An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Positivism approach to research

Back to: Paper 1 Unit 2: Research Aptitude (शोध अभिवृत्ति)

Lesson 1.3

Positivism Approach of Research (प्रत्यक्षवाद शोध उपागम)

Introduction

  • August Comte (1798-1857) first described the epistemological (ज्ञानमीमांसीय) perspective of positivism in The Course in Positive Philosophy.
  • He was known as philosopher of science, founder of sociology and  father of positivism.
  • Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemologists study the nature of knowledge, justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues.
  • By the mid-nineteenth century, philosophers like Auguste Comte developed positivism in sociology and John Stuart Mill empiricism in psychology.
  • Comte emphasized observation and reason as means of understanding human behaviour.
  •  He argued that true knowledge is based on experience of senses and can be obtained by observations and experiment.
  • They stated that certain knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations.
  • Positivism is a philosophical and anthological (what exists) position in which there can be something which is ‘positive’ ‘truthful’ or ‘known’.
  • The positivist believed in empiricism the idea that observation and measurement was the core of the scientific method.
  • It often declares that only authentic knowledge is that which is based on sense experience and positive verification.
  • Positivism is elsewhere defined as the view that all true knowledge is scientific and that all things are ultimately measurable.
  • It is a position that holds that the goals of knowledge are simply to describe the phenomena that we experience.

Scope



  • Positivism is well established in almost all universities and in specialised institutions engaged in advanced educational research around the world.
  • Being ‘scientific research paradigm; it endeavours to investigate, validate and predict patterns of behaviour.
  • Students preparing their graduate dissertation or writing terminal research papers commonly use it to test theories and hypotheses.
  • It is significantly useful in natural science, physical science and relatively less in the social sciences particularly in research studies involving very large samples.
  • Its focus is on the objectivity of the research process.

Stages of Positivism (Law of three stages)



Characteristics

  • It totally rejects metaphysics (तत्त्वमीमांसा). (Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality. Originally meaning the study of “being as such”, “first causes”, or “unchanging things“.  Abstract theory with no basis in reality.)
  • Positivism holds that valid knowledge (truth) is found in this a posteriori knowledge. (A posteriori knowledge is empirical, experience-based knowledge, whereas a priori knowledge is a non-empirical knowledge.)
  • Experiences are important.
  • Any phenomenon can be observed and measured.
  • Knowledge beyond this does not exist.
  • It follows the principle of Cause and effect relationship.
  • Science is the only valid knowledge.
  • Fact is the object of knowledge.