Fundamentals of positivism. The main ideas of the philosophy of positivism

Positivism (from lat. positivus- positive) - the direction of philosophy, the essence of which is the desire to put philosophy on a solid scientific basis, free from non-scientific features and make only reliable scientific knowledge as a support. According to positivists, philosophy should only explore facts (and not their inner essence), free itself from any evaluative role, be guided in research by the scientific arsenal of means (like any other science) and rely on the scientific method.

Positivism as a trend philosophical thought originated in the 30s - 40s. XIX century. Positivism has undergone a great evolution and is widespread and popular in the modern era.

In its development, positivism passed four main stages:

1) classical positivism(O. Comte and G. Spencer);

2) empiriocriticism (Machism)(E. Mach and R. Avenarius);

3) neopositivism(philosophers of the Vienna Circle, the Lvov-Warsaw School, B. Russell and L. Wittgenstein);

4) post-positivism(K. Popper, T. Kuhn).

classical positivism. The founder of positivism is considered a student of Saint-Simon, a French philosopher Auguste Comte(1798 - 1857), as well as JohnStuart Mill(1806 - 1873) and Herbert Spencer(1820 – 1903).

According to Auguste Comte (1798 - 1857), the philosophical dispute between materialism and idealism has no serious grounds and is meaningless. Philosophy must renounce both materialism and idealism and be based on positive (scientific) knowledge. It means that:

philosophical knowledge must be absolutely accurate and reliable;

to achieve it, philosophy must use the scientific method in cognition and rely on the achievements of other sciences;

main way to get scientific knowledge in philosophy, empirical observation;

philosophy should investigate only the facts, and not their causes, the "inner essence" of the surrounding world and other problems far from science;

philosophy must free itself from the value approach and from the evaluative nature of research;

philosophy should not strive to become the “queen of sciences”, a superscience, a special general theoretical worldview, it should become a specific science based on an arsenal of precisely scientific (and not any other) means, and take its place among other sciences.

Comte also put forward law of dual evolution – intellectualAndtechnical. In this connection, the philosopher identified three stages of intellectual development and three stages of technical development.

The stage of intellectual development includes: theological(worldview based on religion), metaphysical(worldview, intellectual development is based on non-systematic, probabilistic knowledge) and positive(based on science).

The stages of technical development include: traditional, pre-industrial And industrial society.

The stages of intellectual and technical development generally correspond to each other: theological - traditional society, metaphysical - pre-industrial, and positive (scientific) - industrial. Comte's philosophy only laid the foundations of positivism. In the future (up to the present day), positivist philosophy was supplemented and improved by a number of other philosophers.

John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873) in his work "The System of Deductive and Inductive Logic" tried to lay the foundations of methodology for all sciences. According to Mill, the basis for all sciences should be inductive logic, which analyzes the data of experience and formulates its conclusions on their basis. At the same time, inductive logic should become the basis even for such deductive (based on axioms) sciences as mathematics and logic.

Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903) - another major representative of the "first positivism". He was at the forefront of a naturalistically oriented sociology, often referred to as "social Darwinism." The idea of ​​the unity of the laws governing nature and man, under the influence of the huge leap that the natural sciences made at that time, was very common in the 19th century. Spencer drew ideas for his theory from biology, considering society as a single organism, similar to a living organism. The integrity of society is ensured by its division into two systems existing in it - external and internal. This organism maintains balance, adapts to the environment and develops. Spencer believed that the development of any organism is closely related to its adaptation to the environment, i.e., in the case of society, to nature, and implies, first of all, the differentiation of its organs and functions, and, consequently, its constant complication.

Empiriocriticism (Machism). The "second form of positivism" is often referred to as empirio-criticism ("critique of experience"). Its creators are an Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst max(1838 - 1916), German philosopher RichardAvenarius(1843 - 1896) and French philosopher and mathematician Henri Poincare(1854 - 1912). The main idea of ​​empirio-criticism: philosophy must be based on critical experience.

Empirio-criticism speaks from a subjective-idealistic position: all objects, phenomena of the surrounding world are presented to a person in the form of a “complex of sensations”. Consequently, the study of the surrounding world is possible only as an experimental study of human sensations. And since human sensations have a place in all sciences, philosophy should be:

firstly, an integrative, "universal" science;

secondly, a reliable science about human sensations, to translate abstract scientific concepts into the language of sensations (for example, mass, size do not exist on their own, but are what a person feels as mass, size).

In view of its subjective idealism, empirio-criticism partly diverged from the very principles of positivism, which is why it did not become widespread.

Neopositivism. On the contrary, neopositivism was a very popular and widespread trend in philosophy in the first half and the middle of the 20th century. The main representatives of neopositivism were:

philosophers « Viennese circle": its founder Moritz Schlick(1882 - 1936) and followers - Rudolf Carnap(1891 – 1970), Otto Neurath(1882 - 1945) and Ganz Reichenbach (1891 – 1953));

representatives Lviv-Warsaw School (Jan Lukasiewicz(1978 - 1956) and Alfred Tarski (1902 – 1984));

English philosopher, logician and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970);

Austro-English philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951).

The main idea of ​​neopositivism is that philosophy must deallogical analysis of the language of science, since language, like the language of science, is the main means through which a person positively (reliably, scientifically) perceives the world. Philosophy should deal with the logical analysis of the text, signs, concepts, relationships within sign systems, the semantics (meaning) contained in signs (this is how neopositivism approaches hermeneutics).

The basic tenet of neopositivism is verification principle, i.e.comparing all the provisions of science with the facts of experience. Only then the position, the concept makes sense, is of interest to science, when it can be verified, i.e. subject to experimental verification of facts. Most of the problems of the old philosophy (being, consciousness, idea, God) are not subject to verification, and therefore, these problems are pseudo-problems that do not have a reliable scientific solution. Therefore, they must be excluded from philosophy. Thus, another goal of neopositivism (in addition to the logical analysis of the language of science) was liberation of philosophy from metaphysical(not having a reliable scientific solution) problems.

Postpositivism. The latest variant of positivism is post-positivism(second half - the end of the 20th century). Within the framework of postpositivism, it is conditionally possible to distinguish two main directions (naturally, they reveal commonality among themselves):

1) fallibilistic ( Karl Popper (1902 – 1994), Imre Lakatos(1922 - 1974), etc.);

2) relativistic ( Thomas Kuhn (1922 – 1996), Paul Feyerabend(1924 - 1994), etc.)

Major English philosopher, sociologist, logician Karl Popper (1902 - 1994) his philosophical concept critical rationalism developed by overcoming logical positivism. His ideas became the starting point for postpositivism. These include:

1. The problem of demarcation- a concept from the philosophical concept of K. Popper, where this problem is considered as one of the main tasks of philosophy, which consists in separating scientific knowledge from non-scientific knowledge. The method of demarcation, according to Popper, is the principle of falsification.

2. The principle of falsification- the principle proposed by Popper as a demarcation of science from "metaphysics", non-science, as an alternative to the verification principle put forward by neopositivism. This principle requires the fundamental refutability (falsifiability) of any statement related to science. According to the philosopher, a scientific theory cannot be consistent with all facts without exception. It is necessary to exclude facts that are not consistent with it. Moreover, the more facts the theory refutes, the more it meets the criterion of reliable scientific knowledge. Popper's principle of falsification favorably differs from the neopositivist principle of verification, since it allows one to analyze relative knowledge - knowledge that is in its infancy.

3. Principle of fallibilism- the principle of Popper's concept, stating that any scientific knowledge is only hypothetical and subject to error. The growth of scientific knowledge, according to Popper, consists in putting forward bold hypotheses and implementing their resolute refutation.

4. The theory of "three worlds"– theory philosophical concept K. Popper, who affirms the existence of the first world - the world of objects, the second world - the world of subjects and the third world - the world of objective knowledge, which is generated by the first and second worlds, but exists independently of them. The analysis of the growth and development of knowledge in this independent third world is, according to Popper, the subject of the philosophy of science.

