Positivism: the march of science

Inherent in the methodologies guiding research efforts are a number of theoretical perspectives, as the previous chapter has suggested and Table 1 has exemplified. Furthermore, there is a range of epistemological positions informing the theoretical perspectives. Each epistemological stance is an attempt to explain how we know what we know and to determine the status to be ascribed to the understandings we reach.

In Chapter 1 we tried our hand at establishing some relationships among these elements. We connected epistemologies to perspectives to methodologies to methods. In the history of the natural and social sciences, some connections of this kind occur more frequendy than others. Certainly, as we look back over the last century-and-a-half, there is one very common string that emerges across our columns. It starts with objectivism (as epistemology), passes through positivism (as theoretical perspective), and is found, historically, informing many of the methodologies articulated within social research.

This positivist perspective encapsulates the spirit of the Enlightenment, the self-proclaimed Age of Reason that began in England in the seventeenth century and flourished in France in the century that followed. Like the Enlightenment that gave it birth, positivism offers assurance of unambiguous and accurate knowledge of the world. For all that, we find it adopting a number of guises. This chapter is concerned with the various meanings that positivism has assumed throughout the history of the concept and with the post-positivism that has emerged to attenuate its claims without rejecting its basic perspective.

Source: Michael J Crotty (1998), The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process, SAGE Publications Ltd; First edition.