WHAT WE CALL Positivism:

In general, it is named to that theoretical attitude which holds that the only
authentic knowledge or knowledge is scientific knowledge. Characterizes a critical
attitude towards traditional philosophy, especially metaphysics and philosophy
states that also must be scientific. To this end the "positive spirit" is true to some
guiding principles or rules (enunciated by L. Kolakowski), which remain in all the
positive philosophies of the various eras:
1-ontological phenomenalism rule, according to which reality is manifested in
phenomena, forces reject any conception of a hidden beyond the phenomena
essence;
2- nominalismo rule, under which abstract knowledge is not knowing things in
themselves or universal but widespread mere individual things;
3- rule requiring renounce value judgments and normative statements, as devoid of
cognitive meaning and,
4- Finally, the rule of the unity of the method of science, according to which it is
conceivable in one field of knowledge, reducible to observation and experience,
ultimately to a single science, preferably physics.
The main contribution of Comte positivism is the idea that human reality is social
and it must be able to be scientifically known. A science that studies this reality as
a synthesis of all human knowledge Comte called 'sociology'. This sociological
positivism, along with the biological positivism of Claude Bernard, the positivist
ethic John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer evolutionist positivism are the main
representatives of the European s positive spirit. XIX. In the last quarter of the last
century, empirio Mach and Avenarius defends the need for a scientific philosophy
and in the period between the twenties and thirties of this century, after the First
World War, the so-called positivism develops logical, logical positivism or
empiricism. This neopositivismo, which represents the German-Austrian positivist
tradition, which crystallizes around called Vienna Circle, whose most prominent
representatives are M. Schlick, R. Carnap, Hempel C. and O. Neurath, plus
inspiration from Hume, Comte and Mach, is distinguished from positivism s. XIX
focus its study, not fact, object of the natural sciences, but in the logical analysis of
language. His most positivistic feature is, however, the empiricist criterion of
meaning, or verification principle, according to which only have meaning, and
produce knowledge, therefore, those statements that are subject to verification,
that is, those for which there a method of checking whether they are true or false.
The Vienna Circle also advocates the thesis of the unity of science, or unified
science and at least some of its members also support the claim, characteristic of
Comte, that sociology has to follow the same methods the natural sciences; this
statement is the core of so-called "sociological positivism '.
Comte, concepts: THREE STAGES OF LAW
Basic Law Auguste Comte's positivism, according to which the sciences, the
human mind and humanity in general -to which Comte really be considered a pass
through three stages: the theological or fictitious state, when absolute explanations
are sought of things using personal principles and supernatural forces; the
metaphysical or abstract state, when replacing the supernatural by the abstract, is
resorted to force, causes or hidden entities; and the scientific or positive state,

when, recognizing the impossibility of absolute knowledge, man is content to know

the laws of things, that is, the relationships between phenomena. The first state are
three ways of philosophizing: fetishism, polytheism and monotheism and represent
theology or childhood of humanity; the second state, the prevalence of the causes,
or the set of all understood as nature, it is an intermediate philosophy,
metaphysics, and is a period of transition as a "disease
chronic 'own stage that passes, both for the individual and for humanity, between
childhood and manhood; the third state, the final time to tend the other two, it is the
time of manhood, adulthood the individual and humanity, whose characteristics
match those of industrial civilization. This historic phase is also the goal for the
individual and for society: the final positive state, which is what develops, "social
physics" positive philosophy, or sociology, the latest science and performing
synthesis All of them.
Auguste Comte text: law of three stages. "To conveniently explain the true nature
and character of the positive philosophy, it is essential, from the outset, take a look
back at the progressive march of the human spirit as a whole, since any of our
speculations may not be well understood rather than through its history.
Thus, studying the total development of human intelligence in its various spheres
of activity, from its origins to the present day, I have discovered a great
fundamental law, which is subject this development with an invariable need and I
think it can It is firmly established, along with rational evidence that gives us the
knowledge of our organization, along with the historical checks resulting from a
careful examination of the past. This law is that each of our major speculation,
every branch of our knowledge, passes successively through three states
(Stadiums) different theoretical: the theological or fictitious state, the metaphysical
or abstract state, and the scientific or positive state. In other words, that the human
spirit, by its nature, successively employed in each of their research, three
methods of philosophizing, whose characters are essentially different and even
radically opposed: first, the theological method; then the metaphysical method; and
finally the positive method. From here, three kinds of philosophies, or general
systems of reflection on the set of phenomena that are mutually exclusive: the first
is the point of necessary departure of human intelligence, the third its fixed and
definite state, and the second is intended only to serve as a transition.
In the theological state, the human spirit to essentially run their investigations into
the intimate nature of beings, to the first and final causes of all the effects that
astonish you, in a word, to absolute knowledge, the phenomena is represented as
produced by direct and continuous action of more or less numerous supernatural
agents, whose arbitrary intervention explains all the apparent anomalies of the
universe.
In the metaphysical state, which basically is nothing more than a simple
modification of the first, the supernatural agents are replaced by abstract forces,
real entities (personified abstractions), inherent in the different beings in the world,
and conceived as capable of engendering by themselves all observed phenomena
whose explanation is thus to assign to each corresponding entity.
Finally, in the positive state, the human mind, recognizing the impossibility of
obtaining absolute notions, renounces find the origin and destiny of the universe

