PHILOSOPHY

THE FAILURE OF POSITIVISM AND SOME LESSONS FOR SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES

by Revd. Richard Russell on 5 January 1999

My underlying argument — derived from the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd of the Free University of Amsterdam — is that all academic disciplines are constituted by philosophical- metaphysical constitutions (linking an ontology with an epistemology — defining a field of investigation correlated with a methodology of knowing). This in turn is shaped by an ultimate allegiance to a world view (e.g. paganism, secular naturalism, Christian theism, etc.). In short no field of scholarship — not even mathematics — is metaphysical or religiously neutral. This is not a matter of disputes about the metaphysical or religious implications of theories in the disciplines (e.g.. Darwin or Freud or Durkheim, etc.) but of the constituitive presuppositions of the theories themselves.

So I chose to illustrate my general thesis by taking the case of positivism — the philosophical movement most explicitly antagonistic to my thesis.

The main sources of modern positivism (including logical positivism as the most articulated expression) are to be found in the works of Hume & Comte. Hume's Enlightenment secularism saw empiricism (all real knowledge comes from sense experience) as a `scientific' (even `Newtonian') weapon with which to support his native Calvinism (metaphyics, theology, theistic arguments, miracles, etc.). In his earlier Treatise on the Human Understanding he came to realise that his empiricism was equally destructive of all knowledge claims about the human self, other minds, the external world and scientific laws. (No wonder this later awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumbers!)

In his later Inquiry Hume sought instead to find a principle with which to demarcate between (unacceptable) metaphysics & theology and (acceptable) common sense & science. This endeavour was revived by the logical positivists (1920s-1940s) as the search for the verification principle. Far from making the desired demarcation the various formulations of the principle either eliminated metaphysics & theology but also natural science; or it kept natural science but only at the price of not excluding metaphysics & theology. This whole development served to reveal the arbitrary, ideological & self-contradictory character of the principle - and that positivism was itself a crusading metaphysical movement which had tried to conceal its own identity and allegiance to a secular naturalism which was bristling with philosophical problems (e.g. one leading proponent proposed that we should embrace methodological solipsism and methodological behaviourism simultaneously!; another that metaphysics was nonsense and that scientific laws were useful nonsense!!).

If we now turn to the second source of positivism it is to Comte. He invented the term `positivism' but also & significantly `sociology' & `altruism'. He is best known for his law of three stages (Hegel, Spencer, Darwin, Marx, etc. engaged in parallel enterprises). For Comte history told the story of a collective epistemological progress from theological explanations (in terms of spirits & gods) to metaphysical (in terms of abstract principles & essences) to positive scientific (correlating & predicting sense experiences). This schema has come to be taken over by the various academic disciplines and is endlessly repeated in the introductory chapters of textbooks. This positivist disciplinary mythology relates that once upon a time, in the bad old days, the discipline was hopelessly entangled with theology and metaphysics — and of how the bold founding fathers of the discipline fought to emancipate it — so that now it has gained its autonomy, having religiously and metaphysically neutral methodology which enables it to produce objective, universally valid results based on the accurate observation of the empirical facts followed by rigorous logical analysis.

The attempts to articulate this orthodox positivist story line in the history, sociology & philosophy of science have lead to its more or less complete repudiation. Often reluctantly, it has been realised that we cannot start with the `facts'. For facts presuppose classifications, which presuppose theories, which presuppose paradigms & research programmes, which make metaphysical assumptions themselves rooted in allegiance to world views (Popper, Latakos, Kuhn, Radnitzsky, Polanyi, Dooyeweerd, et al).

So where do we go from here. Certainly postmodernism dances on the grave of positivism - no more `facts' - just (relativistic) `perspectives' & `interpretations'. But postmodernism has its own unacknowledged dogmatic metaphysics which is imposed in many ways including a philosophy of history & society which is similar to Comte. We are said to move from `premodern' to `modern' to `postmodern' as progressive stages — and then are told that we are or ought to have (as authentic postmoderns) an incredulity towards all 'grand narratives' — except for the postmodern one, one should understand but not say.

So where do we go from here, where the ghost of positivism still haunts the `sciences' and the spirit of postmodernism possesses the `arts' and worries the `sciences'. I think our state of scholarship needs some serious exorcism. But for this proposal to be really plausible I would have to tell another story and parables like that of the prodigal son.

Richard Russell