On This Page:ToggleWhat Is Positivism?Key PrinciplesHypothetico-Deductive MethodTheoriesCriticism
On This Page:Toggle
On This Page:
The positivist paradigm believes that society should be studied scientifically. Sociology should approach research in the same way as the natural sciences. It should be objective and logical and follow the hypothetico-deductive method.
A positivist approach prefers collecting quantitative data using objective research methods, such as closed questionnaires, structured interviews, and experiments.
This will allow them to uncover and measure patterns of behavior, which will lead them to create social facts that govern society. Social facts are things such as institutions, norms, and values that exist external to the individual and constrain the individual. For example, the reality of crime is measured in terms of Official Statistics.
The search for causality comes from the desire to be able to change things for the better. Causality means the relationships between cause and effect. How one stimuli can lead to a certain action.
Positivists believe that research should be detached from subjective feelings and interpretations. It is claimed that a scientist’s beliefs and values have no impact on their findings, and sociologists should be the same.
Key TakeawaysPositivism is an approach to sociology, as well as philosophy, that relies on empirical evidence, such as those found through experiments and statistics, to reveal information about how society functions.Sociology should approach research in the same way as the natural sciences. It should be objective and logical.Positivism originates from the thinking of the French philosophers and sociologists Henri de Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, and Emile Durkheim but branched off into German-Austrian and American traditions in the early 20th century.Positivisms in the philosophical and scientific sense share several key principles: phenomenalism, nominalism, refusing to call judgments and normative statements knowledge, and belief in the unity of the scientific method.Beginning with the Frankfurt School, critical theorists have critiqued positivism heavily. As a result, positivist methods have had relatively little influence on sociology since the 1970s
Key Takeaways
Positivism is an approach to sociology, as well as philosophy, that relies on empirical evidence, such as those found through experiments and statistics, to reveal information about how society functions.Sociology should approach research in the same way as the natural sciences. It should be objective and logical.Positivism originates from the thinking of the French philosophers and sociologists Henri de Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, and Emile Durkheim but branched off into German-Austrian and American traditions in the early 20th century.Positivisms in the philosophical and scientific sense share several key principles: phenomenalism, nominalism, refusing to call judgments and normative statements knowledge, and belief in the unity of the scientific method.Beginning with the Frankfurt School, critical theorists have critiqued positivism heavily. As a result, positivist methods have had relatively little influence on sociology since the 1970s
Positivism in sociology emphasizes applying the scientific method to the study of society, focusing on gathering empirical data and objective facts to uncover universal laws that govern human behavior and social development.
What Is Positivism?
Positivism is a term used to describe an approach to the study of society that relies specifically on empirical scientific evidence, such as controlled experiments and statistics.
Reality exists outside and independently of the mind, and therefore, it can be studied objectively and as a real thing. They believe that there are social facts that make up the rules of society, which are separate andindependent of individuals.
Social facts are things such as institutions, norms, and values that exist external to the individual and constrain the individual.
Due to this belief, Positivists believe that society can be studied in the same way as the natural world and that patterns can be observed and analyzed to create the social facts that rule society.
This method is called inductive reasoning, which involves accumulating data about the world through careful observation and measurement. A theory can be formed and verified from this data through further study.
Positivists believe that sociology should follow the objective experimental methods that the natural sciences follow so that the research remains value-free and patterns and causation can be established.
Positivists preferquantitative dataand, as far as possible, should follow the experimental method of the natural sciences. This will allow them to uncover and measure behavior patterns, leading them to create social facts that govern society.
Positivism, as a general term, has at least three meanings. It can describe how Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim describe social evolution, the philosophical tradition of logical positivism, or a set of scientific research methods (Riley, 2007).
Key Principles
Positivism has moved from the realm of philosophy to sociology. Nonetheless, positivism in philosophy and sociology share, according to Kolakowski (1972) four main rules:
The rule of phenomenalism
To positivists, experience is the foundation of human knowledge, according to the rule of phenomenalism. Scientists should only observe and record what they actually perceive through their experiences.
For sociologists, the rule of phenomenalism brings about three main difficulties.
Firstly, while this rule apparently encourages sociologists to use empirical research methods, many have accused sociologists who use these methods of over-abstractifying the social world (Mills, 2000; Willer et al., 1973).
