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.
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.