History Bump

The definition I was working with in my remarks this morning is one from history of philosophy: logical positivism, derived from nineteenth-century Viennese empiricism (especially Augustus Comte) and associated with twentieth-century British empiricists such as Bertrand Russell and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein (in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus). Logical positivism was relatively short-lived, chiefly because its object was unattainable: to step out of language in order to reveal the workings of language, so that all truth could be grounded in empirical science free of metaphysical claims. The imperfect but useful Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers details.

It seems to me that any larger sense of positivism has to be grounded in philosophy of science. Here are selections from my reading notes from Alan Chalmers, an antifoundationalist scientist:

The "positivist strategy" is the "attempt to define some universal, ahistorical methodology of science which specifies the standards against which putative sciences are to be judged." But these attempts, says Chalmers, are "doomed to failure" (11). The positivists want to predicate science on "protocol sentences," simple propositions that can be verified by the senses. But such propositions are revisable. "The Earth is stationary," for example, was once taken as foundational. Scientific theories, moreover, are based on scanty evidence, indeed (15).
Chalmers, Alan. Science and Its Fabrication. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1990.
(Want to really upset your undergrads? Have them read Chalmers!)

And then here are some remarks on origins of positivism in historiography:

"In the nineteenth century, Auguste Comte turned [the Enlightenment] idea of progress into a three-stage teleological view evolving toward positivism. He outlined three historical stages: [1] the theological, when all was interpreted in terms of God, [2] the metaphysical, when Christians learned to think abstractly, and [3] the positive, or scientific, when objective and precise understanding became possible" (12). "Comte's three-stage teleological view was based on the belief that the positivistic pursuit of history, the third stage, would consist of observations leading to general laws governing human activity" (17). According to the "scientific historians," "things were . . . getting better because rationality and enlightenment were thought to be increasing" (13). Comte's contemporary Henry Buckle "claimed that humans function according to patterns, instead of following free will" (12). The approach that Ranke (the source of modern history) took lent itself to positivism, too (15).
Wilson, Norman J. History in Crisis? Recent Directions in Historiography. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.

The only source that I know of in comp/rhet that deals with positivism is one I haven't read:
Shank, Michael H., and David Vampola. "Negating Positivism: Language and the Practice of Science." The Philosophy of Discourse. Ed. Chip Sills and George H. Jensen. Vol. 1. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1992. 22-52.
CompPile might give you more.