Originally founded by Auguste Comte (1798–1857), Positivism was primarily a view about science. Influenced by Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) assertion that knowledge of things-inthemselves was impossible, Comte argued that our scientific theories should be understood as mere tools for systematizing and predicting observation, and that further (metaphysical) speculation must be rejected as unfounded.
Comte was also important for the foundation of sociology as a science and introduced the idea that there are laws of social development that can be studied and manipulated. Comte’s ideas were refined and extended in the early twentieth century by developments in logical analysis and the prospects of reducing complex theoretical concepts into an observational language. The so-called Logical Positivists thus pursued a foundationalist epistemology based on the immediacy of self-evident “sense data.” They argued that any statement that was not (at least in principle) verifiable by observation was to be rejected as meaningless. Such epistemological restrictions were deemed impractical and gradually relaxed, but many Logical Positivists maintained a focus on applying logical analysis to the understanding of science. Logical reduction was thus no longer a tool to ensure epistemological reliability but, rather, a political project for constructing a universal language of science that could maximize democratic participation.
