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The Social Function of Positivism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Frank E. Hartung
Frank E. Hartung*
Affiliation:
Wayne University, Detroit, Mich.
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Extract

Positivists since the time of Comte have defined objectivity in science in terms of the absence of prejudice on the part of the scientist towards the phenomena with which he deals. It has been assumed that if the observer would contemplate the facts himself, this objectivity—an absence of bias—could be attained. However, social psychologists, notably C. H. Cooley and G. H. Mead, have shown that this is not necessarily the case. In the study of culture, an outstanding positivist, W. G. Sumner, in his discussion of folkways and mores, has shown that this objectivity is impossible to attain. These men have described the process through which objects arise in one's experience, and come to be defined in terms of that experience, so that the same object may mean different things to different people. This seems to be the case with certain areas of social theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1945 , pp. 120 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1945

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References

Notes

1 The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (New York, 1859), pp. 28–33.

2 John Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (New York, 1874), Vol. 1, p. 257. Item number three has been slightly condensed by the present writer.

3 “Positivism,” in Ency. Soc. Sci., Vol. 12.

4 I do not mean to imply that Dewey is as consistently dialectic as Baldwin, Cooley or Mead. I have in mind primarily his Human Nature and Conduct. Baldwin's books referred to are The Individual and Society (1911), Mental Development in the Child and in the Race (1906), Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development (1897). Cooley's books are Human Nature and the Social Order (1922), Social Organization (1909), and Social Process (1918). Mead's books are The Philosophy of the Present (1932), Mind, Self, and Society (1934), and The Philosophy of the Act (1938).

5 Cf. Edward C. Jandy's well-written Charles Horton Cooley, his life and his social theory, for a discussion and an evaluation of this idealistic trend in Baldwin, Cooley and Mead.

6 Lenin, Materialism and Empirio Criticism (New York, 1927), pp. 160–170.

7 Op. cit., p. 311.

8 Frank E. Hartung, “Operationalism: Idealism or Realism?” and “Operationism as a Cultural Survival,” both in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Oct., 1942) and Vol. 11, No. 4 (Oct., 1944), respectively.

9 Comte, op. cit., pp. 49–50 (New York, 1855 ed. Parentheses supplied).

10 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York, 1936), p. 148. Several points in the immediately following paragraphs are derived from Mannheim, pp. 148–150.

11 For a detailed discussion of pre- and post-Comtean positivism in relation to this point, see Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, (New York, 1941), pp. 341–359; and, Frank E. Hartung, “The Sociology of Positivism,” Science and Society, Vol. VIII, No. 4 (Fall, 1944), pp. 328–341.

12 I wish tentatively to qualify this statement by excluding the positivists of the “Vienna Circle” for the time being, primarily because I am not intimately enough acquainted with their position. I will state, however, that to me their philosophical position is a reactionary one insofar as their idealism is based upon Berkeley and their conception of the relation of phenomena to each other is in terms of the probability of Hume.

13 A few references on this point are: Fiske, op. cit.; Marcuse, op. cit.; Roy W. Sellars, The Philosphy of Physical Realism and “Positivism in Contemporary American Thought,” Amer. Sociol. Rev., Vol. 4, No. 1 (Feb., 1939); Robert A. Nisbet, “The French Revolution and the Rise of Sociology,” Amer. J. Sociol., Vol. LXIX, No. 2 (Sept., 1943); J. S. Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, (London, 1875(?)); Mannheim, op. cit.; Hartung, op. cit. These are non-Marxian.

Marxian views will be found in various works by Marx, Engels and Lenin, among others. Recent, more or less consistently Marxian, articles on positivism are to be found in various issues of the quarterly Science and Society (New York, Vol. 1, No. 1 issued Fall, 1936).

By implication, but not necessarily explicitly so, the social scientists listed in footnote number 4, above, are also in conflict with positivism.

14 Frank E. Hartung, “The Sociology of Positivism,” op. cit.

15 This is discussed in some detail in V. J. McGill, “An Evaluation of Logical Positivism,” Science and Society, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Fall, 1936).

