Hypertext Webster Gateway: "positivism"
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)
Positivism \Pos"i*tiv*ism\, n.
A system of philosophy originated by M. Auguste Comte, which
deals only with positives. It excludes from philosophy
everything but the natural phenomena or properties of
knowable things, together with their invariable relations of
coexistence and succession, as occurring in time and space.
Such relations are denominated laws, which are to be
discovered by observation, experiment, and comparison. This
philosophy holds all inquiry into causes, both efficient and
final, to be useless and unprofitable.
From WordNet (r) 1.7 (wn)
positivism
n 1: the form of empiricism that bases all knowledge on
perceptual experience (not on intuition or revelation)
[syn: {logical positivism}]
2: a quality or state characterized by certainty or acceptance
or affirmation [syn: {positivity}] [ant: {negativism}]
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