Leszek Kolakowski - The Alienation of Reason. A History of Positivist Thought PDF

The Alienation of Reason
LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI is an essayist and playwright as well as

a philosopher, perhaps best known in this country for his
striking essay, "The Priest and the Jester." Although he has
been called "probably the most important thinker on Marxism
active today," he was expelled from the Polish Communist
Party in 1 966 for his left-wing views and in 1968 lost his
position teaching modem philosophy at the University of
Warsaw because of his active support of student rebels.
A HISTORY OF POSITIVIST THOUGHT
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by Leszek Kolakowsk
TRANSLATED BY
NORBERT GUTERMAN
Anchor Books
DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
This book was published in Poland by Panstwowe Wydawnictwo
Naukowe in 1966 as Filozofia Pozytywistyczna (od Hume 'a do
Kola Wiedenskiego). Copyright Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Nau
kowe, 1966.
The Alienation of Reason was published in hardcover by Double

day & Co., Inc. in 1968.
Anchor Books edition: 1969
Copyright © 1968 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.

All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Preface
This book is an account of the main stages of positivist

thought, which have to be briefly characterized if we are to
grasp the meaning of this philosophy, that is, the inferences to
be drawn from it as well as what is enduring in it. The term
"positivism" does not refer simply to a specific philosophical
doctrine that denies being either a doctrine or a philosophy. It
is also used in connection with a specific theory of law, a par
ticular current in literary history, and a characteristic treat
ment of a number of theological questions. To use the same
term in all these connections is not entirely arbitrary, but
justified to some extent by a common intellectual attitude to
be discerned in them all. On the other hand, their similarity
is not so strongly marked as to rule out separate discussion.
In this book I am concerned exclusively with positivism in
the sense of a philosophical-or, if you prefer, an anti
philosophical-doctrine. I have deliberately avoided mention
ing a great many names, since my intention is not to provide
a detailed historical survey, listing as many contributors to this
current of thought as possible, but rather to bring out its most
important features, the ones most helpful for grasping it as a
whole. Thus, the reader will find here only the best-known
names in the history of positivism. Even to list the individuals
and problems omitted would be out of place here.
The first and the last chapters deal with the same subject:
they represent an attempt to characterize the phenomenon as
a whole. However, the first merely expounds the most impor
tant features of positivism to be found in the philosophical
texts. In the last I inquire into the general meaning of this
vi THE ALIENATION OF REASON
style of thinking, which as a rule is not dealt with by its

adherents.
In some cases the book contains critical observations. These
are clearly distinguishal5le from the purely informative por
tions. Most of the criticisms come from other sources, but
since this book is addressed to the general reader I have not
troubled to indicate where I speak in my own name and where
I draw on others. For the same reason I don't list the critical
and historical sources I have made use of. My aim here is not
to discuss new or previously ignored problems, but merely to
present a well-known phenomenon in such a way that the
reader may not only be informed about it objectively, but also
brought closer to understanding its function in our culture.
Both the informative and the "analytical" portions of my
exposition may, however, be looked upon as the results of
already existing reflection, a procedure admissible in this type
of presentation.
Contents
Preface v
ONE An Over-all View of Positivism 1
TWO Positivism Down to David Hume 11
THREE Auguste Comte: Positivism in the Romantic

Age 45
FOUR Positivism Triumphant 71
FIVE Positivism at the Turn of the Century 101
SIX Conventionalism-Destruction of the Concept of

Fact 129
SEVEN Pragmatism and Positivism 1 49
EIGHT Logical Empiricism: A Scientistic Defense of

Threatened Civilization 1 69
Conclusion 201
Index 213
CHAPTER ONE
An Over-all View of Positivism
The term "positive philosophy" was coined by Auguste

Comte, and it has lasted down to the present in the shorter
form of "positivism." Not all, however, who according to
historians or critics profess the positivist doctrine, would agree
to be classified under this heading. As a rule such objections
are motivated by the fact that thinkers are reluctant to admit
they profess a doctrine that bas bad a long and complex his
tory. To respect their wishes, one would be obliged in each
case to single out those elements in positivism that are not to
their taste, at the same time pointing out how much of the
rest of it they nonetheless subscribe to. Also, many thinkers
are conscious of the errors and oversimplifications that grow
up around doctrinal labels, and for this reason hesitate to
enroll themselves under any banner.
In view of this situation, setting boundaries to the current
of thought positivism represents in nineteenth- and twentieth
century intellectual history requires a decision that is partly
arbitrary. The same problem arises in many other cases (for
example, when one discusses the history of existentialist or
Marxist philosophy). A measure of arbitrariness, however, is
unavoidable both for the historian and for the student of
philosophical culture. One bas to organize the material at
hand according to some schema, disregarding differences in
matters one looks upon as secondary, if one is to bring out
the continuity in primary contexts. Nor is this distinction be
tween primary and secondary strains in philosophy entirely
arbitrary. It is based on certain historical data that show, it
may be with the aid of purely quantitative (though approxi-
2 THE ALIENATION OF REASON
mate) indices, that certain themes, propositions, or assertions