Thus, postpositivism moves away from the priority of the logical study of symbols (language, scientific apparatus) and turns to the history of science. The main goal of postpositivism in general is study not structures (like neopositivists) of scientific knowledge (language, concepts), but development of scientific knowledge. The main questions of interest to postpositivists are: how a new theory arises, how it achieves recognition, what are the criteria for comparing scientific theories, both related and competing, is understanding possible between supporters of alternative theories, etc. Postpositivism softens its attitude to philosophy in general, to the problems of cognition. According to postpositivists, there is no obligatory interdependence between the truth of a theory and its verifiability (the possibility of testing on the facts of experience), just as there is no rigid contradiction between the general meaning of science and the language of science, and it is not necessary to exclude unverifiable (metaphysical, non-scientific) problems from philosophy. As for the problem of the development of science, according to post-positivists (primarily Thomas Kuhn), science does not develop strictly linearly, but in leaps and bounds, it has ups and downs, but the general trend is towards the growth and improvement of scientific knowledge.

) Comte represents humanity as a growing organism, passing through three stages in its development: childhood, adolescence and maturity. Comte's ideas inspired two English thinkers: Mill and Spencer. This positivism has been called First, or classical. In Russia, his followers were N. Mikhailovsky, V. Lesevich.

In the German lands, positivism absorbed some elements of Kantianism and acquired its own specifics. Therefore, it began to be distinguished from the first positivism and called second positivism, or Empiriocriticism. Its representatives were the Swiss Richard Avenarius and the Austrian Ernst Mach. According to Lenin, the views of Poincare and Duhem were close to the views of the second positivism. In August 1900, Poincaré directed the logic section of the First World Congress of Philosophy, held in Paris. There he delivered a keynote speech "On the Principles of Mechanics", where he outlined his conventionalist philosophy. In Russia, the empirio-monism of A. Bogdanov adjoins the second positivism, and in the USA - the pragmatism of C. Pierce:

Closely related to the second "German" positivism is the neo-positivism, or logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, since its leader Moritz Schlick was Mach's immediate successor. In addition to Schlick, Carnap and Neurath were the central figures of the circle. Ludwig Wittgenstein also took part in the work of the circle. This circle found its active supporter and propagandist in England in the person of Ayer, and in the USA in the person of Quine. Since 1930, the Vienna Circle, together with the Reichenbach group in Berlin, has been publishing the journal Erkenntnis (Knowledge), which promotes the ideas of logical positivism. The neo-positivists convened a number of congresses: in Prague (1929), Koenigsberg (1930), Prague (1934), Paris (1935), Copenhagen (1936), Paris (1937), Cambridge (1938). As a result of World War II, Vienna ceased to exist as a center of neo-positivism, and its representatives emigrated to English-speaking countries.

"English-language" neo-positivism is usually called analytic philosophy, since English-language philosophy was already prepared both by the centuries-old traditions of nominalism and empiricism, and immediately preceding the ideas of utilitarianism, pragmatism (Morris) and neorealism (Russell, Moore). Main difference analytical philosophy from Austrian neo-positivism in a shift in focus from logical analysis to linguistic analysis of natural language. If the philosophy of logical positivism considered itself the philosophy of science and represented the line of scientism, the supporters of analytic philosophy opposed any cult of scientific knowledge and defended the "natural" attitude to the world, expressed in everyday language. For example, Ludwig Wittgenstein is considered both an Austrian neopositivist and a representative of the analytic tradition. Under the influence of Wittgenstein was the British philosopher Russell, who is considered a representative not only of neo-realism, but also of neo-positivism. The key representatives of English neo-positivism were Gilbert Ryle, John Wisdom and John Austin, American neo-positivism was represented by Goodman, Davidson, Kripke and Searle.

After World War II, post-positivism emerged in English-speaking countries. Representatives: Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Michael Polanyi, Stephen Toulmin.

Positivism of Auguste Comte | Second Positivism: Empiriocriticism + Machism | Neopositivism: Vienna Circle + Lvov-Warsaw School ______________|_____________ | | Postpositivism Analytic philosophy

Fundamentals of Positivism

The positivists combined the logical and empirical methods into a single scientific method. The essence of a single method for all sciences, which provides reliable and reliable knowledge of the laws of nature, was expressed in the manifesto of the Vienna Circle, published in 1929: “We have characterized the scientific worldview, mainly through two defining moments. First, it is empiricist and positivist: there is only experiential knowledge based on what is directly given to us ( das unmittelbar Gegebene). This sets a boundary for the content of legitimate science. Secondly, the scientific worldview is characterized by the use of a certain method, namely, the method of logical analysis.

The main goal of positivism is the acquisition of objective knowledge.

Positivism influenced the methodology of the natural and social sciences (especially in the second half of the 19th century).

Stages of human history from the position of positivism (according to Auguste Comte)

• Theological- as an explanatory hypothesis, they use the concept of God, who is prescribed the root causes of phenomena and who is clothed in a human-like image. The theological stage itself falls into three stages: fetishism, polytheism and monotheism.
  • Fetishism is caused by the fact that a person's fantasy is still too weak to go beyond phenomena, so a person worships fetishes - things endowed with a human status.
  • Polytheism - people begin to clothe the root causes in human images and invent gods.
  • Monotheism is characterized by the fact that the root causes are structured, among them the main and secondary are distinguished, until, finally, the main root cause is revealed - the One God. This step is called monotheism.
• metaphysical- people still strive to comprehend the beginning and purpose of things, but the place of the gods is occupied by abstract entities. The place of the One God is taken by Nature, which Comte defines as "the vague equivalent of the universal connection". It is in the language of the positivists that metaphysics acquires a negative connotation, since the essence and the notorious nature of things turn out to be the fruit of baseless fantasy, even if it is expressed in a strict logical form.
• Positive According to Comte, scientific knowledge becomes the only form of knowledge. Humanity is becoming old enough to courageously recognize the relativity (relativity) of our knowledge. In this aspect, positivism overcomes the optimism characteristic of the scientific revolution of the Baroque era. The second important feature of scientific knowledge is empiricism - the strict subordination of the imagination to observation. Here Comte repeats Bacon's idea that the foundation of knowledge should be proven experience. Scientists should look not for the essence of phenomena, but for their relationship, expressed with the help of laws - permanent relationships that exist between facts. Another feature of scientific knowledge is pragmatism. Scientists cease to be erudite and encyclopedic. In a word, knowledge becomes positive: useful, accurate, reliable and affirmative.

The idea of ​​evolution from the standpoint of positivism

From the epoch Evolution is an extremely general law of the development of nature and society; that is, in fact, the subject of philosophy. The essence of this law is that development proceeds by branching, from monotony to diversity. For illustrations, Spencer turned to various sciences - to astronomy, biology and sociology. Monotonous cosmic nebula gives rise to diversity celestial bodies solar system; monotonous protoplasm - the diversity of the world of living beings; monotonous primitive horde - variety of forms of the state. In addition, evolution is characterized by a transition from chaos to order and a gradual slowdown as a result of energy dissipation. The idea of ​​evolution turned out to be extremely fruitful. It was borrowed by both materialists and idealists and mystics.

The relationship of positivism with other philosophical currents

The main external conflict of positivism is the struggle with metaphysics, which manipulates terms that did not correspond to anything in reality, for example, entelechy, ether, etc. Search scientific method pursued the goal of finding reliable foundations of knowledge free from metaphysical prejudices. The positivists considered reliable knowledge, which should be based on neutral experience, and the only cognitively valuable form of knowledge, in their opinion, is an empirical description of facts. To express the results of observation, special “protocol sentences” should be used, Moritz Schlick wrote: “originally, “protocol sentences” were understood - as can be seen from the name itself - those sentences that express facts absolutely simply, without any reworking, changing or adding something else to them - facts that every science is looking for and which precede any knowledge and any judgment about the world. It is pointless to talk about unreliable facts. Only statements, only our knowledge, can be unreliable. Therefore, if we manage to express the facts in "protocol sentences", without any distortion, then they will become the undoubted starting points of knowledge "V. S. Stepin

Schlick, M. Positivismus and Realism. In: Erkenntnis 3, 1932, S. 1-31.