and know the intimate causes of phenomena, to devote himself only to discover,
using well combined reasoning and observation, their effective laws, that is, their
invariable relations of succession and likeness. The explanation of the facts,
reduced to its real terms, will not be henceforth nothing but the coordination
between the various particular phenomena and some general facts, that the
various sciences have to limit as low as possible. "The Course in Positive
Philosophy, first lesson, Aguilar, Buenos Aires 1973, p. 34-36.
Comte, concepts: SOCIOLOGY
(Latin socius, partner, companion, and logos, rational discourse, therefore, study
the other as partner) According to Comte, (which, as we saw, was awarded have
been the first to use the term), study of the laws that govern social phenomena. In
general, it can be defined as a way to scientifically know what is considered typical
of "the social", using procedures of analysis of human behavior in society.
Precisely identify what is what can be called "social" marks the birth and early
development of sociology as a science, in France and Germany.
The search for the laws of social phenomena, speaking Comte, is based on a
principle in a biological model; if man is an organism, you can use the model of
biology to study man in society, which is composed of organisms. The idea, no
wonder the same Comte, cobra rise to theories of organicism which diffuses in
England, France and Germany for work, especially Herbert Spencer, for whom
human society is a real organism; organismic conception of social life receives
clear influences of evolution and Darwinism.
Moreover, during the nineteenth century they proliferate in Europe surveys social
character and case studies investigating the crisis situation, especially of
disadvantaged classes, which is reached after a period of transition to the industrial
era and social revolutions, which throws into question the blind belief of the
Enlightenment in the development and progress. Intellectuals companies also
develop their methods and statistical studies, whose implementation had
widespread governments of countries since the beginning of the century. At that
time correspond studies such as The situation of the working classes in England
(1845), Engels, or life and work of people in London, of C.J. Booth (1840-1916), a
work in 17 volumes published between 1892 and 1903. From the bottom of these
descriptive sociological investigations made, not by sociologists but by
professionals of various kinds-doctors, historians, teachers, priests, comes the first
scientific sociological trend, leading to the discovery of the element of cohesion of
society, the social bond, whose features serve to give an explanation of social
phenomena.
Based on the distinction between community and society, made by Ferdinand
Tonnies in 1887, establishing for each one (traditional and agricultural first, based
on kinship and participation of identical different form of relationship between the
individual and society values, while the second, modern, industrial, refers to a
partnership based on the contract and relationships determined by the division of
labor), . Durkheim published the first scientific sociological research, which
identify the situation of anomie, inevitable consequence of the psychological
processes that leads to the division of labor in modern societies, the basic
condition of the relationship between individual and society. Against the previous

biologismo and against psychologism, he played in France by Gabriel Tarde (18431904), who plays social through own psychological laws of phenomena group,
identifies the social fact sui generis and as something proper object of study
sociology, and research on own methods of sociology.
In France, the sociology that develops around these investigations preferably
acquires a descriptive and explanatory nature of social facts. The magazine
"l'annee sociologique" Durkheim founded in 1989, is the means of publication of
the main sociological studies of this period, which maintain some connection with
studies of ethnology, history and statistics.
Max Weber, author of a synthesis between history and sociology based on Dilthey,
Windelband and Rickert and to which the name of "comprehensive sociology" is
given, noted in Germany the beginning of a sociology with its own object. The aim
of sociology is the understanding of social action, that is, those facts produced by
human activity in which intentionality is essential. These characteristically social
facts, or to these social actions, it is not accessed if not through understanding, the
only way to capture, if not its laws, its meaning.
Sociological investigations of Weber and Simmel starts the German scientific
sociology, whose main disseminator is the magazine 'Archiv fr Sozialpolitik und
Sozialwissenschaft' [Archive of Social Sciences and Social Policy] (1902).
Marxism also involved in the birth of sociology as a science. The interpretation of
social reality, while the response to the crisis of society, gives Marxism from the
materialistic interpretation of history or historical materialism. Sociology is, in this
case, the same Marxism interprets history as a class struggle, which shows that
the social organization -the link directly dependent social relations of production of
each period; in the capitalist mode of production, these relationships reflect the
situation of inequality that comes from ownership of the means of production by the
bourgeoisie. Such relationships are conflicting by nature and result in "class
struggle"; the history of humanity to this day says Marx in the Manifesto, has not
been the history of class struggle.
Classical currents of European sociology go to North America during the interwar
period, through mass emigration of European intellectuals and translations of
works, and there are an enabling environment for broadcast, which is partially
responsible for the translation done by Talcott Parsons of the Protestant ethic and
the spirit of capitalism, Weber. The driver of the American Sociological research
center is the "Chicago School", created in 1892 as a department of sociology at the
University of Chicago, where the tradition of British empiricism and utilitarianism of
Jeremy Bentham merge with the pragmatism of William James, Charles S. Peirce
and John Dewey. As the city of Chicago a major center of ethnically varied
immigration becomes an open field for sociological research. Albion Small, the
founder of the sociological center, and Robert Park, his successor, founded an
eminently urban sociology, characterized by its empirical orientation and the
adoption of a methodology based on observation and case history.
Columbia University will replace these methods rather qualitative research by other
strictly quantitative. This new approach has, since 1935, of an organ of self
diffusion: the magazine "The American Sociological Review."
The appearance in 1937 of the first major work of Harvard professor T. Parsons,
the structure of social action, represents the introduction of the notion of

