The Course in Positive Philosophy

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The Course in Positive Philosophy (Cours de Philosophie Positive) was a series of texts written by the French philosopher of science and founding sociologist, Auguste Comte, between 1830 and 1842. Within the work he unveiled the epistemological perspective of positivism. The works were translated into English by Harriet Martineau and condensed to form The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (1853).

The first three volumes of the Course dealt chiefly with the physical sciences already in existence (mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology), whereas the latter two emphasised the inevitable coming of social science. It is in observing the circular dependence of theory and observation in science, and classifying the sciences in this way, that Comte may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term.[1] For him, the physical sciences had necessarily to arrive first, before humanity could adequately channel its efforts into the most challenging and complex "queen science" of human society itself. His A General View of Positivism (published in English in 1865) would therefore set out to define, in more detail, the empirical goals of sociology.

## References

1. ↑ Bourdeau, Michel, "Augste Comte", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition)

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Positivism

| Perspectives|

* Antihumanism
* Empiricism
* Rationalism
* Scientism

|

Declinations|

* Legal positivism
* Logical positivism / analytic philosophy
* Positivist school
* Postpositivism
* Sociological positivism
* Machian positivism (empirio-criticism)
* Rankean historical positivism
* Polish positivism
* Russian Machism

Principal concepts|

* Consilience
* Demarcation
* Evidence
* Induction
* Justificationism
* Pseudoscience
* Critique of metaphysics
* Unity of science
* Verificationism

Antitheses|

* Antipositivism
* Confirmation holism
* Critical theory
* Falsifiability
* Geisteswissenschaft
* Hermeneutics
* Historicism
* Historism
* Human science
* Humanities
* Problem of induction
* Reflectivism
* Methodological dualism / Praxeology

Related paradigm shifts
in the history of science|

* Non-Euclidean geometry (1830s)
* Uncertainty principle (1927)

Related topics|

* Behavioralism
* Post-behavioralism
* Critical rationalism
* Criticism of science
* Epistemology
* anarchism
* idealism
* nihilism
* pluralism
* realism
* Holism
* Instrumentalism
* Modernism
* Naturalism in literature
* Nomothetic–idiographic distinction
* Objectivity in science
* Operationalism
* Phenomenalism
* Philosophy of science
* Deductive-nomological model
* Ramsey sentence
* Sense-data theory
* Qualitative research
* Relationship between religion and science
* Sociology
* Social science
* Philosophy
* Structural functionalism
* Structuralism
* Structuration theory

Positivist-related debate

| Method|

* Methodenstreit (1890s)
* Werturteilsstreit (1909–1959)
* Positivismusstreit (1960s)
* Fourth Great Debate in international relations (1980s)
* Science wars (1990s)

|

Contributions|

* The Course in Positive Philosophy (1830)
* A General View of Positivism (1848)
* Critical History of Philosophy (1869)
* Idealism and Positivism (1879–1884)
* The Analysis of Sensations (1886)
* The Logic of Modern Physics (1927)
* Language, Truth, and Logic (1936)
* The Two Cultures (1959)
* The Universe in a Nutshell (2001)

Proponents|

* Richard Avenarius
* A. J. Ayer
* Alexander Bogdanov
* Auguste Comte
* Eugen Dühring
* Émile Durkheim
* Ernst Laas
* Ernst Mach
* Berlin Circle
* Vienna Circle

Criticism|

* Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909)
* History and Class Consciousness (1923)
* The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934)
* The Poverty of Historicism (1936)
* World Hypotheses (1942)
* Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951)
* Truth and Method (1960)
* The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
* Conjectures and Refutations (1963)
* One-Dimensional Man (1964)
* Knowledge and Human Interests (1968)
* The Poverty of Theory (1978)
* The Scientific Image (1980)
* The Rhetoric of Economics (1986)

Critics|

* Theodor W. Adorno
* Gaston Bachelard
* Mario Bunge
* Wilhelm Dilthey
* Paul Feyerabend
* Hans-Georg Gadamer
* Thomas Kuhn
* György Lukács
* Karl Popper
* Willard Van Orman Quine
* Max Weber

Concepts in contention|

* Knowledge
* Objectivity
* Phronesis
* Truth
* Verstehen

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