Positivism

Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations.

Positivism is a family of philosophical views characterized by a highly favorable account of science and what is taken to be the scientific method.

This lesson highlights the theories of positivism and the impact this approach had on the development of a new social science - sociology.

Learn about positivist and Interpretivist approaches.

In Western philosophy, generally, any system that confines itself to the data of experience and excludes a priori or metaphysical speculations.

Learn important information about positivism.

Basic Idea of the Positive Theory: Criminals are born not made This is an example of nature, not nurture Focused on biological and psychological factors to explain criminal behaviour.

Positivism in general refers to philosophical positions that emphasize empirical data and scientific methods. This tradition holds that the world consists of regularities, that these regularities are detectable, and, thus, that the researcher can infer knowledge about the real world by observing it. The researcher should be more concerned with general rules than with explaining the particular.

Positivism is the view that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method (techniques for investigating phenomena based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence, subject to specific principles of reasoning).

In a positivist view of the world, science was seen as the way to get at truth, to understand the world well enough so that we might predict and control it. The world and the universe were deterministic -- they operated by laws of cause and effect that we could discern if we applied the unique approach of the scientific method.