18. Positivist philosophy, basic principles and stages of its historical evolution. The nature of the relationship of positivism with religious philosophy and with metaphysical materialism.

Positivism- a philosophical trend that puts science and scientific methodology at the center of consideration and takes experience as the philosophical basis of everything (mainly in the scientific sense of the word - experiment).

As an independent trend, positivism was formed in the 30s of the XIX century. and over more than a century of history has evolved in the direction of ever clearer identification of its inherent tendency from the very beginning to subjective idealism. Subjective idealism is one of the main varieties of idealism (consciousness, thinking, the spiritual is primary, and matter, nature are secondary), in contrast to objective idealism denies the existence of any reality outside the consciousness of the subject, or considers it as something completely determined by his activity.

In the center of attention of positivists was always the question of the relationship between science and philosophy. The main goal and purpose of philosophy is the development of methods of scientific knowledge. The main theses of positivism:

1) all genuine, positive (“positive”) knowledge about reality can be obtained only in the form of the results of individual special sciences or their “synthetic” combination.

2) philosophy, as a special science that claims to be a meaningful study of a special sphere of reality, has no right to exist.

Positivism in a certain sense still exists, has experienced a certain evolution - reflection on what experience is, whether it can be considered a criterion of truth. There are 4 stages of positivism:

1) Classical positivism (Comte, Spencer)

2) Empirio-criticism, or Machism (Mach, Avenarius)

3) Neo-positivism, or logical positivism (Moore, Russell)

4) Postpositivism (Popper, Kuhn)

1) Classical positivism(2nd half of the 19th century)

The founder of the idea of ​​positivism is O. Comte. Positive philosophy is associated with the philosophy of the French Enlightenment of the 18th century. Following the Enlighteners, the positivists expressed their conviction that the sciences are capable of infinite development and that the subject area in which scientific methods of thinking are applicable is unlimited. Comte created the following classification of sciences: Mathematics - Astronomy - Physics - Chemistry - Biology - Sociology. Comte divides psychology into biology and sociology; each of these sciences presupposes the existence of the elementary facts of the preceding sciences. Comte introduced the term "sociology", thanks to him sociology was first developed into a special system.

Comte was designed law of three successive stages human thinking, which can be extended both to individual human development and to the history of science as a whole. Three stages can be distinguished: theological (before 1300), metaphysical (before 1800) and positive. At the first, theological stage, a person tries to explain the world around him based on some divine essences, the second - metaphysical - replaces supernatural factors in explaining nature with essences, causes and corresponds to abstract thinking (speculative knowledge - natural philosophy). At the positive stage, a person explores the world based on experience and logical conclusions from it. This stage is characterized by the unification of theory and practice, a person, through observation and experiment, singles out the connections of phenomena and, on the basis of those connections that are constant, forms laws. The motto of positive science is: "To know in order to foresee, in order to avoid." The basic method of science is phenomenological(descriptive generalization) is to set up an experiment and then try to generalize. The law of the subordination of the imagination to observation: we receive all information from observation, i.e. such theoretical constructions should be built, which, at least not now, but later, should be experimentally confirmed.

These three stages are childhood, adolescence and maturity of the human mind. All sciences must be transferred to a positive stage, because only then will they become sciences in the full sense of the word. The positivists did not recognize philosophy as a science, because it does not have its own subject area, there are no reliable experimental data, there are no criteria of truth, and its impact on the solution of practical problems is not visible. Science does not need any philosophy standing above it, but must rely on itself. However, for an adequate knowledge of reality, separate private disciplines are not enough, since there is an objective need to reveal the connection between individual sciences, in the consciousness of their systems - the goal of the new philosophy according to Comte. Philosophy is thus reduced to general conclusions from the natural and social sciences. This is not the case with traditional philosophical "metaphysics", the problems of which not only cannot be solved scientifically, but cannot be posed earlier if one follows the path of concrete scientific generalization. Scientific philosophy does not deal with "metaphysical" problems and therefore rejects both idealism and materialism. The vestiges of "metaphysics", which, according to Comte, include claims to the disclosure of causes and essences, should be removed from science. Science does not explain, but only describes phenomena and, forming laws, answers not the question “why”, but only the question “how”. Thus, Comte fundamentally opposes the formulation of laws and the identification of causal dependencies. The first he considers an integral part of science, the second - a relic of "metaphysics".

Characteristic features of positivism:

1) We know only what the sciences tell us, scientific knowledge is the only adequate one.

2) Any problem can be solved by being transferred to a positive stage. A major achievement in this area is Comte's development of the foundations of a new science - sociology.

3) Any science can achieve success only by being transferred to a positive stage. A major achievement in this area is Comte's development of the foundations of a new science - sociology.

4) methods of various sciences can be transplanted (transferred) from one to another indefinitely. As an example of such transplantation, another ideologist of positivism, G. Spencer, developed the concept of social Darwinism. Darwin raised biology to the positive stage of another science - sociology. He extended Darwinian terminology to society, showing that there is also natural selection in it, and the struggle for survival, the adaptation of man to the environment.

5) Belief in the endless progress of science and the limitless possibilities of human knowledge.

6) A kind of "deification" of experience, the surrounding reality (nature).

In the last decade of the XIX century. classical positivism is going through a crisis caused by the following circumstances:

1) The progress of natural scientific knowledge has devalued many of those “…..” generalizations that were considered by positivism as the eternal and indisputable acquisition of science. Contradictions with new discoveries in physics and biology, explainable only from the standpoint of dialectical materialism.

2) The fundamental logic of concepts in physics and the intensive development of psychological research forced philosophy to turn to the study of the empirical and logical foundations of science, that is, those very “ultimate” questions of knowledge, from the study of which Comte and his followers were in every possible way removed.

3) It turned out to be impossible to include the problems of values ​​introduced by the positivists into the sphere of scientific research and at the same time preserve the positivist criterion of scientificity.

All these circumstances again raised the question of the place of philosophy in the system of sciences and rejected the answer given by the representatives of classical positivism.

2) As a result of attempts to abandon the Comte-Spencer orientation and at the same time maintain a positivist orientation, a sharp demarcation of the fields of science and philosophical "metaphysics" arises empiriocriticism, or machism – philosophy, in which experience is taken as the fundamental principle and which seeks to limit philosophy to the presentation of the data of experience with the complete exclusion of all metaphysics in order to develop a natural concept of the world. The goal is to describe positive, experiential knowledge. The Machists believed that the task of philosophy is not to build a "synthetic" system embodying the general conclusions of all sciences, but to create theories of scientific knowledge. Thus, empirio-criticism differs from classical positivism not only in understanding the nature of specific problems, but also in defining the very subject of philosophy. However, the followers of both Spencer and Mach sought to deprive science of ideological significance and to prove that all traditional philosophical problems were alien to science.

3) Neopositivism(starting from the 20s of the 20th century to the present). The neo-positivists proceeded from the premise that the theory of knowledge cannot be the subject of philosophy either, since its solutions are forced to go to worldview problems, and this inevitably pushes philosophical thinking into the sphere of "metaphysical" problems. In their opinion, philosophy does not have its own subject of study at all, since it is not a meaningful science about some kind of reality. Main tasks: Formalization of science (redefining it through logic) and development of the most simple and understandable scientific language. Truth is the coincidence of a statement with the direct experience of a person. The neo-positivists wanted to purge science of meaningless propositions, that is, those propositions that do not verifiable(its truth can be proven both by experience and by the associated logical proof)

4) Postpositivism. In contrast to the neopositivists, who focused on the analysis structures scientific knowledge, postpositivists made understanding the main problem of the philosophy of science as a mechanism develop knowledge. Popper considered a theory to be scientific if it falsifiable(it is accessible to refutation with the help of experience). “With the help of experience, only the falsity of a theory can be confirmed, and not its truth” (Popper). The experiment is initially carried out for or against some theory (it is theoretically loaded). Can it then be the criterion of truth? Unlike neo-positivists, who clearly separated science and non-science, for example, philosophy (or physics), post-positivists refused to see a rigid boundary between philosophy and science, because philosophical propositions are comprehended and cannot be removed from scientific knowledge. Thus, post-positivism is associated with a partial overcoming of positivist problems, therefore, by a number of researchers, it does not belong to positivism proper.

