Problems of Positivism
Epistemological Critique and its Ontological Significance
1999 Volume 43 Issue 3 Pages 19-34,145
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1999 Volume 43 Issue 3 Pages 19-34,145
Since Descartes, problems of method have been of fundamental importance for rational thinking. Modern intellectual history (especially after Hegel) might be characterized as a process in which the importance of methodological consideration has gradually increased. This process, which can be illustrated by many of trends in the history of thoght from materialism to phenomenology or structuralism, has been closely connected with the condition of modernity under which the rational subject loses its ability to find any absolute ground for its exisistence in the world. In this process, method becomes critically important to clarify the relationship between thinking and being. This means that methodological reflection necessarily leads to ontological considerations as well as epistemological ones.
This is also the case with science. As K. Popper said, uniformity of science is in its method, not in its theory. The most representative method in science, 'positivism', has been criticised in many ways especially since the 1960s. But the criticisms have almost always paid attention only to the methodological or epistemological dimensions of this method and neglected the ontological one.
In this article, I classify three types of criticisms against positivism. 1. critique from the standpoint of Kulturwissenscaft, which in this case can be represented by Weber. 2. the ideological critique of the Frankfurt School. 3. epistemological critique from the standpoint of philosophy of science which is ultimately examplified by Bachelard and Wittgenstein. Here the third one is regarded as the most significant because only this makes it possible to examine the fundamental supposition of positivism, whereas the two former do not.
Ontological meaning extracted from these critiques includes the negation of the ideal of scientist as a rational subject and recognition of contradictions between logic and experience as an inevitable condition for rational beings.