held the attention of readers, polemicists, and adherents over
a given period, while otb,ers went almost unnoticed. The classi
fier or historian who discerns a certain "current" in the his
tory of philosophy goes on to refer solely to historical, factual
criteria in justifying his construction. Otherwise he might be
suspected of ascertaining intellectual trends on the basis of
arbitrarily chosen principles (though even this is permissible,
provided he clearly formulates his criteria). Moreover, he
refers to a sense of continuity that actually was felt by suc
cessive generations of adherents, and given expression by
them. There is room for error in interpreting such evidence,
but it certainly merits being taken into account.
In the present instance, however, we are dealing with a
matter that is scarcely controversial: the existence of a "posi
tivist current" in nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy
is universally acknowledged. Doubts arise only when we try
to define this current, and to formulate rigorous criteria set
ting it off from the other currents. This situation is as normal
and inescapable in the history of philosophic thought as in
the history of art: the interpenetration of ideas, the ways one
current influences another or reacts against it, not to mention
genuine ambiguities in the texts themselves, mean that there
is always room for more than one interpretation; perfectly
clear-cut divisions are ruled out by the circumstances of the
case.
So let us try to characterize the positivist mode of thinking
in the most schematic, over-all terms.
Positivism stands for a certain philosophical attitude con
cerning human knowledge; strictly speaking, it does not pre
judge questions about how men arrive at knowledge-neither
the psychological nor the historical foundations of knowl
edge. But it is a collection of rules and evaluative criteria re
ferring to human cognition: it tells us what kind of contents
in our statements about the world deserves the name of knowl
edge and supplies 'us with norms that make it possible to
distinguish between that which may and that which may not
reasonably be asked. Thus positivism is a normative attitude,
AN OVER-ALL VIEW OF POSITIVISM 3
regulating how we are to use such terms as "knowledge,"

"science, " "cognition," and "information." By the same
token, the positivist rules distinguish between philosophical
and scientific disputes that may profitably be pursued and
those that have no chance of being settled and hence deserve
no consideration.
The most important of the rules that, according to the posi
tivist doctrine, are to be observed in order, so to speak, to
separate the wheat from the chaff in any statement about the
world-i.e., to determine the questions worth considering and
to discard questions that are falsely formulated or involve
illegitimate concepts-are as follows.
1 . The rule of phenomena/ism. This may be briefly formu
lated as follows: there is no real difference between "essence"
and " p he n o m en o n . " Many traditional metaphysical doctrines
assumed that various observed or observable phenomena are
manifestations of a reality that eludes ordinary cognition;
this assumption justified the use of su ch terms as "substance,"
"substantial form," "occult quality," etc. According to posi
tivism, the distinction between essence and phenomenon
should be eliminated from science on the ground that it is
misleading. We are entitled to record only that which is actu
ally manifested in experience; opinions concerning occult en
tities of which experienced things are supposedly the manifes
t ation s are untrustworthy. Disagreements over qu estions that
go be yond the domain of experience are purely verbal in
character. It must be noted here that posi tivists do not r ejec t
every distinction between "manifestation" and "cause." After
all, it is well known that w hoop i n g cough "manifests" itself
by characteristic fits of coughing, and once such a type of
d isease has been isolated, we are entitled to recognize the
cough as a " mani fe s t ati o n" and to inqu ire into the sp ecific
"hidden mechan ism " of th is manifestation. Discovery of Bacil
lus pertussis early in this century, as the causal agent of the
infection, was not, obviously, incompatible with the assump
tions of p heno me nalism . For p osi tivists do not obj ect to in
quiry into the i mmed iately invisible causes of any observed
phenomenon, th ey object only to any accounting for it in
terms of occult entities that are by definition inaccessible to

human knowledge. Classical examples of entities the positivists
condemn as illegitimate interpolations lying beyond the do
main of possible experience are "matter" and "spirit." Since
matter is supposed to be something different from the totality
of the world's observed qualities, and since with this concept
we do not account for observed phenomena more effectively
than without it, there is no reason to make use of it at all.
Similarly, if "soul" is to denote a certain object different from
the totality of the describable qualities of human psychic life,
it is a superfluous construct, for no one can tell us how the
world without "soul" would differ from the world with "soul."
Needless to say, the phenomenalist "Don't" so formulated
can give rise to doubt, for it is hard to state it in such a form
that it will settle once and for all, in every possible case,
whether our question is a legitimate one, whether it repre
sents the search for the "mechanism" behind the "manifesta
tion," or whether it is to be thrown into the dustbin of history
as "metaphysical." In some cases, the decision is easy to
make. For instance, if anyone maintained that absolutely un
knowable objects exist, a positivist would consider him an
incorrigible metaphysician on the ground that he has made
a statement about a reality that is by definition not subject
to experimental control. Conversely, there can be no doubt
about whether it makes sense to inquire into the possible
existence and properties of a specific cancer virus, for all that
it is for the time being observable only through its "manifesta
tions." But there are many cases in which the decision is not
so obvious. We mention this, not as an objection to positivism,
but to call attention to the highly abstract formulations used
here to characterize the positivist program, also to the fact
that incompatible interpretations of this same over-all rule are
to be found within positivism itself. For the moment, however,
we will not go into the over-all rules in greater detail but let
them stand out starkly as a means of identifying one fairly
important current in philosophical thought. This would ap
pear more instructive than to restrict the designation "posi
tivism" to certain branches of this current only.
2. The rule of nominalism. Strictly speaking, this rule may

