The Ghost of Positivism in Social Sciences

Abstract

The term "positivism" has been used since the first half of the nineteenth century and has since acquired a huge plurality of meanings. Also, the connotations associated with a spectrum that notion that unfolds from the most favorable to the most violently negative. This paper presents several senses of positivism and discusses the circumstances that gave rise to and referred to the reasons that influenced so contrasting variety of judgments. These considerations suggest that the vast majority of the references that are made disapproving positivism in current publications respond, among other possible reasons, the semantic confusion and erroneous attribution of ideas to authors who are identified with positivism.