20th century was a century of significant changes in the life of mankind. These changes affected the material, political and spiritual spheres of public life.

Features of the spiritual life of society in different countries gave birth to its reflection in philosophical currents.

Leading philosophical currents of world philosophy of the XX century. were: Marxism, pragmatism, neopositivism, neo-Thomism, phenomenology, personalism and structuralism, Freudianism and neo-Freudianism. A certain contribution to the development of philosophy was made by the “school of structural-functional analysis”, the “Frankfurt school”, etc.

The most significant features of modern Western philosophy are the following:

• the lack of organic unity, which is expressed in the emergence and transformation of numerous trends and schools polemicizing with each other, having their own problems, methods and ways of thinking, their own conceptual apparatus, etc.;
• a claim to non-partisanship and to the removal of the opposition between idealism and Marxism;
• the transformation of the problem of man into the central problem of philosophizing;
• attempts, having mastered the methodology of some special sciences about man, to replace philosophy with these sciences;
• connection of some currents and schools with religion;
• under the guise of a demonstration of pluralism of opinions, a merciless struggle against ideas that threaten capitalism;
• the dominance of the anti-dialectical image of philosophical thinking, expressed in direct hostility to dialectics and attempts to declare it the opposite of science;
• eclecticism;
• contradictory attitude to science, "scientism" and "anti-scientism";
• the spread of irrationalism, expressed in the desire to limit the possibilities of knowledge in order to give place to mysticism, in attempts to reduce philosophy to mythology and esoteric teachings;
• loss of socio-historical optimism.

The emergence and development of positivism

Positivism- a widespread trend in philosophy, founded in the 30s. 19th century French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857). In France, this trend was followed by E. Linttre, E. Renan. In England, positivism was represented in the work of John Stuart Meal (1806-1873) and Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). In Germany, the ideas of positivism were developed by Jacob Moleschott (1822-1893) and Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), in Russia -
N. K. Mikhailovsky and P. L. Lavrov and others.

These philosophers belong to the "first positivism". The "second positivism" is associated with the activities of E. Mach (1838-1916) and R. Avenarius (1843-1896), German scientists who called their philosophy empirio-criticism, as well as with the activities of the French scientist A. Poincaré (1854-1912).

The ideas of positivism were picked up and transformed in the works of Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), Maurice Schlick (1882-1936), Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1851) and others.

The philosophy of these thinkers was called neopositivism. Later, the ideas of representatives of neo-positivism were developed in the works of post-positivists (K. Popper, I. Lakatos, T. Kuhn, and others).

The program of positivism, taking into account its evolution, can be represented as follows:

• knowledge must be freed from worldview and value interpretation;
• all former, traditional philosophy as doctrinaire-dogmatic, metaphysical, i.e., aimed at searching for the root causes and substantive principles and supersensible essences, must be abolished and replaced either directly by special sciences (science is a philosophy in itself), or by an overview of the system of knowledge, the teaching about the language of science;
• one should abandon the extremes of materialism and idealism and go the third way.

As a collection of philosophical ideas spread throughout the world, positivism has the following features:

• In contrast to the subjective idealism of I. Kant, positivism refuses to recognize a priori knowledge as the only means of achieving true knowledge. As the only means of scientific knowledge, positivists single out scientific methods.
• Science is considered by positivists as a means of knowing and transforming the world. Positivists believe in the power of scientific rationality.
• Positivists believe that science is capable of revealing regularity in the processes of nature and society.
• Positivism is characterized by a belief in progress.

Founder of positivism Auguste Comte (1798 — 1857).

The main ideas of positivism were reflected in his six-volume work A Course in Positive Philosophy (1830-1842), in The Spirit of Positive Philosophy (1844) and in The System of Positive Politics (1852-1854).

According to O. Comte, science should limit itself to describing reality and its objects and phenomena, abandoning attempts to reveal their essence.

In his A Course in Positive Philosophy, Comte writes: “... I think I have discovered a great basic law according to which, with unchanging necessity, historical certainty can be established both by our rational proofs and by a careful analysis of the past. This law consists in the fact that each of our basic concepts necessarily passes through three theoretically distinct stages: the theological or fictitious stage; the metaphysical or abstract stage; the scientific, or positive stage... Hence the three types of philosophy, or concentric systems, generalizing mutually exclusive phenomena. The first is the starting point necessary for human understanding ... the third is a fixed and definite stage, and the second is destined to serve as a transit point.

“At the theological stage, phenomena are regarded as the products of the direct and continuous action of supernatural agents, more or less numerous. At the metaphysical stage, they are explained by the action of abstract entities, ideas or forces (bodies are connected thanks to "sympathy", plants grow thanks to the "vegetative soul", and society, as Moliere ironically, puts to sleep thanks to "hypnotic virtue"). Only at the positive stage human spirit, realizing the impossibility of achieving absolute knowledge, no longer asks what are the sources and fates of the Universe, what are the internal causes of phenomena, but seeks and discovers, combining reasoning with observation, their operating laws, i.e., unchanging connections of sequence and similarity.

According to Comte, at the theological stage there is a predominance of force, as, for example, under feudalism, the metaphysical stage is characterized by revolutions and reforms, for example, the reformation of Christianity, the positive stage is characterized by the emergence of an industrial society with its infinite freedom of consciousness.

« This is the law of three stages - the key concept of Comte's philosophy. This law also confirms the development of man (each of us is a theologian in childhood, a metaphysician in youth and a physicist in maturity). This law, according to Comte, is applicable to explain the development of various phenomena of social life.

According to O. Comte, in order to overcome the crisis state of society, it must be studied with the help of science. At the same time, "scientific sociology is called upon to become the only solid foundation for the reorganization of society and overcoming the social and political crises experienced by nations for a long time." The term "sociology" was introduced by Comte. He considered himself the creator of this science.

According to Comte, sociology completes the set of sciences, which he divides into abstract, or general, and concrete, or particular. He refers mathematics, theoretical astronomy (celestial mechanics), physics, chemistry, physiology (biology), sociology (social physics) to the abstract sciences.

According to Comte, the goal of science in the study of laws, since only their knowledge makes it possible to foresee events, direct our activities to change life in the desired direction, knowledge of the law is necessary for foresight, and forecasting is required to determine the amount of effort that should be expended to achieve social goals. . In other words, for Comte, science is necessary for foresight, and foresight is necessary for optimizing actions.

Comte believed that the transition of a society from a crisis state to a "social order" would require knowledge of social laws based on the analysis of facts. According to the ideas of the founder of positivism, just as physics reveals the laws of natural phenomena, so sociology, through observation and reasoning, reveals the laws of social phenomena. He singles out social statics and social dynamics in sociology. That part of sociology which is called social statics studies phenomena that are the same for all societies. Social statics is designed to reveal the connections of various aspects of life, including cultural, economic and political. Social dynamics studies the laws of development of society. The main ones here, according to Comte, are: the law of three stages and the law of progress.

The founder of sociology reflects on various problems.

“However, his whole sociology, to summarize, consists in the following four points:

• Social statistics investigates the conditions of the Order, dynamics studies the laws of Progress;
• Human progress has taken place in accordance with naturally necessary stages, the history of mankind is the unfolding of human nature;
• Although the development of mankind goes from the theological stage to the positive, Comte did not devalue the tradition. The past is pregnant with the present, and "mankind consists more of the dead than of the living";
• Social physics is the necessary basis for rational politics.”

The thinker believed that these laws could be revealed only through observations, experiments and comparisons. An important role in this, in his opinion, is played by the historical method, which forms a solid foundation for making political decisions and building the logic of political events.

The ideas of O. Comte had a great influence on the work of many scientists working in the field social philosophy and sociology.

John Stuart Mill was the founder of positivism in England. (1806-1873).

His work The System of Logic Syllogistic and Inductive (1830-1843) established him as the head of English positivism. His other most significant works are: the treatise "On Freedom" (1859), in which Mil formulated the principles of bourgeois individualism; Utilitarianism (1861), where he put forward updated ideas about the ethics of utilitarianism; Sir Hamilton's Study of Philosophy... (1865) and the posthumously published Three Essays on Religion: Nature. The benefits of religion. Theism" (1874), in which he appeared as a man who believes in God.