be regarded as a consequence of the preceding, but it is pref
erable to state it separately, considering that in philosophical
controversy one philosophically valid judgment often follows
from another, yet terminological ambiguities can still arise
such as may make them appear incompatible. The rule of
nominalism comes down to the statement that we may not
assume that any insight formulated in general terms can have
any real referents other than individual concrete objects. As
is well known, attempts to define knowledge from this point of
view were made at the very beginning of European thought.
When Plato considered the question: What are we actually
speaking about when, for instance, we speak about the tri
angle or about justice? he formulated a question that has not
lost its vitality down to our own day, though it is often posed
in different words. We say that the sum of the angles in any
triangle is equal to two right angles. But what does the state
ment actually refer to? Not to this or that triangular body,
since there is no absolutely perfect triangle that meets all the
requirements of geometry; nor can it refer, for the same rea
son, to all individual triangular objects. And yet it can hardly
be said that geometry does not refer to anything at all. Hence,
our assertion must refer to "the" triangle, pure and simple.
But what is this triangle, which is to be found nowhere in
nature? It has none of the physical characteristics we usually
ascribe to bodies. For one thing, it is not localized in space.
All its properties derive from the fact that it is a triangle and
nothing else; we must acknowledge that it exists in some way,
although it is an existence not perceived by the senses, ac
cessible only to reflection.
Nominalists reject this line of reasoning. We have the right
to acknowledge the existence of a thing, they say, only when
experience obliges us to do so. No experience obliges us to
assume that our general knowledge about the properties of
"the" triangle corresponds to a certain entity different from
individual triangular bodies and possessing a separate exist
ence from them. It is true that our science requires the use
of conceptual instruments that describe certain ideal states,
which are never achieved in the empirical world. Not only

the mathematical sciences but also physics make use of such
constructs. More particularly, the physics initiated by Galileo
m'ust inevitably make use of descriptions of ideal situations, in
which certain observable features of the real world are carried
to an abstract point of refinement. Study of the properties of
such ideal situations helps us understand the real situations
that only approximate them more or less closely. But these
ideal situations-the vacuum in mechanics, self-contained sys
tems, figures in geometry-are creations of our own that serve
as a superior-more concise and more generalized-descrip
tion of empirical reality. There is no reason to suppose that
because we assume such situations for the convenience of our
calc'ulations, they must actually exist anywhere in reality. The
world we know is a collection of individual observable facts.
Science aims at ordering these facts, and it is only thanks to
this ordering work that it becomes a true science, i.e., some
thing that can be put to practical use and that enables us to
predict certain events on the basis of others. All our abstract
concepts, all the schemata of the mathematical sciences, and
all the idealizations drawn up in the natural sciences are con
tained in these ordering systems. Only thanks to them can we
give experience a coherent, concise form, easy to remember,
purified of the accidental deviations and deformations that
are necessarily present in every individual fact. Though ab
solutely perfect circles are found neither i n nature nor in the
products of human technology, we can produce circular
bodies rather closely approximating this ideal, thanks to the
fact that we operate with the perfect circle in our abstract
calculations. A system ordering our experiences must be such
as not to introduce into experience more entities than are con
tained in experience and, since it inevitably uses abstractions
among its means, it must also be such as to enable us to keep
constantly in mind that these abstractions are no more or less
than means, human creations that serve to organize experi
ence but are not entitled to lay claim to separate existence.
According to nominalism, in other words, every abstract
science is a method of ordering, a quantitative recording of
AN OVER-ALL VIEW OF POSITMSM 7
experiences, and has no independent cognitive function in the

sense that, via its abstractions, it opens access to empirically
inaccessible domains of reality. All the general entities, the
abstract creations, with which the old metaphysics filled the
world are fictions, for they illegitimately ascribed existence to
things that have no existence save as names or words. In the
language of the old controversies, "universality" is merely a
characteristic of linguistic constructs and also-according to
some interpretations-of mental acts associated with operations
involving these constructs. In the world of actual experience,
however, hence in the world pure
·
and simple, there are no
such things as "universals."
3. The phenomenalist, nominalist conception of science has
another important consequence, namely, the rule that denies
cognitive value to value judgments and normative statements.
Experience, positivism argues, contains no such qualities of
men, events, or things as "noble," "ignoble," "good," "evil,"
"beautiful," "ugly," etc. Nor can any experience oblige us,
through any logical operations whatever, to accept statements
containing commandments or prohibitions, telling us to do
something or not to do it. More accurately: it is clear that in
relation to an aim one sets oneself, it is possible to supply
logical grounds for judgments concerning the effectiveness of
the means employed; evaluations of this type have a technical
character and may be qualified as true or false to the extent
that they have a technical sense, i.e., to the extent that they
tell us what operations are or are not effective in achieving a
desired end. Examples of such technical judgments would be
a statement to the effect that we should administer penicillin
in a case of pneumonia or one to the effect that children ought
not be.. threatened with a beating if they won't eat. Such state
ments can, clearly, be justified, if their meaning is respectively
that penicillin is an effective remedy against pneumonia, and
that threatening children with punishment to make them eat
causes characterological handicaps. And if we assume tacitly
that, as a rule, it is a good thing to cure the sick and a bad
thing to inflict psychic deformation upon children, the above
mentioned statements can be justified, even though they do
8 THE ALIBNATION OF REASON
have the form of normative judgments. But we are not to

