23 POSITIVISM

Dr. Chandreyi Banerjee

THE CONCEPT OF POSITIVISM

The origin of positivism as a well-established philosophy can be accredited to French philosopher August Comte in the 1830s. Positivism as a philosophy was mainly initiated as a polemical instrument against the romantic and speculative tradition that prevailed prior to the French Revolution. Its main purpose was to distinguish science from metaphysics and religion. Thus, positivism may be precisely described as a philosophical movement that emphasized on science and scientific method as the only source of knowledge and, which stood in sharp contrast to religion and metaphysics.

Comte rejected metaphysics for two reasons—-(i) its abstract nature with no grounding in reality; and, (ii) for being more concerned with emotional than with practical questions. He sought for ‘sociocracy’ dominated by scientists for the unity and progress of the entire humanity. Since a lot of social disorder was created following the French Revolution, Comte attempted to establish positivist philosophy as an organizational tool that would lead the society through an organized development. This was much against the metaphysical principle that sought to change society through utopian solutions to the existing situations. Therefore, Comte argued that philosophy was an ‘immature science’ and metaphysics should hence be replaced by a scientifically dominated ‘positive’ outlook.

August Comte delivered lectures on positivist philosophy which was published as a book with the title ‘The Course of Positive Philosophy.’ His positivist philosophy included the following five basic guidelines:

All scientific knowledge was to be based on direct and empirically verifiable experience of reality (phenomenology). This was supposed to provide an edge over theoretical conjectures. Scientific methods, he asserted, was to combine both reason and experience—reason to formulate the hypothesis; and, experience to do away with falsifications.

There was to be a unified scientific method or ‘le certitude’ acceptable to all the sciences. This implied that the different branches of knowledge were to be distinguished by their subject matter or the object of study rather than their method of study. In other words, branches of knowledge differed from each other not on the basis of how they studied but on the basis of what they studied.

This was possible only when there was ‘le precis’ or a common objective of formulating scientific theories that could be subjected to empirical testing and utilized for proposing universal laws. This meant that ethical-based value judgements (beliefs, customs, norms etc.) were not to be considered as part of scientific knowledge since they were not based on direct observations and thus, were not capable of empirical verifications.

The empirically verifiable theories so developed were supposed to be based on the tenet of ‘le utile’ meaning that it should have had some utility to serve as an instrument of social engineering.

Finally, the positivist philosophy was supposed to follow the doctrine of ‘le relative’ which implied that scientific knowledge was never complete but rather relative. It kept on progressing with time through the unification of scientific theories which increased human awareness about the social arrangements that in turn, required more inclusive theories.

The philosophy of positivism challenged several taboos and religious beliefs that existed against empirical investigations. The above five postulates provided some sort of transition from the immediate through the unitary to the universal.

Comte opined that development of the society took place in three stages:

theological when everything was described as God’s will;

metaphysical; and,

 positive when attempts were made to find out some sort of causal relations between the observed phenomena.

Comte advocated that it was true that the social phenomena were more complex than the natural phenomena, yet, there should have been a science of social relationships to be developed as parallel to and in the same principles as the natural sciences. The purpose of such social sciences would be to explore the laws governing human society through the scientific investigation of social communities. These ideas of Comte were much in tune with the proposition of John Locke that knowledge could only be derived through direct observations of actual situations and whatever were not supported by empirical facts could not considered as knowledge.

In a nutshell the basic tenets of positivism were:

Positivism was also described as empiricism (derived from the Greek word ‘empeire’ meaning experience) since it promoted science and scientific methods as a source of knowledge. It averred that science only dealt with ‘empirical questions’ that were based on experiences of real conditions as they existed and that which could be tested through experiments or some other measures. It enabled to discover the causal connections between the facts to arrive into some conclusions that were supposed to be value-free, unbiased and unprejudiced.

The positivist philosophy proved to be anti-idealistic that is, it stood in contrast to anything that was abstract and essentially a mental construct. Therefore, positivist philosophy did not deal with the ‘normative questions’ since they could not be tested empirically and could not be established with scientific evidence. Positivism thus rejected metaphysics for being unscientific.

