This takes us directly to the development of positivism as a theory of knowledge which emerged in the nineteenth century. Primarily a philosophic doctrine associated with the work of Auguste Comte, positivism may be defined as a scientific movement which began to create reforms in the way knowledge was acquired. While Comte published his work on positive philosophy in 1830, positivism did not become a world wide movement until the latter part of the nineteenth century…

In a work entitled A Course on Positive Philosophy, Comte put forward two basic premises. First, he asserted that all the speculative philosophies of knowledge would be replaced by the methods of the natural sciences and, second, he took the view that positivism was the highest possible stage in the development of knowledge. Comte, therefore, tended to equate positivism with scientific progress and social reform. As a scientific doctrine positivism emphasized two key points of departure from idealist philosophies which had been dominant up until that time. It stressed the reliability of observation as a basis for a theory of knowledge; and it placed an extraordinary emphasis on the search for factual regularities which Comte believed would lead to the formation of general laws. Positivism thus constituted a key shift in the philo¬ sophy of knowledge, to the extent that it insisted that the old idealist search for under¬ lying meaning and ultimate causes or truths be abandoned and replaced with the ultimate stress on observation and description.

The influence of positivism on the development of the social sciences was therefore dramatic.Generally, there were two pivotal assertions which made positivism so influential. First, Comte’s flaw of three stages’ had the effect of essentially equating the use of the scientific method with historical development and social progress. Second, Comte developed a system for classifying the sciences by arranging them in terms of a definite order, and by hierarchically organizing the sciences in relation to their complexity and utilization of the scientific method. This left no doubt that, in contrast to the social and historical sciences, the methods of the natural sciences had obtained greater precision and thus had attained the highest rank.

What proved to be so controversial about Comte’s assertion that positivism constituted the highest stage in knowledge was its immediate claim that the speculative stage of knowledge was to be replaced by the positivistic stage and that the development toward this stage was necessary if social thought was to become a credible science. In essence, this meant that positivism became associated in the minds of many with progress and social reform. Under these circumstances, it became a matter of historical urgency for the social sciences to develop from the speculative to the positive stage, thereby marking their scientific stature.

(Adopted from Ken Morrison: Marx, Weber and Durkheim, pages 32 – 33)