assume that any value assertion that we recognize as true "in
itself," rather than in relation to something else, can be jus
tified by experience. For instance, the principle that human
life is an irreplaceable value cannot be so justified: we may
accept it or we may reject it, but we must be conscious of
the arbitrariness of our option. For, by the phenomenalist
rule, we are obliged to reject the assumption of values as
characteristics of the world accessible to the only kind of
knowledge worthy of the name. At the same time, the rule of
nominalism obliges us to reject the assumption that beyond
the visible world there exists a domain of values "in them
selves," with which our evaluations are correlated in some
mysterious way. Consequently, we are entitled to express
value judgments on the human world, but we are not entitled
to assume that our grounds for making them are scientific;
more generally, the only grounds for making them are our
own arbitrary choices.
4. Finally, among the fundamental ideas of positivist phi
losophy we may mention belief in the essential unity of the
scientific method. To an even greater extent than the previous
principles, the meaning of this one admits of various interpre
tations. For all of that, the idea itself is invariably present in
positivist discussion. In its most general form it expresses the
belief that the methods for acquiring valid knowledge, and the
main stages in elaborating experience through theoretical re
flection, are essentially the same in all spheres of experience .
Consequently we have no reason to assume that the qualita
tive differences between particular sciences come to anything
more than characteristics of a particular historical stage in
the development of science; we may expect that further prog
ress will g,radually eliminate such differences or even, as many
authors have believed, will reduce all the domains of knowl
edge to a single science. It has often been supposed that this
single science in the proper sense of the term will be physics,
on the grounds that of all the empirical disciplines it has de
veloped the most exact methods of description, and that it en
compasses the most universal of the qualities and phenomena
found in nature-those without which no others occur. This

assumption-that all knowledge will be reduced to the physi
cal sciences, that all scientific statements will be translated
into physical terms-does not, to be sure, follow from the
foregoing positivist rules without further assumptions. More
over, belief in the unity of the scientific method can be speci
fied in other ways as well. However, the above-mentioned
interpretation is fairly common in the history of positivism.
Around these four briefly stated. "rules," positivist philoso
phy bas built up an extensive network of theory covering all
the domains of human cognition. Defined in the most general
terms, positivism is a collection of prohibitions concerning
human knowledge, intended to confine the name of "knowl
edge" (or "science") to those operations that are observable
in the evolution of the modern sciences of nature. More es
pecially, throughout its history positivism bas turned a polemi
cal cutting edge to metaphysical speculation of every kind,
and hence against all reflection that either cannot found its
conclusions on empirical data or formulates its judgments in
such a way that they can never be contradicted by empirical
data. Thus, according to the positivists, both the materialist
and the spiritualist interpretations of the world make use of
terms to which nothing corresponds in experience: it is not
known how the world of our experience would be different
from what it is, were we to assume that it is not, as materialists
think, a manifestation of the existence and movement of mat
ter, or were we to assume that it is not, as the adherents of
religious denominations think, controlled by the spiritual
forces of Providence. Since neither of these assumptions en
tails consequences enabling us to predict or to describe addi
tional features of the world apart from what we can predict
or describe without them, there is no reason to concern our
selves with them. Thus positivism constantly directs its criti
cisms against both religious interpretations of the world and
materialist metaphysics, and tries to work out an observational
position entirely free of metaphysical assumptions. This po
sition is consciously confined to the rules the natural sciences
observe in practice. According to the positivists, metaphysical
assumptions serve no purpose in these sciences, whose aim is

to formulate the interdependence of phenomena without pene
trating more deeply into their hidden "natures" and without
trying to find out whether the world "in itself," apart from
the cognitive situations in which it appears to us, has features
other than those accessible to experience.
What sense these positivist prohibitions make in the history
of culture, what initial assumptions they require, and how
they can be justified, as well as what kind of difficulties are
associated with accepting them-all this we will try to analyze
in a final chapter. Our main task, however, is to expound the
main stages through which modern positivist thought has
passed.
CHAPTER TWO
Positivism Down to David Hume
The task we have set ourselves requires the following histori

cal remarks:
It is possible to begin the history of European positivist
thought almost anywhere, for many strands we regard as of
primary importance in contemporary positivist doctrines had
antecedents in antiquity. There are Stoic fragments, also sur
viving writings by skeptics and atomists, with passages that
bring vividly to mind the anti-metaphysical treatises of the
modern era. For instance, these ancient thinkers tell us that
experience enables us to ascertain whether a given object has
this or that appearance, but that it is illegitimate to go on to
infer that the object is in reality such as it appears to be. For
example, we may say that honey appears to be sweet, but we
cannot infer from this that honey is sweet; similarly, we may
say that we experience the warmth of fire, but not that fire is
warm "in itself," etc. The main rules of that interpretation of
knowledge we call phenomenalism-which require that we dis
tinguish between the true content of the "data" of experience
(appearances, phenomena) and such illegitimate extrapola
tions from it as present the qualities we observe as qualities
inherent in "the nature of things"-had already been formu
lated in antiquity, though in a form we must today regard as
simplistic. (We should note right here that phenomenalism
does not imply that the only objects of cognition are "psychic
contents"-this belief may be, but is not necessarily, associated
with the phenomenalist position.)
1. Medieval positivism. The philosophical literature of the
later Middle Ages also contains many texts that may be re-
12 THE ALIENATION O F REASON
garded as giving expression to a positivist view of the validity