The first work "System of Logic ..." was devoted to the presentation of inductive logic. He often expanded logic to the scale of epistemology and saw in it the methodology and foundation of the logic of the moral sciences, by which he understood the social sciences.

As noted German philosopher Heinrich Rickert: "J. S. Mill was the first to make an attempt to create a systematic logic of the sciences about the spirit. Among the moral or social sciences, psychology was conceived as fundamental by Mill. “It is psychology, according to Mill, that is possible as an exemplary inductive science, while the social sciences inevitably acquire a deductive character, trying to explain the varieties of social behavior of specific people with the help of general laws found inductively.”

According to Mill, the closest thing to psychology is ethology based on it, understood as "the science of character formation", which deduces from psychological laws the laws of formation of characters and their forms. Various physical and psychological circumstances find expression in these laws, which gives the characters individual traits.

The clarification of the laws of society, according to Mill, contributes to history. However, Mill “warned against naively accepting the first “historical evidence” that came across, some actual “uniformity of the historical sequence of social states” as a true law of nature, while such uniformity should be considered only an “empirical law”, that is, a law of the lowest level of generality, law in the first approximation. Empirical laws must still be reduced to laws of a higher degree of generality. The reduction of "primary historical and sociological generalizations to a series of laws of a higher degree of generality is the essence of Mill's "reverse deductive or historical method", which he considered the most important and most reliable of his "methods of social science." According to Mill, the main task of social science is to find the laws according to which any given state of society causes another that follows it and replaces it. Open social laws make it possible to formulate rules for activities that meet the requirements of these laws. But one must act carefully in this direction, and “the general principle with which all practical rules must conform, and the sign that must be used to test them, is the promotion of the happiness of mankind, or rather, of all sentient beings, in other words; the ultimate principle of teleology is the increase of happiness."

Other Herbert Spencer was a major positivist in England. (1820 — 1903).

He spent much of his life as an armchair scientist. From 1862 to 1896 he published 10 volumes of the “synthetic philosophy” system, which includes “Basic Principles” ((1862), a book on the first principles of being), “Foundations of Biology” (1864 - 1867), “Sociology as a Subject of Study” (1873), “Foundations psychology" (1879 - 1893), "Foundations of Sociology" (in 3 volumes, 1876 - 1896), "Foundations of Ethics". In 1850, his "Social Statistics" was published.

Spencer sought to prove the compatibility of science and religion. He believed that science helps religion to be cleansed of mysticism.

Spencer considered philosophy as knowledge at the stage of maximum generalization, since philosophical generalizations unite and systematize the achievements of all sciences. According to Spencer, philosophy must begin with the most general principles that science has arrived at. These, in his opinion, are the principles of the indestructibility of matter, the continuity of movement, and force resistance. These principles should be used by all sciences. However, they can be unified into a more general principle - the principle of "continuous redistribution of matter and motion." The law of general change is the law of evolution.

For the first time the term "evolution" was used by Spencer in 1857. Two years later, Darwin in "The Origin of Species" will use this concept in relation to living beings. However, Spencer talks about the evolution of the universe. "Its first characteristic is the transition from a less bound form to a more bound form." The second characteristic is the transition from homogeneous bound state to a heterogeneous unbound state. "The third characteristic of evolution is the transition from the indeterminate to the certain." Spencer noted that evolution is the integration of matter, accompanied by the dispersion of motion; in it matter passes from an indefinite and unbound autonomy to a definite and bound homogeneity.

Spencer singled out three phases of "greater evolution": inorganic, organic and supraorganic (or superorganic), smoothly passing into each other. However, each phase at a certain stage of maturity acquires a new quality of complexity and is not reduced to another. Social evolution is a part of supraorganic evolution, which implies the interaction of many individuals, coordinated collective activity, which in its consequences exceeds the possibilities of any individual actions. The subject of sociology is "the study of evolution (development) in its most complex form."

In relation to society, evolution is expressed in the fact that “the growth of society, both in terms of its numbers and strength, is accompanied by an increase in the heterogeneity of its political and economic organization. The same applies to all scientific-historical products and other products - language, science, art and literature. This is the essence of Spencer's understanding of progress.

On German soil, as is believed in Russian literature, positivism found expression in the empirio-criticism or "second positivism" of Richard Avenarius (1843-1896).

Another major representative of the "second positivism" was Ernst Mach (1838-1916).

These thinkers tried to "overcome" the shortcomings of materialism and objective idealism in the theory of knowledge by moving to the positions of subjective idealism. They saw the source of knowledge in the analysis of sensations, which were considered out of touch with the material world.

Neopositivism

Neopositivism("logical atomism", "logical positivism", "analytic philosophy", "logical empiricism") is a widespread philosophical movement. Within the framework of this trend, the ideas of "first positivism" and "second positivism" were developed.

“Logical positivism originated in the so-called Vienna Circle, which was formed in the early 1920s. under the leadership of M. Schlick (1882 - 1936), which included L. Wittgenstein, R. Carnap, F. Frank, O. Neurath, G. Hahn and others. Along with the "Vienna Circle" and the Berlin "Society of Empirical Philosophy" ( G. Reichenbach) in the 30s. arose: a group of "analysts" in England (J. Ryle and others); Lviv-Warsaw School in Poland
(K. Tvardovsky, K. Aidukevich, A. Tarsky).

Common feature of neopositivism, most commonly referred to today as " analytic philosophy”, - a detailed study of the language in order to clarify philosophical problems. B. Russell (1872-1970) and L. Wittgenstein (1989-1951) are considered the most prominent representatives of analytical philosophy. Russell lived long life and wrote many works. In collaboration with A. Whitehead, he published the fundamental work "Principles of Mathematics" (1910). Later he independently wrote The Analysis of Consciousness (1921), An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits (1950), History Western philosophy"(1948) and others.

B. Russell, being a prominent mathematician, made a great contribution to the application of logical analysis to the study of the foundations of mathematics. He believed that it was important to clarify the meaning of the words and sentences that make up knowledge by transforming less clear provisions into clearer ones. He applied the method of logical analysis to philosophy. In his works "Our Knowledge of the External World" (1914) and "Logical Atomism" (1924), he put forward the idea that with the help of logic one can reveal the essence of philosophy.

It should be noted that, as a philosopher, B. Russell did not limit his interests to the logical analysis of language. He made a significant contribution to the study of the problems of the theory of knowledge, social philosophy and ethics.

B. Russell's student Ludwig Wittgenstein is considered one of the most original thinkers of the 20th century. He is the author of the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (1921) and "Philosophical Investigations". The texts of the philosopher are composed of numbered fragments. In the first work, he applied the method of logical analysis, and in the second, the method of linguistic analysis.

In the Logico-Philosophical Treatise, the world is presented as a set of facts. The latter act as events, which in turn consist of objects and are their possible configurations. Events are narrated by logical atoms - elementary propositions. From the facts, an idea of ​​the world and a picture of the world are formed. About all this, statements are possible that make up the content of knowledge.

The understanding of the term "philosophy" was subjected to an unusual interpretation in this work. Wittgenstein considers philosophy only a means of logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy, in his opinion, is not a doctrine, but an activity to clarify and clarify thoughts. According to Wittgenstein, in order to philosophize, it is not necessary to speak, since the demonstration of silence can also, in a certain case, be a philosophical attitude to reality.

Dissatisfaction with his attempt to reflect the "picture" of the world in language as clearly and precisely as he wanted led the thinker to create the treatise "Philosophical Investigations". In this work, the logical analysis of language is replaced by its linguistic analysis. The language in it is considered not as a logical "double", opposite to the world, but as a means of relating to the world in the course of its application with elements of creativity, play. At the same time, language games are considered as a method of discovering opportunities. Philosophy in this work acts as a means of teaching thinking.