Secondly, in sociology, the rule of phenomenalism demands that there is a common way to observe experiences without adding subjectivity. Yet, beyond the work of, say, Durkheim in The Rules of the Sociological Method (1938), sociologists have not put emphasis on finding a “neutral observation language” (Bryant, 1985).
Thirdly, as Kolakowski himself notes, it is difficult to be sure exactly what can be observed and what cannot. For example, discussions around ‘realism’ in sociology have observed hidden structures and mechanisms that Comte would have likely called unobservable (Keat and Urry, 1975; Bryant, 1985).
The rule of nominalismAccording to the rule of nominalism, science is a way of recording experiences, and the recording of experiences can not create knowledge about parts of reality that were previously inaccessible to empirical research (Kolakowski, 1966).This has created controversy in sociology, specifically around whether or not social facts are the same as individual facts. Historically, divides over this question have created breaks between schools of positivism (Bryant, 1985)
The rule of nominalism
According to the rule of nominalism, science is a way of recording experiences, and the recording of experiences can not create knowledge about parts of reality that were previously inaccessible to empirical research (Kolakowski, 1966).This has created controversy in sociology, specifically around whether or not social facts are the same as individual facts. Historically, divides over this question have created breaks between schools of positivism (Bryant, 1985)
According to the rule of nominalism, science is a way of recording experiences, and the recording of experiences can not create knowledge about parts of reality that were previously inaccessible to empirical research (Kolakowski, 1966).
This has created controversy in sociology, specifically around whether or not social facts are the same as individual facts. Historically, divides over this question have created breaks between schools of positivism (Bryant, 1985)
The rule that refuses to call value judgments and normative statements knowledgeSociology brings up the issue of whether or not the evaluations that a sociologist makes about the social world can be judged scientifically or rationally.Positivists believe that research should be detached from subjective feelings and interpretations; it is claimed that a scientist’s beliefs and values have no impact on their findings, and sociologists should be the same.To some, such as Giddens (1974), judgments of value that are not based on empirical evidence, meaning that they cannot be proven valid or invalid through experience, are not knowledge.
The rule that refuses to call value judgments and normative statements knowledge
Sociology brings up the issue of whether or not the evaluations that a sociologist makes about the social world can be judged scientifically or rationally.Positivists believe that research should be detached from subjective feelings and interpretations; it is claimed that a scientist’s beliefs and values have no impact on their findings, and sociologists should be the same.To some, such as Giddens (1974), judgments of value that are not based on empirical evidence, meaning that they cannot be proven valid or invalid through experience, are not knowledge.
Sociology brings up the issue of whether or not the evaluations that a sociologist makes about the social world can be judged scientifically or rationally.
Positivists believe that research should be detached from subjective feelings and interpretations; it is claimed that a scientist’s beliefs and values have no impact on their findings, and sociologists should be the same.
To some, such as Giddens (1974), judgments of value that are not based on empirical evidence, meaning that they cannot be proven valid or invalid through experience, are not knowledge.
Belief in the essential unity of the scientific method
For example, some positivists have argued that the unity of science stems from a single fundamental law that all other laws can be derived from – such as Saint-Simon, who argues that this fundamental law is the law of gravity).
However, Kolaski himself holds that different types of science have certain principles and practices in common (Kolakowski, 1972; Bryant, 1985).
Hypothetico-Deductive Method
The hypothetico-deductive method is a scientific process used in positivism, in which certain logical steps are taken to arrive at the truth.
This method is usually conceptualized as consisting of a series of stages:
Theories of Positivism
Usually, scholars say that the French philosopher Auguste Comte coined the term positivism in his Cours de Philosophie Positive (1933).
This is not completely accurate, as Comte did not write about the term positivism itself but about the so-called “positive philosophy” and “positive method,” and the philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon wrote about these ideas before him (Bryant, 1985).
Nonetheless, Durkheim was himself a critique of positivism, connecting positivism with an oversimplified conception of social science and exaggeration of the field’s achievements, both of which he considered dangerous to the new applied social sciences.
Durkheim rejected attempts to reduce the complexity of humanity to a single law or formula.
He attacked Comte for assuming “that mankind in its totality constitutes a single society which always and everywhere evolves in the same manner” when “what exists, in reality, are particular societies (tribes, nations, cities, states of all kinds, and so on), which are born and die, progress and regress, each in its own manner, pursuing divergent goals” (Durkheim, 1915).