internalized structure (values and norms) as a source of interpretation of social

action. Later, in 1951, his work The social system means the application of
functionalism of Malinowski to sociology. The American functionalism enters crisis
towards the seventies, while charging booming new sociological trend known as
symbolic interaction.
.
Positivism prior to the Context: ideologues
Currently, they are named inspiring doctrinal points or fundamental lines of a
particular ideology. Historically, they are "les ideologues" French, of the Age of
Enlightenment, who, inspired by the British empiricists and especially in Condillac,
were in favor of the institution of a "science of ideas", to which the meaning of
them, ALC Destutt de Tracy, gave the name of "ideology"; this science should be
the basis of all others and was based on the analysis of sensations and ideas.
They taught their teachings on the Second Class of the Institut National de Paris
(also had belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte) developed education programs for
colleges, and also defended moderately, the ideas of the revolution and the ideals
of the enciclopedistas illustrated. His criticism in the political field induced
Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, to close down the Board of Education and the
Academy of Moral Sciences, which brought many of them Destutt de Tracy,
Cabanis, Lacunal, Garat, and others. They influenced the social ideas of Fourier
and Saint Simon, but their voices were drowned by spiritualists and French
traditionalists.
Concepts of time Comte: proletariat
* (Latin proletarius, citizen of Rome devoid of possessions) this term was originally
applied to the poor. From the eighteenth century it meant the "common people"
and from the nineteenth century appoints wage workers, especially urban. But
acquires its more technical meaning in Marxist terminology, according to which the
proletariat is the social class consisting of industrial workers and peasants without
their own resources, ie, the whole working class, in exchange for a wage must sell
their labor, which is their only way of survival in capitalist society. According to
Marx and Engels, the proletariat is a social class that emerges while the capitalist
mode of production is formed and structured as a class appears from the industrial
revolution, which divests the old craftsmen of their means of production. Since this
social class emerges appear to capitalism, the class struggle within this production
mainly faces the proletariat with bourgeois or capitalist class.
While the proletariat is the producer of all goods and all wealth agent, the capitalist
class, which is the owner of the means of production, it appropriates surplus value
and dispossessed proletarians product of their work. Since the capitalist system,
the world became, housed within it the possibility of developing sufficient for the
whole of mankind wealth, the contradiction between the development of productive
forces (capable of generating an oriented social purposes production) and relations
of production (in which all benefits are directed towards the private interests of the
capitalists) allows, according to Marx, that his improvement in a socialist society
end the exploitation of man by man, end the class struggle, and that in this future
society they disappear, and thus open a better future from which all previous

history appears only as the prehistory of humanity.

In classical Marxist theory, the concept of the proletariat is linked to the Marxist
doctrine of pauperization (Verelendungstheorie) whose estimates have not been
made in industrial societies, where the ancient proletariat has agreed to better
social positions than forecast, but some Marxist theorists still apply this term to
designate workers especially in the countries of the third world.
Concepts of time Comte: social class
* (Latin classis, division, group, class, class) group of individuals who have in
common the same situation or social status, determined by the or family heritage
staff, but also by other factors such as birth, occupation, wealth, work, etc. The
name comes with the first theorists of society in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, A. de Tocqueville and K. Marx, also used
by Auguste Comte, and refers to the specific situation of capitalist society that
despite the theoretical equality of law, citizens are clearly, in fact, unequal; unlike
what happened in societies caste feudal society or estates societies, which
distinguished clearly by institutional and legal citizens media and distributed in
privileged or caste, vassals and lords, or in the estates or orders of nobility, clergy
and people. The very inequality of capitalist society is, according to Marx, to
structural factors determined by the relations of production, which determine the
existence of two antagonistic classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, including
a class struggle establishes that must not cease until it is actually classless
communist society.