Other representatives of neopositivism R. Carnap, F. Frank, G. Reichenbach, K. Hempel and others also made a significant contribution to the development of the theory of knowledge and the philosophy of science. At the same time, a significant increase in knowledge was made about the essence and purpose of the language of science, about the logic of the development of scientific knowledge and the mechanisms of its growth, about the functions of science, about the criteria for evaluating knowledge, etc.

Historians of philosophy, when analyzing the constructions of positivism, pay special attention to the consideration by representatives of this trend of the question of verifying the truth of knowledge. The process of establishing the truth of scientific statements is carried out by neopositivists with the help of the principle of verification, which means the establishment of the truth of scientific statements as a result of their empirical verification. In accordance with this principle, any scientifically meaningful statement about the world should provide the possibility of reducing it to a set of statements that fix the data of sensory experience. For example, the truth of the sentence: "This house is panel" is established from eye contact with it. Those statements that cannot be reduced to the data of sensory experience and find confirmation in it, for example, “time is irreversible” or “motion is a form of existence of matter,” are treated by neopositivists as pseudo-sentences and denote pseudo-problems. This principle seemed insufficiently effective, which was the reason for its rejection by the representatives of the “fourth positivism”, or post-positivism.

Postpositivism

Since the 60s. 20th century the concepts of post-positivism, or, as it is sometimes called, the “fourth positivism”, become the most significant for logical and methodological research. Continuing the search for positivism in the field of increasing scientificity, the rigor of philosophy, its representatives, the most famous of which are K. Popper (1902 - 1994), T. Kuhn (born in 1922),
I. Lakatos (1922-1974), P. Feyerabend (born in 1924), refine the theory of the development of knowledge. In contrast to logical positivism, which took the principle of verification as a criterion of scientificity, K. Popper puts forward the principle of falsifiability. Emphasizing that modern scientific knowledge is extremely abstract in nature, that many of its provisions cannot be traced back to sensory experience, he argues that the main thing for determining scientificity is not confirmation, but the possibility of refuting the provisions of science: if it is possible to find conditions under which protocol ( i.e., the basic, primary) propositions of the theory are false, then the theory is refutable. And this is not accidental, because no scientific theory accepts all the facts, but affirms some and denies, excludes others that do not correspond to its main provisions. Therefore, in principle, a situation is possible when facts are found that contradict the theory, and it turns out to be wrong. If there is no experimental refutation, the theory is considered "justified".

Absoluteizing the factor of the relative truth of knowledge, Popper puts forward the thesis that only those theories are considered scientific that can, in principle, be refuted, and that refutation is a fundamental property of scientific knowledge.

Arguing that any scientific theory is interested in being refuted, Popper absolutized the characteristic that is really inherent in the development of science. It is not a simple quantitative accumulation of facts within the framework of a single theory that explains the laws of the universe or the addition of new theories to old ones, but a consistent process of changing theoretical constructions that differ significantly from each other, often fundamentally rejecting previous scientific explanations.

Popper painted a vivid and dramatic picture of scientific life, in which there is a struggle of theories, their selection and evolution. He believed that if a theory is refuted, it should be immediately discarded and a new one put forward, so scientific life is a battlefield for theories that can rise only through the “killing” of those who oppose them.

It should be noted that for postpositivism, talking about the scientific nature of theories is not the same thing as talking about their truth. So, although the truth, according to Popper, objectively exists, it is in principle unattainable due to the hypothetical, and, ultimately, false (because every theory will be refuted) nature of any knowledge. Human knowledge can only create more or less plausible theories.

Popper's views on knowledge have differences with those that are characteristic of supporters of neopositivism. These differences are as follows: 1) neopositivists considered the data of sensory experience to be the source of knowledge, for Popper any source of knowledge is equal; Popper does not distinguish, as the neopositivists do, between the terms of empirical and theoretical knowledge; 2) neo-positivists put forward verifiability, i.e., verifiability, and Popper’s falsifiability, i.e., refutation, as a criterion for demarcation between true and false knowledge;
3) the neo-positivists sought to discredit the meaning of metaphysics, while Popper tolerated it; 4) as the main method of science, logical positivists singled out induction, and Popper - the method of trial and error, including only deductive reasoning; 5) for logical positivists, the philosophy of science is reduced to a logical analysis of the language of science, while for Popper it is reduced to an analysis of the process of development of knowledge; 6) many representatives of neopositivism
(R. Carnap, K. Hempel and others) allowed the idea of ​​the natural to be applied to the phenomena of social life, and K. Popper in his works “The Open Society and Its Enemies” (1945) and “The Poverty of Historicism” (1944) proved the opposite.

Popper's ideas about the process of development of science were already criticized by one of his followers - T. Kuhn, who in the book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" puts forward his own model of its development. Kuhn introduces the concepts of scientific community and paradigm. The scientific community is a group of scientists, professionals, united by a common scientific paradigm - a model for solving scientific problems and selecting significant problems. The scientific paradigm also includes an understanding of the picture of the world, the general values ​​of scientific research, and patterns of learning. So, as an example, Kuhn cites the paradigms of Newton, Lavoisier, Einstein.

During the period of "normal science" the principles of the paradigm are not questioned, and research is carried out within its framework. However, with the development of science within the framework of the paradigm, anomalies are found, contradicting facts, or paradoxes of the paradigm itself, which cannot be solved by its own means. There comes a period of scientific revolution, during which the old paradigm is discarded and a new one is selected from alternative possibilities. It is during this period, according to Kuhn, that the principle of falsification works.

However, Kuhn denies the principle of continuity, the progressive development of knowledge, putting forward a position about the incommensurability of paradigms, the impossibility of comparing their level of truth.

Another development of scientific knowledge was proposed by I. Lakatos in the book "Falsification and Methodology of Research Programs". The main unit of description of the model of development of science for him is the "research program", which consists of a "hard core", "protective belt" and a set of methodological rules - "negative heuristics", which determines the preferred research paths. The "hard core" is considered within the framework of the research program as consisting of irrefutable statements. At the same time, the "protective belt" plays the role of a means of protecting the "hard core" from refutation. However, he himself changes and improves thanks to the rules of "positive heuristics", as well as with the help of falsification and confirmation. According to Lakatos, a research program develops progressively when its theoretical growth anticipates its empirical growth. If the opposite is observed, then it regresses.

The researchers believe that the concept proposed by Lakatos is more advanced, as it offers a deeper understanding of the dynamism of the development of science. The development of science is presented by the philosopher as a gradual process of knowledge growth based on scientific activity based on developing research programs.

A different point of view on the development of science was presented by P. Feyerabend. His main works include the following: “Against the method. Essay on the Anarchist Theory of Knowledge” (1975); "Science in free society"(1978); "Goodbye Mind" (1987). The philosopher believes that the development of scientific knowledge and science is carried out due to the mutual criticism of incompatible theories in the face of existing facts. Scientific work, according to Feyerabend, should be aimed at creating alternative theories and conducting controversy between them. At the same time, in his opinion, it is necessary to follow, on the one hand, the principle of proliferation, which means that it is necessary to invent and develop concepts that are incompatible with existing theories recognized by the scientific community, and on the other hand, the principle of incommensurability, which says that theories cannot be compared.

Feyerabend opposed the dictate of methodologies and the recognition of any rules in scientific research. He put forward the view that science is no different from myth.

It should be noted that Feyerabend’s rebellion against rationalism in cognition means a rebellion against science, since irresponsible equalization of pseudoscientific constructions and the results of the activities of professional scientists would mean the end of scientific progress, and with it the end of technical and social progress in general.