and scope of human cognition. We suppose that the emer
gence of such ideas reflected a growing interest in nature, in
cosmological or physical investigation, and aimed at eliminat
ing the Aristotelian metaphysical categories from the descrip
tion of nature. Although the nominalist tendency is one of
the most significant components in positivist ideology as a
whole, and although nominalism had its first flowering as
early as the close of the eleventh century, this philosophy was
not at first bound up with a positivist theory of knowledge. It
had important theological consequences, serving above all as
a tool in criticizing certain theological doctrines, but unlike
fourteenth-century nominalism, it was not yet tied in with a
scientific program. Renewal of active interest in natural sci
ence led, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to at
tempts at interpreting it philosophically. In the thirteenth
century, Roger Bacon, a Franciscan at Oxford, not only de
manded that controlled experiment be made a condition of
any knowledge worthy of the name, but also called attention
to the need for technical control over nature-i.e., he believed
that the value of knowledge can be measured by the effective
ness of its applications. We call this point of view "pragma
tist," and it is common in the history of positivism; simplifying
somewhat, we may say that Francis Bacon's well-known apho
rism, "Knowledge itself is power," is in the eyes of positivists
truer when turned around: "Power itself is knowledge." To
Roger Bacon, the only reliable means of acquiring knowledge
about the world were experiment and geometric deduction,
and with this program he associated dreams of technological
achievements that he hoped would come about once nature
had been properly investigated.
However, Roger Bacon's thought accords with positivist
thinking only in a general way. All they really have in com
1
mon is disparagement of methods of cognition that cannot
prove their worth by practical effect, and the demand for an
empirically orientated science. It should be noted here that
this philosopher's empirical bent extended even into the re
ligious life: he attached an especially high value to mystical
POSITIVISM DOWN TO DAVID HUME 13
experience, as a means of direct communication with the

divine source of being and as a "pragmatic" means of at
taining the good life, though not here and now.
The accord between experimentalism and nominalism is
more striking, and more explicit, in certain writers who,
chiefly in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, dis
tinguished themselves at Paris and Oxford by their opposition
to the reigning Scholasticism. They remained virtually ignored
until medievalists in our own day called attention to the origi
nality of their thought and began to reissue such works and
fragments of works as have come down to us. William of
Ockham, the best known of these writers, achieved philosophi
cal fame above all by his support of a radical nominalism,
that is, a position that falls into the innermost canon (as it
were) of the positivist style of thinking. It was he who formu
lated the famous rule, which has been revived in various
versions over the centuries, known as "Ockham's razor." It
says, in effect, that entities are not to be multiplied unneces
sarily: in other words, we are to take cognizance of only so
much in the world as the irrefutable testimony of experience
obliges us to take cognizance of. He voiced this view in op
position to a metaphysics that had populated the world with a
host of superfluous entities-mere words or names without
counterparts in reality. Only concrete objects and their prop
erties are real, William maintained. Moreover, relations be
tween objects-the relation between cause and effect, for in
stance-do not constitute an independent domain of being,
but are identical with the objects concerned. Thus, he reduced
the Aristotelian categories to two-substance and quality-ar
guing that only these two refer to some sort of realities in our
world.
Ockham's thought aimed at driving out of philosophy all
conceptual categories without counterparts in actual experi
ence, and hence favored a conception of knowledge as the
sum total of data that can be confirmed by experience. At the
same time, this doctrine ruled out natural theology, the dis
cipline that attempts to demonstrate the truth of religious
revelation "by reason alone," with the aid of arguments drawn
from the data of experience. Actually, Ockham regarded the

domain of religious truth as undemonstrable, as being the
object of faith alone; he was not hostile to religious truth,
but believed it impossible and unnecessary to prove. Thereby
Ockham's nominalism contributed to 'upholding the principle
of a complete separation between secular knowledge and re
ligious life. This principle was of fundamental importance in
medieval intellectual culture, in efforts to emancipate from
clerical control not only the whole of knowledge, but also all
spheres of secular life-manners and customs, government,
politics. The aspirations of late medieval and early modern
princes to free themselves from the papacy-and the eventual
creation of nation-states in which there is complete separation
of Church and State-thus have some doctrinal foundation in
the extreme nominalism of the fourteenth century.
The most radical version of medieval positivism, however,
was advanced by certain Paris nominalists who were severely
condemned by the authorities in their day, chiefly because
of the theological consequences to which their theory of
knowledge would lead. We have fragments of writings by Jean
de Mireco'urt, a Cistercian, and by the still more radical Nic
olas d'Autrecourt, in which a clear-cut separation between
the spheres of faith and reason is carried even farther than
it was by Ockham. Theirs is a critique of the Scholastic theory
of knowledge which departs radically from the Peripatetic
tradition. According to Jean de Mirecourt, infallible ("self
evident") knowledge is either reducible to the principle of
contradiction or is an account of the facts supplied by inner
or outer experience. Thus he formulated one version of a
fundamental tenet of positivism, namely, that only analytical
judgments and descriptions of immediate experiences deserve
the name of knowledge. Whatever we know about the world
on the basis of experience implies no necessity: we cannot,
by invoking the principle of contradiction, prove that any
fact is any more necessary than its negation. Among other
things, Jean de Mirecourt maintained that the divine will is
not limited by anything, or, to put it in the language of mod
ern philosophy, that all the characteristics of the world and its
POSITMSM DOWN TO DAVID HUME 15
very existence are contingent and have no rationale apart
from a free divine decree. Similarly, Nicolas d'Autrecourt re
duced infallible knowledge to two kinds: one based on the
principle of identity, the other consisting of records of imme
diate experience. This reduction served to put in question the
concepts of substance and cause, which were fundamental to
Scholasticism. We merely observe individual causal connec
tions, and prediction as to their constant or regular recur
rence can be no more than probable; the principle of identity
does not permit the existence of one thing to be inferred from
the existence of another. For the same reason no concatena
tion of observed facts entitles us to infer that they are linked
by some underlying substance that is not evident to percep
tion. Thus the concept of substance turns out to be superflu
ous to our description of the world, a mere terminological
convention.
Considerations of this type, combined with outright criti
cism of Aristotelian metaphysics, obviously foreshadowed
what we have been calling the "mies" of positivism; their
function is to discern what is absolutely reliable in our knowl
edge and what is not, to arrive at ultimate, infallible cog
nitive contents. All that is reliable are the so-called infallible
rules of reasoning, which are in themselves quasi self-evident,
and directly experienced data. Any knowledge irreducible to
either of these two kinds deserves no consideration. What we
truly know is contained in analytical judgments (which do not
refer to the existence of anything) and statements of fact.
Translated into modem terminology, such is the main episte
mological conception in fourteenth-century nominalism. The
powerlessness of our reason to rise from the natural world to
the Creator with the help of inferences from effects to cause,
or by arguments from desigu, becomes manifest in the light
of this criticism. Natural theology practically ceases to exist,
and the sphere of faith is left a matter of faith alone, distinct
from rational demonstration. The foregoing helps us to under
stand why Martin Luther found inspiration in nominalist doc
trines. The nominalist idea that faith is beyond the scope of
reason was also invoked by certain theologians within the
Church who sought to restore Augustinian teachings and to

