In fact, while Durkheim is widely considered the most important functionalist among positivist theorists, it is well known that much of his analysis was culled from reading Spencer's work, especially his Principles of Sociology ( 1874-96 ).

However, this positivist reading, which mostly based itself on Engels ' latter writings in an attempt to theorize " scientific socialism " ( an expression coined by Engels ) has been challenged by Marxist theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci or Althusser.

In his book Science, Faith and Society ( 1946 ), Polanyi set out his opposition to a positivist account of science, noting that it fails to recognise the role which personal commitments play in the practice of science.

There were many points on which Durkheim agreed with the positivist thesis.

That which makes such a description different from the " naive " subjective descriptions of the man in the street, or those of the traditional, positivist social scientist, is the utilization of phenomenological methods.

This is something which has often been ignored under ' traditional ' IR as positivist theories make a distinction between ' facts ' and normative judgments, or ' values '.

Post-processualist Daniel Miller believed that the positivist approach of the processualists, in holding that only that which could be sensed, tested and predicted was valid, only sought to produce technical knowledge that facilitated the oppression of ordinary people by elites.

International relations theories can be divided into " positivist / rationalist " theories which focus on a principally state-level analysis, and " post-positivist / reflectivist " ones which incorporate expanded meanings of security, ranging from class, to gender, to postcolonial security.

Along with Andre-Michel Guerry, he helped to establish the cartographic school and positivist schools of criminology which made extensive use of statistical techniques.

Paradoxically, he admired the positivist philosopher Auguste Comte, like many of the Third Republic leaders he detested, in which he found a counter-balance to German idealism.

Notably, Menachem Elon adopts a legal positivist approach in his extensive study ( Elon 1994 ), which has been used to train Israeli law students at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

It has roots in both the positivist view of the world, and the modern marketing viewpoint that marketing is an interactive process in which both the buyer and seller reach a satisfying agreement on the " four Ps " of marketing: Product, Price, Place ( location ) and Promotion.

Raimundo Teixeira Mendes presented a project in which the imperial coat of arms was replaced by a blue celestial globe and the positivist motto.

From the early part of the 20th century until WWII, the field was characterised by a notably empiricist and positivist approach, termed the " French School ," in which scholars examined works forensically, looking for evidence of " origins " and " influences " between works from different nations.

) For Lewis, the logical positivist shuts his eyes to precisely that which properly confirms a sentence, namely the content of experience.

The cultural turn has been described by one of its most prominent historiographers as a “ wide array of new theoretical impulses coming from fields formerly peripheral to the social sciences ,” especially post-structuralism and various forms of linguistic analysis, which emphasized “ the causal and socially constitutive role of cultural processes and systems of signification .” It also describes a shift in emphasis toward meaning and away from a positivist epistemology.

The first, and probably most common, is the positivist approach, in which evaluation can only occur where there are “ objective ”, observable and measurable aspects of a program, requiring predominantly quantitative evidence.

A detailed example of the positivist approach is a study conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California report titled " Evaluating Academic Programs in California's Community Colleges ", in which the evaluators examine measurable activities ( i. e. enrollment data ) and conduct quantitive assessments like factor analysis.

Despite the paradigm which is used in any program evaluation, whether it be positivist, interpretive or critical-emancipatory, it is essential to acknowledge that evaluation takes place in specific socio-political contexts.

In his 1955 William James lecture series, which were later published under the title How to Do Things with Words, Austin argued against a positivist philosophical claim that the utterances always " describe " or " constate " something and are thus always true or false.

It was the publication of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, however, which fully opened the study of science to new disciplines by suggesting that the evolution of science was in part sociologically determined and that it did not operate under the simple logical laws put forward by the logical positivist school of philosophy.

Jürgen Habermas argues, in his On the Logic of the Social Sciences ( 1967 ), that " the positivist thesis of unified science, which assimilates all the sciences to a natural-scientific model, fails because of the intimate relationship between the social sciences and history, and the fact that they are based on a situation-specific understanding of meaning that can be explicated only hermeneutically ... access to a symbolically prestructured reality cannot be gained by observation alone.