Since positivism declared anything as unscientific and abstract until it could be verified with empirical evidence and tested through experiments, it did not accept authority just because it was declared as authority. This brought them in conflict with the Nazi Movement in Germany and positivist philosophy was branded as anti-authoritarian and the term ‘positivism’ was used as an abusive term.

   In the 1920s, positivism witnessed some sort of deviation from the classical Comtean ideas when, a group of scientists created the ‘Vienna Circle’ and identified themselves as the ‘logical positivists.’ German philosopher and physicist Moritz Schlick was the founder of this group which also had another German philosopher Rudolf Carnap as a prominent member. They upheld the viewpoint that some knowledge could also be gained without relying on experience, through formal logic and pure mathematics. Hence they distinguished between:

analytical statements which were, a priori propositions whose truth could be verified through tautologies and, which were essentially the domain of the formal sciences like logic and mathematics; and,

synthetic statements that were supposed to be established empirically through hypothesis testing and these in turn, were supported by the analytical statements.

Hence, logical positivism offered a much more authentic basis for scientific investigation. The essence of logical positivism was acquiring knowledge through a combination of both experience and analysis and using such knowledge to alter phenomena so as to yield a desired outcome. This philosophy included three interrelated precepts:

Scientism: This meant that the positive methods alone were the methods of acquiring knowledge.

Scientific Policies: This implied that only positivism was the key to social engineering or modification as it provided rational solutions to all social problems.

Value-Freedom: This implied that scientific judgements derived through positive methods were neutral, unbiased and objective and hence were free from any moral or political binders.

POSITIVISM IN GEOGRAPHY

There was a great deal of efforts in the latter half of the 19th century to develop the discipline of geography as a nomothetic science. This was largely the impact of the Darwinian tradition that invigorated the scientists to search for the governing laws of nature and in the same tune, the social scientists to explore the laws determining social arrangements. The hypothetic-deductive approach of study that was especially characteristic of the natural sciences, replaced the inductive methods in the social sciences. Thus there was an effort to accommodate social sciences within the framework of positivism. It must be pointed out here that the geographical developments that took place in the 1950s and 1960s were mainly committed to logical positivism. The researchers sought to develop a priori models about reality for which they devised a set of hypotheses that were to be authenticated, validated or discarded through testing of empirical data. Once verified, they were validated as laws until their eventual refutation through further research. The logical positivists conceived that some order persisted in the objective world that needed to be explored and discovered through scientific investigation—- spatial patterns of variation in geography—-that could not be manipulated by the observer. Geography soon became ‘positivist-led.’ The hypothetic-deductive approach led the discipline particularly human geography to develop as a model building and theoretical science since it dealt with phenomena that were familiar with reality both spatially and temporally.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the essence and purpose of Anglo-American geography witnessed a drastic transformation with the replacement of the idiographic approach that focused on areal differentiation with the adoption of the nomothetic methods that sought to explore models of spatial structure. This change was initiated by Schaefer with his critique of Kant’s exceptionalist views that placed history and geography as exceptional and different from the other systematic sciences. Schaefer put forward his ‘spatial organization paradigm’ and conceived geography as a spatial and social science primarily concerned with the formulation of laws that governed the spatial distribution of any phenomenon as they were found on the earth’s surface. Hence, Schaefer set off a sort of ‘revolution’ in geography that was basically ‘theoretical and quantitative’ in nature. This revolution in geography sought to provide the discipline a scientific approach with the application of mathematical and statistical methodologies. It largely accepted the tenets of positivism of unified scientific methods acceptable to all the sciences—-natural and human. The quantitative schools undertook to construct models and theoretical structures within which geographical realities were supposed to be incorporated.

The quantitative revolution that geography underwent by adopting the viewpoints of positivism was set off mainly by the mathematicians. It was mainly the outcome of the impact of the non-geographers on geography. As was evident in many other disciplines, it altered an already existing knowledge base with a mathematical approach. William Bunge in his ‘Theoretical Geography’ (1962) went as far as to describe geography as a science of spatial relations and geometry as the mathematics of space. So logically, geometry was supposed to be the language of geography.

