchanging fundamental assumptions.
2. A protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses that can be altered to safeguard the core.
The research program develops as long as the theory remains progressive and productive, meaning that it continues to explain new facts and phenomena that other theories cannot. If a theory fails to account for new facts, it becomes stagnant and may eventually be abandoned. Lakatos argued that both the accumulation and rejection of knowledge are part of the complex process of theory evolution.
2. Logical Empiricism
Logical empiricism arose from the fusion of positivism and logic. It emerged as a distinctive philosophical movement in the early 20th century, influenced by the Vienna Circle and its efforts to unify logical analysis with empirical science.
3. Logical Positivism
Logical positivism, or logical empiricism, represented an attempt to synthesize the empirical tradition of positivism with the formal precision of logic. Logical positivists sought to develop a rigorous language for scientific discourse, rejecting metaphysical and theological claims as meaningless. They emphasized the importance of verification and the logical analysis of language to clarify philosophical problems.
4. Vienna Circle and Falsificationism
The Vienna Circle, with its prominent members, contributed to logical positivism's development. However, their approach faced criticism, particularly from Karl Popper, who introduced falsificationism. Popper argued that scientific theories should be testable and falsifiable, challenging the notion of verification as the sole criterion for scientific knowledge.
5. Imre Lakatos and Research Programs
Imre Lakatos expanded on Popper's ideas by introducing the concept of research programs. He proposed that scientific theories consist of a core set of assumptions and a protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses. The progress of a research program is measured by its ability to explain new phenomena and its adaptability to empirical evidence.
6. Neopositivism
Neopositivism, or logical positivism, faced challenges and eventually evolved into various philosophical perspectives. Despite its decline, its impact on philosophy of science and methodology remains significant.