POSITIVISM

POSITIVISM

(from lat. positivus - positive) - philosophy. the direction of the 19th-20th centuries, emphasizing the reliability and positive scientific knowledge in comparison with philosophy and other forms of spiritual activity, giving preference to empirical methods of knowledge and pointing to the unreliability and precariousness of all theoretical constructions. In its development, P. went through three stages, while retaining some of the main features that allow us to talk about it as a single direction of philosophy. .
O. Comte is considered the ancestor of P.. Considering the history of human knowledge and the mentality of an individual, Comte came to the conclusion that the human in his development goes through three stages: “By virtue of the very nature human mind every branch of our knowledge must inevitably pass through three different theoretical states in its movement: the theological, or fictitious; metaphysical state, or; and finally the scientific or positive state. Once people explained the phenomena of the surrounding world with the help of myth and religion, then the human rose to the level of philosophy. (metaphysical) explanation; in the 19th century philosophy must yield to scientific knowledge of the world. Hence follows the negative attitude towards philosophy, which is characteristic of philosophy: it has already played its role in the development of human knowledge and must give way to science. In the same high appreciation of science and the scientific approach: only able to give a positive about the world, it must cover all areas human activity and ensure them durable.
For Comte, as well as for P. in general, the main thing in science are facts - hard, undoubted, stable facts. The main business of science is to collect these facts and systematize them. Myth, philosophy sought to explain phenomena by pointing to certain entities that lie behind phenomena and give rise to them. Religion sees in the world of divine will, philosophy seeks the causes of sensually perceived things and events in the sphere of imperceptible entities. But all reasoning about causes, the positivists believed, both religious and philosophical. are very unreliable, therefore it is most reliable to confine ourselves to a simple statement of facts, without engaging in speculative reflections about them possible causes. “The true spirit consists primarily in replacing the study of the first or final causes of phenomena by the study of their immutable laws; in other words, in replacing the word "why" with the word "how" (Comte). Thus, the main method of scientific knowledge turns out to be, and the main function of science is the description: "All sane people repeat from the time of Bacon that only those knowledge are true that are based on observations." (Comte).
The desire of Comte and his followers to free themselves from speculative speculation and rely on reliable knowledge had quite a definite historical basis. Ideas fr. enlighteners of the 18th century. led ultimately to the revolutionary upheaval of France and to the bloody Napoleonic wars, which lasted more than a quarter of a century. The teachings of G.W.F. Hegel that the development of nature is due to the self-development of the absolute spirit was in sharp contradiction with the scientific approach to the study of nature. All this gave rise to a suspicious attitude towards any ideas that go beyond what is accessible to simple and reliable observation. This attitude was expressed by the nascent P. That is why it became widespread just among scientists.
However, its popularity was ensured primarily by the activities of two English. Comte's followers - G. Spencer and J.S. Mill. Their work determined the shape and many character traits new philosophy. directions: emphasizing the unconditional reliability and validity of empirical knowledge - knowledge of facts; wary attitude towards theoretical knowledge, including generalizations, laws, theories; to the instrumentalist interpretation of theoretical knowledge; the exaltation of science to the detriment of philosophy and other forms of spiritual activity.
These features are preserved in the so-called. the second P., who gained wide popularity in scientific circles in. 19 - beg. 20th century E. Mach became the leader of P. during this period, giving P. a new form, which received "", or "". Together with Mach, the ideas of P. during this period were developed by him. physical chemist V.F. Ostwald, Swiss. R. Avenarius, fr. physicist P. Duhem, rus. philosophers A.A. Bogdanov, P.S. Yushkevich, V.M. Chernov.
World, in terms of Maha, consists of elements that are a combination of physical and mental. Therefore, in relation to the physical world and human consciousness, these are neutral: they are not fully included in either the first or the second. These elements are homogeneous, equivalent, among them there are no more important, more fundamental or essential: "The whole internal and is made up of a small number of homogeneous elements ..." The doctrine of the neutral elements of the world, according to Mach, was supposed to overcome the extremes of materialism and idealism and resolve contradictions between these directions in philosophy.
Since all the elements of the world are absolutely equal, there are no “-”, “reason -” relations between them. Connections in nature are not so simple that each time one can point to one cause and one effect: “in nature there are no causes and no effect. Nature is given to us only once” (Mach). The only relationship that exists between elements is the functional relationship. Therefore, such concepts as “cause”, “”, “essence” and “replace causes with the mathematical concept of function” should be considered obsolete. The consequence of such a flat vision of the world, in which only homogeneous elements and functional connections between them are seen in it, is descriptivism in the theory of knowledge: all functions of knowledge, incl. and scientific, are reduced to description. And this is quite natural, because if the essence is also expelled from the world, then the explanation turns out to be impossible. “Descriptions ... - says Mach, - are reduced to determining the numerical values ​​of some features on the basis of the numerical values ​​of other features using the usual numerical operations.” This is scientific knowledge. “But let this ideal be achieved for some area of ​​facts. Gives a description of everything that a scientific researcher may require? I think yes!" Consistently developing this perspective, Mach also interprets scientific concepts as "certain connections of sensory elements." The laws of science also turn out to be nothing more than descriptions. The scientific theory is interpreted in the same way: “the speed with which our knowledge expands thanks to the theory gives it a certain quantitative advantage over simple observation, while there is no essential difference between them qualitatively, either in terms of origin or in terms of the final result.” Moreover, it turns out to be the worst kind of description, because it is the furthest away from its object. However, we are forced to use theories, because they accumulate in themselves in an abbreviated and compressed form huge sets of individual descriptions that would be difficult to remember and reproduce. In the use of theories, an economy of thought is manifested, which Mach considers fundamental principle regulating the development of human cognition.
Machism, or "the second P.", was born of the crisis of classical natural science, the inability of scientists to understand new phenomena with the help of old means, which had served them without fail for almost two hundred years. At first, it spread among scientists that science should not set itself the proud task of comprehending the truth. In philosophy, this opinion found in the flat and pessimistic philosophy of Mach and his supporters. However, scientists soon recovered from the shock caused by the discovery of a whole avalanche of new incomprehensible phenomena, and began to search for new means of explanation and understanding. Philosophy
Maha quickly lost supporters and receded into the realm of history.
The third surge of interest in P. appeared in the middle. 1920s, when the logical P, or logical P, was formed and quickly gained wide popularity. Its distinguishing feature is that, while maintaining the basic principles of positivist philosophy, it widely uses the apparatus of mathematical logic to formulate and solve philosophy. problems ( cm. VIENNA CIRCLE).

Philosophy: Encyclopedic Dictionary. - M.: Gardariki. Edited by A.A. Ivina. 2004 .

POSITIVISM

(French positivism, from lat. positivus - positive), philosophy a direction based on the principle that everything is authentic, "will put." (positive) knowledge can only be obtained as individual specialist. sciences and their synthetic. associations and that philosophy as a special science, claiming to be independent. reality, has no right to .

P. took shape in a special trend in the 30s gg. 19 V. and over its more than a century of history has evolved in the direction of an ever clearer manifestation of its inherent tendency from the very beginning to subjective idealism.

The creator of P., who introduced this very one, French thinker Comte proclaimed will decide. break with philosophy ("metaphysical") tradition, believing that science does not need any philosophy standing above it; this, according to the positivists, does not exclude the existence of a synthesis scientific knowledge, the old name of “philosophy” can be kept behind the Crimea; the latter comes down T. O., to general conclusions from nature. and societies. Sciences. Since P. does not deal with "metaphysical." problems, he rejects both , and . The vestiges of "metaphysics", which, according to Comte, include claims to the disclosure of causes and essences, should be removed from science. Science does not explain, but only describes phenomena and answers not the "why", but the question "how". The consistent development of this thesis leads to phenomenalism. However, along with the subjective-idealistic tendency, Comte's P. retains some elements of natural-scientific materialism, coming from the traditions of the French Enlightenment. V. Following the enlighteners, Comte speaks in the ability of science to infinite development.