eliminate the danger to which the Christian religion had been
exposed by Scholastics who, intoxicated by the force of their
own arguments, made its justification ever more dependent on
their fragile syllogisms. Others invoked nominalism in arguing
that empirical science should be freed from theological super
vision. However, this question does not concern us here. We
may refer to it later in connection with more recent attempts
by certain schools of theology to exploit modern positivism.
In the same period a rudimentary form of pragmatism
made its appearance alongside phenomenalism. Jean Buridan,
who served a few terms as rector of the University of Paris
and is famous for his revolutionary attempts to overthrow
Aristotelian physics, tended to believe that cosmological the
ories should be interpreted in an instrumental rather than a
descriptive sense. That is, they do not tell us anything about
the nature of the world, but provide practical clues as to bow
we are to calculate and predict the motions of the heavenly
bodies. Buridan was active in the same period as Nicolas of
Oresme, who, nearly two centuries before Copernicus, tried
to prove the daily rotation of the earth. This is worth men
tioning because, among other things, Andreas Osiander's pref
ace to Copernicus's work contains a pragmatist and phe
nomenalist interpretation of heliocentrism: Copernicus is
presented, not as describing the actual structure of the plane
tary system, but as advancing a hypothetical construction in-
1tended to facilitate astronomical computation. The pragmatist
interpretation of knowledge was no novelty in Christian cul

ture: many mystics were convinced that the human reason
can never make a true, a literally true, statement about God,
and that a language adequate to the created world is utterly
inadequate to describe the absolute; they regarded the asser
tions of theology as practical indications rather than doctrinal
truths. They claimed that statements about God do not open
access to Him, but merely urge worship and reverence: they
are norms rather than judgments.
Thus it may be said that medieval thought gave birth to
and, in its own language, gave expression to the fundamental
ideas of positivism, which aim at establishing rules of mean
ingful knowledge and confine it to analytical statements or
matter-of-fact observations. But we must not overestimate the
historical importance of this development. The majority of
Scholastic "positivists" (insofar as they may be called such)
exerted only a very limited influence on the generations im
mediately following. Most of the philosophical ideas men
tioned did not come to light until our own century. The nom
inalist tradition was absorbed into Renaissance philosophy,
but in a different form; in the Middle Ages, nominalism was
important primarily as one significant phase in attacks upon
the Aristotelians and as a doctrine containing explicitly or
implicitly the theory of divine decretalism, and thereby en
couraging a return to St. Augustine's doctrine of grace. The
last-named question, central to the doctrinal evolution of
Christianity in the epoch of the Reformation and the
Counter-Reformation, is only very loosely connected with the
positivist theory of knowledge.
The Renaissance itself was not a positivist period. It was
marked by an avid search for knowledge, rather than any
search for rules whereby to restrain the operations of the
human mind; it made lavish use of its hard-won freedom
from Scholastic forms of philosophy and from Scholastic ter
minology. The intellectual climate was the opposite of ascetic
in the matter of knowledge, as also in matters of art and
morals. The rich variety of literary styles in which philosophy
now expressed itself went hand in hand with a loosening of
the rules of proof and a return to rhetorical modes of argu
ment. The infinite diversity of nature, its countless facets, its
miraculous plasticity, and its unlimited potentialities were pon
dered and investigated with the greatest eagerness. The world
was seen to be populated with a host of mysteries-mysterious
forces of nature whose secrets were probed by alchemists and
magicians, mysterious non-human creatures and other enig
matic phenomena described by naturalists. The mystery of
godhead appeared to deepen, now that pantheist thinkers
arose to point out that the divine activity and the very exist
ence of the Creator are contrary to the rules of logic; this
tended to limit the validity of logic. The revival of Platonism