Discussions around positivism began in Germany and Austria around economics; more generally about the differences between the natural and the historical, cultural and social sciences.
A dispute over the place of values in academic and social sciences, known as the value-freedom dispute, and a further dispute over whether sociology should be in university departments (Bryant, 1985).
The Vienna Circle and the Frankfurt School shaped German-Austrian positivism following World War I. The Vienna Circle was a group of philosophers and scientists from the natural and social sciences, logic, and mathematics who met from 1924 to 1936 at the University of Vienna.
Vienna CircleThe Vienna Circle conceptualized the world as empiricist and positivist – that there is only knowledge from experience. And secondly, that logical analysis can be used to gather knowledge about the world.This concept of Logical Analysis differentiates the Vienna Circle from earlier positivisms. According to logical analysis, there are two kinds of statements: those reducible to simpler statements about what is empirically given and those that cannot be reduced to statements about empirical experience.The second statements, such as those in the field of metaphysics, were meaningless to the Vienna Circle and either arose from logical mistakes or were interpretable as empirical statements in the realm of science (Bryant, 1985).The Vienna Circle also pursued the goal of a unified science, meaning a scientific system where every legitimate, logical statement can be reduced to simpler concepts that relate directly to an experience.This inspired a search for a so-called “symbolic language” that eliminates the ambiguity of natural languages (Bryant, 1985).
Vienna Circle
The Vienna Circle conceptualized the world as empiricist and positivist – that there is only knowledge from experience. And secondly, that logical analysis can be used to gather knowledge about the world.This concept of Logical Analysis differentiates the Vienna Circle from earlier positivisms. According to logical analysis, there are two kinds of statements: those reducible to simpler statements about what is empirically given and those that cannot be reduced to statements about empirical experience.The second statements, such as those in the field of metaphysics, were meaningless to the Vienna Circle and either arose from logical mistakes or were interpretable as empirical statements in the realm of science (Bryant, 1985).The Vienna Circle also pursued the goal of a unified science, meaning a scientific system where every legitimate, logical statement can be reduced to simpler concepts that relate directly to an experience.This inspired a search for a so-called “symbolic language” that eliminates the ambiguity of natural languages (Bryant, 1985).
The Vienna Circle conceptualized the world as empiricist and positivist – that there is only knowledge from experience. And secondly, that logical analysis can be used to gather knowledge about the world.
This concept of Logical Analysis differentiates the Vienna Circle from earlier positivisms. According to logical analysis, there are two kinds of statements: those reducible to simpler statements about what is empirically given and those that cannot be reduced to statements about empirical experience.
The second statements, such as those in the field of metaphysics, were meaningless to the Vienna Circle and either arose from logical mistakes or were interpretable as empirical statements in the realm of science (Bryant, 1985).
The Vienna Circle also pursued the goal of a unified science, meaning a scientific system where every legitimate, logical statement can be reduced to simpler concepts that relate directly to an experience.
This inspired a search for a so-called “symbolic language” that eliminates the ambiguity of natural languages (Bryant, 1985).
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School, in contrast, critiqued positivism post-World War II. Horkheimer, a main figure in the Frankfurt School, believed that the methods of inquiry used in the social sciences could not imitate the scientific method used in the natural sciences.
This was because, Horkheimer argued, the ongoing search for universal laws – a logical and mathematical prejudice – served to oversimplify and separate theory from how people interact in the world.
Horkheimer posited that “we should reconsider not merely the scientist, but the knowing individual, in general” (Horkheimer, 1972).
The main arguments of Horkheimer and other members of the school involved:
Instrumental Positivism
Positivism has also taken on a number of forms in American Sociology. The most distinctive of these, what Bryant (1985) calls “Instrumental Positivism,” came into prominence in the late 1920s before enduring more intense criticisms from the 1960s and 1970s onward.
Instrumental positivism has several key characteristics (Bryant, 1985):
The preoccupation with the refinement of statistical techniques and research instrumentation: American sociologists such as Giddings introduced developments in statistics from other countries to American sociology as well as creating new statistical techniques themselves (Bryant, 1985).
The endorsement of a nominalist or individualistic conception of society: according to Hinkle and Hinkle (Andrews, 1955), American sociology assumes that the structure of all social groups is a consequence of the individuals in those groups and that all social phenomena come from the motivations of these individuals. According to this view, individuals are the main “objects” of sociological study (Bryant, 1985).