Jürgen Habermas argues, in his On the Logic of the Social Sciences ( 1967 ), that " the positivist thesis of unified science, which assimilates all the sciences to a natural-scientific model, fails because of the intimate relationship between the social sciences and history, and the fact that they are based on a situation-specific understanding of meaning that can be explicated only hermeneutically ... access to a symbolically prestructured reality cannot be gained by observation alone.

However, the author has been criticised for an incomplete understanding of Eastern astrology and mysticism, which may in part have been due to his positivist approach.

The school was based on positivist philosophy and the University motto of “ Amor, orden y progreso ” (" love, order and progress ") remains to this day.

This is much the opposite of theory-driven, hypothesis-testing research methods that are based on the positivist epistemology.

In a 1931 paper with Albert Blumberg, " Logical Positivism: A New European Movement ," he argued for logical positivism to be renamed " logical empiricism " based upon certain realist differences between contemporary philosophy of science and the older positivist movement.

The reforms were guided by educational and scientific progress, and based on the principles of positivist and rationalist enlightenment.

Whilst Comte's religious movement was unsuccessful, the positivist philosophy of science itself played a major role in the proliferation of secular organizations in the 19th century.

Bradley was also famously criticised in A. J. Ayer's logical positivist work, Language, Truth and Logic, for making statements that do not meet the requirements of positivist verification principle, e. g. statements such as " The Absolute enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution and progress.

This fictional history, initially drafted on parchment, was carved in stone and cast in metal ; it " has rooted itself in our perception to such an extent that no positivist criticisms can make humanity doubt its veracity.

It removes our present expression and shows that the badness we meant would not be affected by this, whereas on positivist grounds it should be.

It ideally removes the past event, and shows that this would render false what we mean to say, whereas on positivist grounds it should not.

Identifying a particular theorist as a positivist or a natural law theorist sometimes involves matters of emphasis and degree, and the particular influences on the theorist's work.

The positivist view on law can be seen to cover two broad principles: Firstly, that laws may seek to enforce justice, morality, or any other normative end, but their success or failure in doing so does not determine their validity.

The main influences on the early logical positivists were the positivist Ernst Mach, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell and the young Ludwig Wittgenstein.

As Orans points out Mead's data support several different conclusions, and that Mead's conclusions hinge on an interpretive, rather than positivist, approach to culture.

Upon his return to Frankfurt, Adorno was influential to the reconstitution of German intellectual life through debates with Karl Popper on the limitations of positivist science, critiques of Heidegger's jargon of authenticity, writings on German responsibility for the Holocaust, and continued interventions into matters of public policy.

A key difference between the two positions is that while positivist theories, such as neo-realism, offer causal explanations ( such as why and how power is exercised ), post-positivist theories focus instead on constitutive questions, for instance what is meant by ' power '; what makes it up, how it is experienced and how it is reproduced.

By the 18th century, historians had turned toward a more positivist approach focusing on fact as much as possible, but still with an eye on telling histories that could instruct and improve.

He soon became a friend of Comte, and popularised his ideas in numerous works on the positivist philosophy.

: The legal positivist concentrates his attention on law at the point where it emerges from the institutional processes that brought it into being.

Current positivist approaches generally focus on the culture.

Especially since the mid-20th-century European crisis, researchers have begun recognizing the importance of looking at nature from a broader, philosophical perspective rather than the narrow, positivist approach that relies implicitly on a hidden, unexamined philosophy.

At first glance, it would seem that the pragmatic conception of meaning, despite its different formulation and its focus on action, very much resembles the logical positivist verification requirement.

Dostoyevsky's novels focus on the idea that utopias and positivist ideas, in being utilitarian, were unrealistic and unobtainable.

Much of the positivist ideas of progress that dominated the social science philosophy of Spencer and subsequent Social Darwinists has been criticized by present-day sociologists, but such ideas continue to be one of the major critiques made by creationists against evolution in general, even though strict biological evolution does not depend on it nor offer any type of endorsement of so-called " social Darwinism " or its derivative philosophies such as eugenics.