Positivism

Positivism is a philosophy of knowledge that grounds reliable claims in empirical observation and systematic methods. It generally rejects appeals to entities or causes that cannot be investigated through experience.

Empiricism: The view that experience is a primary source of knowledge. Positivism makes empirical experience central to establishing reliable claims.
Auguste Comte: A French philosopher who named positivism and applied it to the study of society. Comte formulated an influential early program for positivist thought.
Falsifiability: The property of a claim that could be contradicted by some possible observation. Karl Popper proposed attempted refutation, rather than verification, as science's defining test.
Positivism in sociology: The use of observation, comparison, and systematic methods to study social regularities. Comte presented sociology as a science capable of discovering laws of social life.
Scientific method: A systematic approach to investigating questions through observation, hypothesis testing, and evidence-based revision. Positivists treat systematic inquiry as a model for dependable knowledge.
Law of three stages: Comte's theory that human thought develops through theological, metaphysical, and positive stages. It presents Comte's account of positivism as the culmination of intellectual development.
Critical rationalism: A philosophy of science that advances knowledge through conjectures and attempts to refute them. It rejects the positivist hope that observations can confirm universal laws.
Émile Durkheim: A French sociologist who argued that social facts should be studied as things. Durkheim's methodological program applied positivist standards to sociological research.
Verification principle: The criterion that a statement is meaningful only if it is empirically verifiable or analytically true. Logical positivists used verification to distinguish meaningful claims from metaphysics.
David Hume: A Scottish philosopher whose empiricism and analysis of causation shaped later debates about knowledge. Hume's skepticism about induction exposed a problem for observation-based general laws.

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