What followed was the development of the concept of ‘space’ as the basic concept for organizing the subject matter of geography. Two major approaches were identified in the study of geography, namely—-

Spatial Analysis: This referred to the application of quantitative or more specifically statistical methods and techniques in locational analysis.

Spatial Science: This concept was largely akin to the positivist philosophy and presented human geography as a social science with its prime focus on space as the guiding principle behind the organization and operation of the society and the behaviour of individual human being.

These two approaches related to space led to the development of the following two aspects of space that became the central theses of geography:

Spatial Interaction: This referred to the interdependence between spatial units and was gratuitous to the interaction between humans and environment within a particular area.

Spatial Structure: This referred to the spatial arrangements or more precisely the geometric pattern of any phenomena on the earth’s surface since geometry was regarded as an important tool in geographical studies.

Inspired by positivist thinking, major advances towards a unified methodological and philosophical basis of the quantitative schools were rendered by Peter Haggett, Richard Chorley and David Harvey in the 1960s. The discipline of geography witnessed major theoretical and methodological developments. A new domain of knowledge emerged that came to be known as regional science. It was basically an assemblage of geography, economics and planning with its main concern for regional problems. The pioneer for this new discipline was Walter Isard (1956).

     The most important theoretical development that fundamentally incorporated the philosophy of positivism was the locational analysis of Peter Haggett. The concept was put forward by him in the book ‘Locational Analysis in Human Geography’ (1965). Following the geometric tradition this approach in human geography, more popularly termed as spatial science concerned itself with, the spatial arrangements of phenomena on the earth’s surface. In addition to this, it also dealt with the interaction between places within a spatial pattern, the dynamics of such patterns as well as the creation of alternative patterns through model building to provide for a better possibility. The Central Place Theory postulated by August Losch (1954), the Gravity Model by Stewart and Warntz (1959) or the Diffusion Theory of Hagerstrand (1953) were all formulated using locational analysis.

Another concept that was intrinsically associated with positivism was the concept of systems. A system was defined as an array of entities that had specific relationship among them as well as with their environment. Richard J. Chorley was the first geographer to introduce general systems theory in geography. His paper ‘Geomorphology and General Systems Theory’ (1962) was developed within the framework of the systems approach in which he tried to apply the concept of open and closed systems to geomorphology.

A major contribution to the positivist theory was made by David Harvey in his ‘Explanation in Geography’ (1969). He opined that reality was a set of complex phenomena particularly so far as the relationship between the phenomena were concerned. However, it was possible to decipher such complexities with the aid of system analysis which explored the structure and function of a system. Every system was supposed to have three fundamental aspects—-structure, function and development. The structure of the system was the set of elements it was comprised of and the relationship between them; function was the exchange or the flow between the elements while development meant the changes in the structure and function of the system over time.

Since geography studied the relationship between humans and the environment, systems analysis was supposed to have a wide range of applications especially in human geography. This was because the systems analysis was based on an implicit assumption of positivist philosophy and drew analogies between human societies on one hand and natural phenomena on the other.

This drawing of analogies led to the model and analogue theory that had close connections with positivism. A model was basically a structured conceptualization of reality that represented particular attributes of reality and, analogue theory was the formal theory related to building of models. A model or an analogue ranged from a structured idea to a hypothesis to a law to a theory. Following the positivist outlook, a model could be used as a guide to validate a set of hypothesis through empirical testing and to establish a theory as it contained some resemblances with the reality. Though model building had been used in many sciences since long back but, its use in geography was of comparatively recent origin and could be attributed to positivism.

CRITIQUE OF POSITIVISM

The positivist philosophy by rejecting metaphysics provided a sound philosophical, methodological and scientific base to the discipline of geography. Knowledge based on the observations of real situations that could be easily verified empirically was highly objective, unbiased and unprejudiced and could be readily utilized for the formulation of universal laws and theories. Positivism encouraged the use of statistical and mathematical techniques that provided precision to research and enabled to analyse a geographical system in a much more simplified form. It provided a kind of framework within which theoretical statements could be formally presented. However, the critique of positivism was highly intense and convincing. Positivism was criticized mainly on three fronts:

Empiricism: Positivism recognized the fact that theory building was essentially based on the direct observation of reality which could be subjected to statistical procedures for empirical verification. But this approach proved to be very superficial against which new philosophical and theoretical frameworks were designed and for which alternate methods than statistical techniques were required. These, like realism and structuralism offered a much more insightful exposure of human society. In contrast to positivism that concerned itself  with  ‘how’,  they  were  concerned  with  ‘why’  and  went  beyond  the  positivist argument to discover the processes that created a particular pattern of physical or social regularities.