Representatives of the first, "classical", form P. 19 V., besides Comte, there were E. Littre, G. N. Vyrubov, P. Laf-it, I. Taine, E. J. Renan - in France; J. S. Mill, G. Spencer - in the UK. P.'s development proceeded along the line of an increasingly clear identification of his phenomenalistic, subjective idealistic. trends (J. S. Mill, Spencer, in Russia - V. V. Lesevich, M. M. Troitsky, V. N. Ivanovsky, P. L. Lavrov, II. K. Mikhailovsky). Spencer, using in his "synthetic." generalizations of the discovery of natural science 2nd floor. 19 V., develops agnostic stitch. the doctrine of the unknowability of objective reality, the essence of which can only be penetrated through religion, and not through science. II. rendered means. influence on the methodology of natures. and societies. Sciences (especially the 2nd floor. 19 V.) . IN con. 19 V. P. is experiencing, caused by the progress of the natural sciences. knowledge (devalued many of those “synthetic” generalizations that were considered by P. himself as an eternal and indisputable acquisition of science), a radical breaking of concepts in physics at the turn of 19-20 centuries Crisis of the first P. was promoted by intensive development psihologich. research that forced them to take those very “ultimate” philosophy questions of knowledge, which P. avoided in every possible way, as well as the failure of all P.'s attempts to prove the objective validity of his proposed system of values ​​within the mechanistic. and metaphysical. sociology (because, having retained the positivist scientific character, it turned out to be impossible to include the field of values ​​in the sphere scientific research, deduce "due" from "existent"). This forced the question of the place of philosophy in the system of sciences to be raised again. The transformed P. enters a new, second stage of its evolution - Machism (empirio-criticism), which is clearly expressed subjective-idealistic. . The tendencies of Machism receive their further development in neo-positivism, the appearance of which dates back to the 20th century. gg. 20 V. and which is the modern, third stage in the evolution of P. (cm. See also Vienna Circle, Logical Positivism, Analytic Philosophy). Neopositivism, moving away from indigenous solutions philosophy problems, focuses on private logical and methodological. research, on the analysis of the language of science.

Lenin V. I., Materialism and empirio-criticism, PSS, T. 18; Narekii I. S., Essays on the history of P., M., 1960; Kon I. S., P. in sociology, L., 1964; Burzh. philosophy of the eve and the beginning of imperialism, M., 1977; Shkupinov P. S., P. in Russia 20 V., M., 1980; Fouillee, A., Le mouvement positiviste et la conception sociologique du monde, P., 1896; Simon W. M., European positivism in the nineteenth century, Ithaca (N.Y.) , 1963.

Philosophical encyclopedic dictionary. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. Ch. editors: L. F. Ilyichev, P. N. Fedoseev, S. M. Kovalev, V. G. Panov. 1983 .

POSITIVISM

(from lat. positivus - positive) - philosophy. direction, proceeding from the thesis that all genuine, "positive" (positive) knowledge can only be obtained as a result of otd. specialist. sciences or their synthetic combination and that philosophy as a special science that claims to contain. study of reality, has no right to exist.

P. took shape in a special trend in the 30s. 19th century and over its more than a century of history has evolved in the direction of more and more clear identification and bringing to logic. the end of the fundamental statements inherent in him from the very beginning (which was expressed in his tendency towards subjective idealism), but in the first forms of P., expressed insufficiently consistently and often obscured by other provisions that contradicted them. “... The essence of the matter,” Lenin pointed out, “is the fundamental divergence of materialism from the entire broad current of positivism, within which are Og. Comte, and G. Spencer, and Mikhailovsky, and neo-Kantians, and Mach with Avenarius” (Coll. , vol. 14, p. 192).

At the stage of Machism, P. continues to maintain a definition. with real methodological scientific issues that were very topical at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. during the revolution in natural science. (Thus, Mach in "Mechanics" criticized Newton's ideas about the absoluteness of space and time and tried to reveal the logical concepts of mass, frame of reference, etc.). In contrast to the former P., Machism formulates the task of philosophy not as the construction of "synthetic." a system that systematizes the general conclusions of all sciences, but as the creation of a theory of scientific. knowledge; in this he merges with the line of negation of metaphysics represented by neo-Kantianism. In the epistemology of Machism, its connection with the subjective idealism of Berkeley and Hume appears in an explicit form. In the future, these trends are developed in neopositivism, the appearance of which refers to the 20s. and to-ry is the modern, third stage in the evolution of P.

First and main a variant of neopositivist philosophy -, or logical. , developed by the "Vienna Circle" (Schlick, Karnap, Reichenbach, etc.), expresses a further strengthening of negativism in relation to the main. philosophy issues. Logic P. declares that the subject of philosophy cannot even be, which is still too metaphysical. character. Philosophy is not a science about any reality whatsoever, but one that consists in the analysis of natures. and arts. languages, pursuing two goals:

1) to eliminate from science all those who do not know. the meaning of reasoning and pseudo-problems;

2) to provide as a result of the analysis the construction of ideal logical. models of meaningful reasoning. Questions that puzzle metaphysicians (that is, in essence, all traditional philosophical problems) are among the pseudo-problems, devoid of scientific. meaning. As an ideal analytical tool philosophy logical activities. P. accepts developed in the 20th century. apparatus of mathematical logic, refusing Machian biologism and psychologism in the interpretation of knowledge. In the concept of logic P. the task of completely demarcating metaphysics from science was posed in the most acute form in the entire history of P. It is here that it is brought to the logical. the end of the position adopted by P., which defines scientific character as a description of empiricism. given. Being in this sense the most mature stage of positivist history, logical. P. betrays the secret of every P., and his collapse means the collapse of P. in general.

Meanwhile, P.'s formulation of his claims in a logically consistent, strict form, achieved in the philosophy of logical. P., helped to convincingly demonstrate the bankruptcy of positivist principles: the implementation of the reduction of theoretical. the level of knowledge to the empirical, the failure of the principle of verification (see Verifiability principle) as a criterion of meaningfulness; the impossibility of a sharp dichotomy analytic. and synthetic. judgments and opposition of scientifically meaningful statements to metaphysical ones. The impracticability of philosophy. program put forward logical. P., now recognized as representatives of the modern. analytical philosophy (see Philosophy of analysis), incl. and his former supporters. In present logical time. P. as independent. the school lost its serious influence, having been supplanted (in the 1950s) by other areas of neo-positivist analytic. Philosophy: in the US, mostly logical. pragmatism (Quine, M. White, Goodman and others); in England - a school of linguistics. analysis (Ryle, J. Wisdom and others). Having subjected to criticism for metaphysics the most radical positivist elimination of any metaphysics, formulated by logical. P., the latest trends in analytics. philosophies logically inevitably come to a partial rehabilitation of metaphysics, with which the logical. P. Remaining within P., modern. analytical philosophy rejects his principle of verification and more liberally refers to the possibility of classical metaphysics. type. So, Oxford "analysts" declare that all philosophy. schools and points of view are justified insofar as they make clear some of the distinctions that were not clear before them, and that there is no limit to philosophizing and no single true philosophy. method. Thus, in modern analytical Philosophy P. comes to its logical. end, to that line beyond which he begins to deny himself. (Sociological, ethical and aesthetic concepts of P. see, respectively, in the articles Sociology, Ethics and Aesthetics).

Lit.: L[avrov] P., Problems of P. and them, "Modern Review", 1868, No 5, p. 117–54; Huxley, P. and modern. the science. Scientific side P., "Cosmos", 1869, sec. half a year, No 5, p. 75–108; Solovyov Vl., Crisis zap. philosophy. Against the Positivists, M., 1874; Lesevich V., The experience of critical. studies of the founders of positive philosophy, St. Petersburg, 1877; Lewis J. G., History of Philosophy, 2nd ed., St. Petersburg, 1892; Mill D.S., Auguste Comte and P., M., 1897; Comte O., General review of P., in collection: Ancestors of P., vol. 4–5, St. Petersburg, 1912–13; Narsky I. S., Essays on the history of P., M., 1960; Thissandier J.-B., Origines et développement du positivisme contemporain, P., 1874; Laas, E., Idealismus und Positivismus, Tl 1–3, V., 1879–84; Robinet, La philosophie positive. A. Comte et P. Laffitte, P., 1881; Brutt M., Der Positivismus nach seiner ursprünglichen Fassung dargestellt und beurteilt, Hamb., 1889; Grüber H., Der Positivismus vom Tode August Comte "s bis auf unsere Tage, Freiburg, 1891; Masaryk Τh. C., Die philosophischen und sociologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus, W., 1899; Schmekel A., Die positive Philosophie in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Bd 1–2, B., 1914–38; Schlick M., Positivismus und Realismus, "Erkenntnis", 1932, Bd 3, H. 1; Dürr K., Der logische Positivismus, Bern, 1948; Fischl J. , Materialismus und Positivismus der Gegenwart, Graz – , )