POSITIVISM, piiz'ti-tIv-izm, originally de notes any theory that takes the affirmative side and states its tenets in positive terms. In this sense one speaks of positive Christianity or positive theology, as synonymous with dog matism, indicating thereby that liberal religion which rejects belief in miracles, or a special revelation, or the traditional Church doctrines, is negative.
The term was appropriated by August Comte to denote a philosophy that would limit itself to the positive sciences and exclude all meta physical speculation. .Comte propounded posi tivism as the ultimate aim of the evolution of knowledge, which (as Turgot had indicated) necessarily passed through three stages, the theological, the metaphysical and the positive. In the theological stage, the classified phenom ena of nature are personified as gods — a view based upon a mythological interpretation of nature which reaches its climax in minotheism and leads to the metaphysical stage in which the laws of nature are conceived as imper sonal essences or powers. The highest and last stage is attained when the scientist is satisfied simply to describe the facts and leave out all metaphysical speculation.
Comte felt that there was something wrong with metaphysics, and he eliminated it from the domain of his philosophy, but instead of solv ing the problem, he ignored it on the plea that it was unsolvable. His great work (Philosophie Positive) (consisting of six volumes) contains simply a recapitulation of the whole range of human knowledge, the systematic arrangement of which he called the hierarchy of the sciences. Comte does not deny the existence of some thing metaphysical, but only maintains that re search in this domain is fruitless.
Eugen Diihring, a German philosopher of great acumen, rightly criticizes Comte's posi tivism in saying that °its main contents, strangely enough, consist in negativism,' and "a hierarchy of the sciences offering a digest of knowledge cannot pretend to be philosophy)) (Krit. Gesch. d. Phil. p. 486).
In a more advanced stage of his life, Comte felt the need of going beyond the standpoint of the positive sciences. In response to this need of his nature he invented a religion of mankind which should be based on science, re placing the idea of God by the conception of ideal mankind. Comte's conception of a sci entific religion is worthy of a great genius, but the rituals which he prescribes are too artificial, and proved acceptable only to a very limited circle of his admirers.
Littre, the well-known author of a French dictionary, disavowed Comte's religion as fan tastic, but he accepted his philosophy which he formulated as follows: The domain that lies beyond refers to the things that cannot be known. Positive science proposes neither to deny nor to affirm them. In a word, it does not know the Unknowable, but it recog nizes its existence. This is the highest philos ophy. To go beyond is chimerical, to go not so far is to miss the mark.' The most prominent English representative of Comtean positivism, George Henry Lewes, sums up the tenets of positivism in this sen tence: "Our province is to study her (nature's) laws, to trace her processes, and, thankful that we can so far penetrate the divine significance of the universe, be content — as Locke wisely and modestly says — to sit down in quiet ig norance of all transcendent subjects."
The modern representative of Comte's posi tivism in England, averring both his philosophy and his religion, is Frederick Harrison, presi dent of the English Positivist Committee, and author of 'Positive Evolotion of Religion) (New York 1913).
In spite of the shortcomings of Comte's philosophy, the conception of positivism is a great and recommendable ideal; but positivism in order to fulfil its purpose should be truly positive. Genuine positivism would be a philos ophy based upon the facts of experience. Whether or not metaphysics is wrong depends entirely upon the definition of the word. If "the metaphysical" is a mysterious essence or power behind nature, the scientist should not merely ignore it but deny its existence; but if, after the precedence of Aristotle, we under stand by metaphysics "the science of first prin ciples," we must grant that its study, far from being fruitless, is indispensable for every scientist.
The aim of a positive philosophy should be to understand the methods and general spirit of science, to systematize the results of the totality of human knowledge and to apply them to practical life. Accordingly, philosophy will serve three purposes: it will be (1) the propm deutics (preliminaries) of science, (2) a synopsis of all knowledge and (3) ethics or the science of moral conduct. The first branch of philosophy includes logic, epistemology and methodology, that is, the sciences which are equally needed as intellectual tools in all the several branches of inquiry. The second part, a synopsis of all knowledge, cannot be a mere compendium or a hierarchy of the sciences, hut must be worked out into a systematic world conception, not a mere sum of the sciences but their product, which might be called "ontology,' that is, the science of existence or "cosmonomy," the science of the world constitution. Ontology in the old sense is an a priori construction of a system of abstract thought; in the new sense it would be a methodical arrangement of the facts of experience, a monistic or consistent system of knowledge. Cosmonomy explains the prevalence of uniformities and their formulation as general rules, called laws of nature, etc. It points out the permanent back ground of existence, the eternal conditions of becoming from which world-systems originate and, above all, defines man's position toward the whole of existence, toward his fellows and especially toward those factors that determine his destiny— in religious nomenclature called "God.' The third part of philosophy would be a practical application of the second, resulting in what has been called philosophy proper, world-wisdom or, broadly speaking, ethics. Con sult Huxley, Thomas, 'Scientific Aspects of Positivism> (in 'Lectures and Lay Sermons,' Everyman's Library, 1910).