Crudely speaking, positvism is that measurement = understanding.
That facts and sciences are “neutral” from the society that produces them and it devalues systems thinking. It atomises and isolates variables. Consider for example racial science such as skull measurements to assess intelligence, or IQ currently, or genetics for biological determinism etc.
To begin with it may be worthwile looking at the arguments against Karl Popper’s positvism (eg falsefiability) and how quantum physics proves positvism is not correct (while doing so you will also discover where positvists also claim that quantum physics backs them up!).
Then it may be worthwile doing a deep dive into dialectical materialism:
Positivism is a deflationary view that one should only believe in things that are either tautologically true or derived a posteriori from empirical observation. To be “deflationary” means it subtracts away beliefs that are not absolutely necessary to make sense of what we observe.
Mach, famously, did not believe atoms existed, because in his time, no one had yet developed an electron microscope that could actually see atoms. He thus saw atoms as a metaphysical construct used to explain the results of experiments, but since we could not directly observe them, we did not need to commit to a belief that they literally definitely existed.
The main issue with positivism, in my view, is that it is a bit too deflationary. If you take it seriously, you basically have to adopt a kind of solipsistic stance, because I cannot observe what you observe, so I have to assume your point of view doesn’t exist, and if I am not looking at something, well, by definition I cannot observe it, so I also have to deny that things even can be said to have existence at all in any sense when I am not looking.
This is a critique that many dialectical materialists have of positivism. Dialectical materialism is sometimes viewed as positivist since dialectical materialist authors love to rail against the “metaphysicians” and engage in deflationary rhetoric. But it’s not really positivist because dialectical materialists always have defended that at least some metaphysics is necessary to make sense of the world, but they just always caution to use it very sparingly.
In addition to my last answer I realised I didn’t go into positivism with the context of history/historiography (ie regarding OP article’s subject): it would be relaying events/facts about history without understanding the explanatory power behind it all.
You will often see this where a historian (outside of the academic discpline, and even within it) explain historical events as the decisions of “great” men/women (ie igorning the masses and systems that allows these “great” people to come into a poisiton of power and allowing them to take the actions they do, and ignoring the weight of systems or masses of peoples in the direction of history ie class struggles) or the serendipity/randomness of events.
The above is the equivalent of recognising brownian motion of individual particles in a fluid (ie individual “random” movements) and then not considering diffusion or osmosis ie a direction of entropy.
It is the denunciation effectively of the science of history, historical materialism, and taking an idealistic metaphysical non-scientifc perspective instead.
Ie as noted in my previous comment - positivism could be considered “measurement” = understanding; taking historical events (assuming what being relayed is true) and then not recognising the interconnectedness of systems when you zoom out.
Being a dialectical materialist, however does not mean there is no obejctive reality - we are not idealists - but recognising that objectivity includes the relationships between things and not assuming understanding something by removing it from its fullest context.
What is positivism? I keep looking at the descriptions I get when I look it up and I don’t really get it.
Crudely speaking, positvism is that measurement = understanding.
That facts and sciences are “neutral” from the society that produces them and it devalues systems thinking. It atomises and isolates variables. Consider for example racial science such as skull measurements to assess intelligence, or IQ currently, or genetics for biological determinism etc.
To begin with it may be worthwile looking at the arguments against Karl Popper’s positvism (eg falsefiability) and how quantum physics proves positvism is not correct (while doing so you will also discover where positvists also claim that quantum physics backs them up!).
Then it may be worthwile doing a deep dive into dialectical materialism:
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10454574/7636518
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9962669/7402719
Positivism is a deflationary view that one should only believe in things that are either tautologically true or derived a posteriori from empirical observation. To be “deflationary” means it subtracts away beliefs that are not absolutely necessary to make sense of what we observe.
Mach, famously, did not believe atoms existed, because in his time, no one had yet developed an electron microscope that could actually see atoms. He thus saw atoms as a metaphysical construct used to explain the results of experiments, but since we could not directly observe them, we did not need to commit to a belief that they literally definitely existed.
The main issue with positivism, in my view, is that it is a bit too deflationary. If you take it seriously, you basically have to adopt a kind of solipsistic stance, because I cannot observe what you observe, so I have to assume your point of view doesn’t exist, and if I am not looking at something, well, by definition I cannot observe it, so I also have to deny that things even can be said to have existence at all in any sense when I am not looking.
This is a critique that many dialectical materialists have of positivism. Dialectical materialism is sometimes viewed as positivist since dialectical materialist authors love to rail against the “metaphysicians” and engage in deflationary rhetoric. But it’s not really positivist because dialectical materialists always have defended that at least some metaphysics is necessary to make sense of the world, but they just always caution to use it very sparingly.
In addition to my last answer I realised I didn’t go into positivism with the context of history/historiography (ie regarding OP article’s subject): it would be relaying events/facts about history without understanding the explanatory power behind it all.
You will often see this where a historian (outside of the academic discpline, and even within it) explain historical events as the decisions of “great” men/women (ie igorning the masses and systems that allows these “great” people to come into a poisiton of power and allowing them to take the actions they do, and ignoring the weight of systems or masses of peoples in the direction of history ie class struggles) or the serendipity/randomness of events.
The above is the equivalent of recognising brownian motion of individual particles in a fluid (ie individual “random” movements) and then not considering diffusion or osmosis ie a direction of entropy.
It is the denunciation effectively of the science of history, historical materialism, and taking an idealistic metaphysical non-scientifc perspective instead.
Ie as noted in my previous comment - positivism could be considered “measurement” = understanding; taking historical events (assuming what being relayed is true) and then not recognising the interconnectedness of systems when you zoom out.
Being a dialectical materialist, however does not mean there is no obejctive reality - we are not idealists - but recognising that objectivity includes the relationships between things and not assuming understanding something by removing it from its fullest context.
Hope that helps.