Exclusivity: The positivists’ claim that the methods of natural sciences could be extended into the domain of the social sciences including humanities to establish a unified scientific method was also criticized. Positivism excluded the normative questions like beliefs, values, emotions, attitudes and so on. But in reality, much of human behaviour and social arrangements was to be guided by such questions. Hence, it provided a very parochial approach to the study of any domain of social sciences.

Autonomy: The assertion of positivism that knowledge based on direct observation and verified empirically would yield a scientific discipline that would be objective, neutral and unprejudiced was widely challenged.

Among the social sciences, human geography was the one to adopt the positivist doctrine in a great way as it provided a systematic and scientific approach to the discipline and where reality could be verified. This new paradigm was widely accepted particularly in the fields of urban and economic geography. Schafer’s paper on exceptionalism opened the door to the domain of (logical) positivism. The geography that developed by adopting the positivist doctrine emphasized on analyzing spatial data and developing spatial theory based on empirically tested mathematical models. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, there was increasing dissatisfaction among the geographers with over emphasis on spatial views and they sought to explore alternative approaches to geographical problems. They argued that human geography employing the spatial view was actually a sort of ‘fetishism’ that alienated, diverted and obscured the fundamental social questions. For this reason, even David Harvey later deviated from the positivist stand to focus on the question of social distribution.

The critique of positivism in geography mainly emanated from two sources:

Its acceptance of statistical techniques for making inferences about reality; and,

its acceptance of the assumption of the methodological unification of the sciences. Regarding the first criticism, Bennett in 1985, highlighted the following points:

      Positivism created a false sense of objectivity. The models constructed using statistical techniques that were considered as an effective tool of theory building actually deviated the observer from the observed by giving more prominence to some elements and undermining others. This paved the way for controlling and manipulating society. They were regarded as grossly inadequate for geographical enquiry as well due to non-repeatability of experiments and data.

By employing quantitative techniques positivism largely eliminated the social and humanistic concerns and reduced humankind as decision-makers or workers to mere passive agents. Such models mostly turned out to be the result of economic determinism.

Positivism described the existing real situation and thus encouraged status quo in society especially with respect to the distribution of social well-being.

Since it excluded the normative questions thus it deprived human society of the norms and values based on which it should have been organized. With its overenthusiasm with empirical questions, sometimes it overlooked many good qualitative statements that would have otherwise proved to be effective in describing regional entities.

Positivism attempted to construct theories with universal acceptability by moving from particular to the general which had reduced validity in real world owing to the spatial character of geographical data. Hence, this resulted into overgeneralization.

Availability of an extensive and reliable database was an important pre-requisite for the application of statistical techniques in human geography in the absence of which the models or theories developed were supposed to portray an erroneous and distorted picture of reality.

So far as the second criticism was concerned, some geographers like Peet or Slater derided the positivist-spatial science tradition in geography and even challenged its methodological base as a whole. Their rejection of positivism implied a rejection of the concept of space and hence the rejection of the entire subject matter of geography. They argued that spatial science with geometry as its language was not adequate for addressing geographical problems. Though space was regarded as the central theme of the subject, yet the discipline could not be distinguished from others solely on that ground. The concept of space merely reduced geography to a heterogeneous amalgam of spatial models that yielded no process of understanding or specific theoretical object to geography.

The separate development of physical and human geography also eroded the possibility regarding the unification of the subject. In most situations, human geographers minimized the role of the environment while physical geographers sought to develop theories detached from human and social needs.

The critique of positivism revived the social foundations and responsibilities of social sciences due to which geography went through an anti-positivism and critical revolution in the 1970s. A lot of humanistic approach was proposed to counter and replace the concept of an objective world highlighted upon by the positivist paradigm.