inspired both spiritualists who expressed contempt for matter
and naturalists who spoke with tireless enthusiasm of matter's
creativity. Although empiricism or experimentation flowered
as never before, this development had little in common with
positivist programs: the aim was to get at "the thing in itself,"
understood not as "substance" in the traditional sense, but as
the primordial hidden "power" that Nature diffuses through
her various creations.
2. Positivist strands in the seventeenth century. In marked
contrast, the development of positivist thought in the seven
teenth century is very clear and closely bound up with the
birth of modem mechanics. Galileo's thought cannot be in
terpreted in its entirety as an expression of the positivist pro
gram: historians have stressed the importance of the Platonic
background as well. All the same, in one essential respect,
Galileo founded a conception of science that may be called
characteristically positivist, which became dominant in the
seventeenth century and largely determined the division of
intellectual Europe into two camps. Galileo was the first to
formu1ate, at least in so clear a form, the phenomenalist pro
gram for knowledge as opposed to the traditional interpreta
tion of the world in terms of substantial forms. Previous de
scriptions of reality had attributed the causes of observed
phenomena to non-empirical "natures" ("heaviness," for ex
ample, as the cause of the fall of bodies) . Now it began to
1be
recognized that such a way of thinking has no cognitive
value; the "natures" are words without meaning, not true ex
planations of the phenomena. The task of science is not to go
on multiplying these "natures" and their qualitative "forms,"
but to supply quantitative descriptions of measurable phe
nomena. One essential element in this approach was Galileo's
conviction that, although mechanics must continually appeal
to experiment, its assertions do not refer to the results of
actually conducted experiments, but to processes taking place
under ideal conditions which cannot actually be reproduced
(e.g., the motion of a projectile that does not have to over
come the resistance of the air). Such ideal conditions can be
envisaged with the aid of geometric models. Galileo achieved

his res'ults by going beyond empirical approaches and recog
nizing the importance of idealization in science. There were
many enthusiastic followers of the new science in the seven
teenth century who failed to assimilate this particular aspect
of his method and, in their stru ggle against the epigones of
Scholasticism, laid exclusive emphasis upon experimentation
in the belief that physics is merely the record of actually con
ducted experiments. However, they failed to achieve impor
tant results, at least in mechanics.
The intellectual life of Europe in Galileo's day and the
period immediately following was defin ed by a much deeper
division or split of the learned world into factions : for and
against "substantial forms," for and against the new phen om
enalist-minded science. Despite disputes and differences among
themselves, scientists in the seventeenth century felt that they
were nonetheless united in opposition to the older, more con
servative tradition-not just the part represented by Scholasti
cism, but also that represented by Renaissance naturalism
and that their common stand was defined by their acceptance

of Galileo's physics. One of the most active propagators of
the new science was Marin Mersenne, dubbed "the secretary
of learned Europe" because of the very extensive relations he
maintained with all the imp ortan t scholars and scientists of
the period. Mersenne reconciled his orthodox Catholicism
With the new physics the more readi ly because both were of
use to him in fighting the same adversary-the Italian pan
theistic naturalists, the astrologers, the alchemists, and the
adepts of occult sciences generally. Mersenne's writings contain
the general outline of a phenomen alist physics : quantitative,
tnechanistic, anti-metaphysical. According to him, scientific
kn owledge consists in the quantitative organization of ob
served phenomena and makes no metaphysical claims; it does
not seek to inform us about "the nature of things," but to
gain an exact quantitative knowledge of the phenomenal world ,
a knowledge sufficient for man's practical exploitation of that

world. What lies beyond the domain of observed phenomena
is the obj ect of faith, and here re ligio us authority is decisive.
Thanks to this sharp separation between metaphysical ques

tions and scientific knowledge, Mersenne, like many another
of his learned contemporaries, w as able to retain his religious
beliefs without coming into conflict with natural science; nor
did his positivist interpretation of knowledge lead him-as it
has led so many latter d ay positivists-to give up his meta
-
physical convictions. What he renounced was any and all

attempts to justify the latter rationally, either on the basis of
experience or on other "rational" p rincipl es .
A similar type of seventeenth-century positivism is repre

sented by Gassendi. In his first treatise ( 1 624) , directed
against the Aristotelians, he demonstrated the futility of
metaphysical speculation and the unreli ability of rational
theology. According to him, all knowledge worth acquiring
will always and inevitably be imperfect, though not thereby
unproductive of results. What we truly know on the basis of
our natural means of cognition cannot go beyond probability,
nor can such knowledge lay claim to discovering the "nature"
of the world or the "essence" of things. At the same time,
however, it suffices for practical purposes, though it is always
open to criticism and runs the risk of being sooner or later
refuted.
Gassendi's doctrine reflects a spirit of modesty in the mak
i ng of intellectual claims which was a general characteristic of
the French libertines and one essential factor in the develop
ment of modern positivi sm We are not to ask questions th at
.
by definition cannot be answered with the aid of means ac

cessi ble to man q uestions about God, about the underlying
-
nature of the universe, about the invisible world. As for mat

ters s ubject to the verdict of natural knowledge, we are not to
regard any results achieved as indisputable or irrevocable, but
are to keep our minds open to the possibility of different solu
t ion s and correction in the light of future experience. These
rules , which have today become commonplaces in scientific
thinking, at the time added up to a kind of ascetic defiance
addressed to every sort of speculative philosopher of nature
and to all metaphysicians-materialist as well as religious
who organized the world into non-empirical structures of no
use t o natural science. I t must be stressed once again that this