The linkage of a dichotomy of facts and values with a conception of value-freedom: instrumental positivism was determined to be objective, which came to a determination to exclude value judgments from claims to knowledge (Gouldner, 1962). To American instrumental positivists, not only were the values of the people conducting sociology separable from sociological facts and research, but this separation was essential to an objective science (Bryant, 1985).
The prominence of team research and the multiplication of centers or institutes of applied social research: finally, instrumental positivists tended to assemble research teams in centers that often did contract research. This had the consequence that those doing sociological research in America were those who could afford to have an established and well-placed team (Bryant, 1985).
Criticism and Controversy
Implicit to these key positivist principles are several points of contention.
For one, positivism assumes that scientists’ methods in the natural sciences can also be applied to sociology.
This means that the subjective nature of human experience and behavior, to positivists, does not create a barrier to treating human behavior as an object in the same way that, say, a falling rock is an object in the natural world (Giddens, 1974).
However, there has also been a great amount of debate over how much sociologists can generalize human behavior before it is no longer truly representative of human behavior and whether or not conclusions drawn from these so-called adaptations of human behavior are positivist (Bryant, 1985).
As a consequence, scholars agree there is little agreement as to what sociology is supposed to adapt or adopt from the natural sciences when studying human behavior.
Positivism also presupposes that the end result of sociological investigations is a set of laws, like those that natural scientists have established, that can describe human behavior.
This assumption has the consequence that sociological knowledge is “instrumental” in form, and sociological research acquires findings that “do not carry any logically given implications for practical policy for the pursuit of values” (Giddens, 1974).
References
Adorno, T. W. (2000). Sociology and empirical research.
Bryant, C. G. (1985). Positivism in social theory and research. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Comte, A., & Lemaire, P. (1933). Cours de philosophie positive: 1re et 2me leçons.
Durkheim, E. (1938). The Rules of the Sociological Method. Trans. Sarah A. Solovay and John H. Mueller. Ed. George EG Catlin. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1893.
Giddens, A. (Ed.). (1974). Positivism and sociology. London: Heinemann.
Gouldner, A. M. (1962). The Myth of a Value-Free Sociology, 9 SOC.
Hempel, C. G. (1958). The theoretician’s dilemma: A study in the logic of theory construction.
Hinkle, R. C. (2020). Founding Theory of American Sociology 1881–1915. Routledge.
Horkheimer, M. (1972). The latest attack on metaphysics. Critical theory: Selected essays, 132-187.
Horowitz, I. L. (1964). Max Weber and the spirit of American sociology. The Sociological Quarterly, 5(4), 344-354.
Keat, R. (1981). The politics of social theory Habermas, Freud and the critique of positivism.
Keat, R., & Urry, J. (1975). Social Theory as. Science. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 83.
Kołakowski, L. (1972). Positivist philosophy from Hume to the Vienna Circle.
Mills, C. W. (2000). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.
Riley, D. (2007). The paradox of positivism. Social Science History, 31(1), 115-126.
Willer, D., & Willer, J. (1973). Systematic empiricism: critique of a pseudoscience. Prentice Hall.
Wolff, K. H., & Durkheim, E. (1960). Emile Durkheim, 1858-1917: a collection of essays, with translations and a bibliography. The Ohio State University Press.
Further InformationSteps of the Scientific MethodRyan, G. (2018). Introduction to positivism, interpretivism and critical theory. Nurse researcher, 25(4), 41-49.The Paradox of Positivism
Further Information
Steps of the Scientific MethodRyan, G. (2018). Introduction to positivism, interpretivism and critical theory. Nurse researcher, 25(4), 41-49.The Paradox of Positivism
Steps of the Scientific Method
Ryan, G. (2018). Introduction to positivism, interpretivism and critical theory. Nurse researcher, 25(4), 41-49.
The Paradox of Positivism
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education
Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.
Charlotte NickersonResearch Assistant at Harvard UniversityUndergraduate at Harvard UniversityCharlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.
Charlotte NickersonResearch Assistant at Harvard UniversityUndergraduate at Harvard University
Charlotte Nickerson
Research Assistant at Harvard University
Undergraduate at Harvard University
Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.