Fiske's discussion of this aspect of positivism is in op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 174–176. His emphasis is somewhat different, being concerned with phenomenalism and Absolute Existence as the two sides of the self-contradiction. Reference is made to agnosticism in another connection. He also discusses the shortcomings of the three stages, using the term “deanthropomorphization” where I use “secular” above.

16 Herbert Spencer, Recent Discussions, p. 124. Spencer, however, is no less a positivist for having rejected Comte's three stages of thought. Micheal M. Davis, Psychological Interpretations of Society, (New York, 1909), p. 16, criticizes Comte's stages from a somewhat different view.

17 This statement of alternatives may seem to be arbitrary, but is not intended to be so. It is not within the limitations of this paper to explore the objections that may be raised to this point, particularly that which would pose objective idealism as one alternative, rather than dialectical idealism.

18 Herbert Marcuse, op. cit., p. 3. The “Introduction” is an excellent discussion of this point.

19 Fiske, op. cit., vol. 2, Chapter VI, esp. pp. 478 ff.

20 This is, of course, a very simplified statement of the ideological basis of evolution as a scientific concept. To develop this ideological conception in any detail would require at least monographic treatment. However, a partial verification of this view is to be found in the fate of the concept of cultural evolution. Widely adopted in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, used as a basis for the crudest rationalizations of the status quo, its application to social forms was quickly withdrawn when the Marxists adapted it to their own use in showing that bourgeois society was bound to evolve to a socialist system. To this day, anthropology, and to a lesser extent sociology, are the only sciences in which an anti-evolutionary philosophy is respectable: “the theory of cultural evolution (is) to my mind the most inane, sterile, and pernicious theory ever conceived in the history of science. . . .” Quoted from B. Laufer in Leslie A. White, “Energy and the Evolution of Culture,” Amer. Anthro., Vol. 45, No. 3 (July, 1943), p. 355. This article is an excellent statement of the concept of cultural evolution by one of its few American advocates. Cf. also V. F. Calverton, “Modern Anthropology and the Theory of Cultural Compulsives,” in The Making of Man (New York, 1935), for a discussion of the ideological acceptance and rejection of cultural evolution. A. D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York, 1896), Vol. 1, Chapter 1, has a survey and bibliography of pre-nineteenth century evolutionary ideas, and, on pages 67–68, specific reference to Malthus and Darwin. John Maynard Keynes, “Robert Malthus, The First of the Cambridge Economists,” in Essays in Biography (New York, 1933), pp. 95–150, describes in some detail how Malthus came to write his Essay when arguing against his father, who was defending Rousseau and Godwin, and other of the negative philosophers.

21 For a fuller discussion of these points see Peter Richard Rohden, “Maistre, Comte Joseph Marie de,” Ency. Soc. Sci., Vol. 10, pp. 50–51. Rohden believes de Maistre influenced Comte through Saint Simon. However, I think that Comte's Positive Philosophy and his Positive Polity indicate a direct influence. See also Harold J. Laski, Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty (New Haven, 1917), Chapter V.

22 Comte, op. cit. (New York, 1859 ed.), pp. 36ff. See also p. 400 et passim.

23 Hartung, “The Sociology of Positivism.“

24 Comte, op. cit., pp. 539–540.

25 Marcuse, op. cit., p. 21.

26 W. G. Sumner and A. G. Keller, The Science of Society, Vol. 1, p. 31.

27 W. G. Sumner, Folkways, p. 4.

28 “Modern society is ruled by the middle class. In honor of the bourgeoisie it must be said that they have invented institutions of civil liberty which secure to all safety of liberty and property. They have not, therefore, made a state for themselves alone or chiefly, and their state is the only one in which no class has had to fear oppressive use of political power.” Op. cit., p. 169. Cooley, in discussing Folkways in “Sumner and Methodology,” says, “… last and worst, its objectivity is open to question. There is reason to think that Sumner was by no means an unbiased man, but was, on the contrary, noted for a somewhat dogmatic individualism and pessimism that were not without influence upon his treatment of the folkways.” Sociological Theory and Social Research, p. 325.