program, like that of the medieval positivists, was not intended
to do away with religious faith, but only to change its cogni
tive status. Or, as the learned men of the time believed, it
was intended to restore religious faith to its original status.
Faith cannot be transformed into knowledge, and this is an
additional reason why we must not straitjacket science in reli
gious directives ; the paths of the two virtually never cross,
and hence the Christian and the scientific attitudes can co-exist
peacefully, provided they are clearly distinguished the one
from the other. Not all who drew this distinction, however,
always interpreted it in the same sense. Some really were con
cerned with removing all religious questions from the field of
vision of rationally thinking people and either refrained from
taking any religious position themselves or actually looked
upon this principle of separation as a safe way to formulate
their own unbelief. Others found in the same principle a safe
guard of religious faith against scientific criticism-a criticism
unavoidable so long as religious truths were treated as scien
tific assertions and their content made subject to rational
control. The most widespread attitude in the period, perhaps,
was represented by those who reduced religious faith to the
basic beliefs held in common by all the denominations of
Christianity : in God, in Providence, and in the immortality
of the soul. All the more specific questions concerning the ex
act nature of God and how He governs the world were recog
nized as riddles beyond the power of the human mind to solve.
Such an attitude, common in learned circles at that time,
made it possible to remove religious questions from intellectual
activity while yet upholding the main elements of the Chris
tian faith. It allowed one to practice tolerance and to view
religious dissension and doctrinal dispute as pointless and
futile. This style of thinking considerably reduced the impor
tance of denominational differences in the intellectual world
and so furthered scientific collaboration, personal friendship,
and the exchange of ideas among members of different faiths.
Denominational differences were relegated to the secondary
spheres of custom or legality; the fact of belonging to one or
another church had no more importance than following one

or another fashion and ceased to play any part in people's
general outlook. Thus, in the seventeenth century, positivism
gradually came to be linked with dogmatic indifferentism,
with an over-all anti-metaphysical and anti-theological orien
tation in science, but not as yet with atheism or passionate
concern for religious reform.
This new climate of opinion furthered moderation in the
assessment of scientific knowledge. Science does not disclose
infallible truths about the nature of being b'ut schematizes
actual experience in a way that makes possible its technical
exploitation. On this score, the libertine program seems to
have come closest to positivism in the seventeenth century,
for it implied renunciation of the hope that science could ever
provide us with information concerning the necessity al
legedly implied in the empirical regularities we observe. Let
us not ask what the world m ust necessarily be, let us not de
ceive ourselves that the laws we discover imply any absolute
necessity : they merely tell us how things in fact are, never that
they could not be otherwise. Within the scientific description
of the world, positivism thus lays bare the essential, irremedi
able contingency of all the properties of nature that are ac
cessible to reason and experience. Admittedly, this intellectual
modesty was not particularly fruitful of scientific results.
Gassendi and the other phenomenalists deserve full credit as
propagators of the new science and for their criticism of the
older Scholastic and naturalistic metaphysics, but their actual
scientific achievements were modest, or at least far more mod
est than those of other scientists. The latter, no less inspired
by the ideals of the new science and similarly contemptuous
of explanations of the world in terms of substantial forms,
clung to metaphysical aspirations and hoped by their investi
gations to discover the ultimate basis of the universe.
From the point of view discussed here, neither Descartes
nor Leibniz (any more than Galileo) was a positivist, al
though both shared the positivist conviction that interpretation
of the world by unseen faculties or forces, inaccessible to
empirical investigation, is absurd. We must not leave room for
the operation of inexplicable forces in the ordinary course of

nature, as Leibniz put it; otherwise we might end up with
explanations according to which clocks show the hour because
of some "horodeictic" faculty, and mills grind flour because
of some "fractionating" capacity. Descartes and Leibniz be
lieved that science should divest the world of mystery, should
fill the gaps in our cognition with real knowledge, not mask
our ignorance with purely verbal formulas . Though he clung
to the concept of substance, Descartes tried to characterize it
in such a way that it lost its old mysteriousness : matter, or
extended substance, is nothing but extension, and the soul,
or thinking substance, is nothing but thinking. There is no
"nature " hidden behind the actually observed qualities of
things, reference to which accounts for anything whatever. A
thing is no more or less than that which can be observed in
it, comes to no more or less than the sum total of its observ
able qualities. Although Descartes did not carry this position
to its ultimate consequences, and was not perfectly consistent
in ass erting it, it certainly is in line with the positivist pro
gram . At the same time, Descartes and Leibniz were both very
far from turning their backs on metaphysical problems or
from abandoning inquiry into the necessary attributes of be
ing. In contrast to the phenomenalists who s aw in the con
tingent character of experience evidence that the entirety of
our knowled ge is irrevocably uncertain, Descartes tried to
overcome this contingency and to discover truths that can be
accepted as absolutely necess ary and that yet are not purely
analytic in character. According to him, the very deceptive
ness of empirical knowledge, the l ack of any kind of necessity
in its contents, and the fact that it does not enable us to arrive
at any sure existential assertion ( since even the existence of
the material world is not self-evident on the basis of direct
perception ) , oblige us to turn elsewhere in our quest for in
fallible criteria of knowledge. Hence Descartes' belief that
mathematics ( more precisely, the model of deductive knowl
edge to be found in Euclid's Elements) has universal applica
tion in science, and that only with its help will we be able to
construct a science of nature not exposed to the uncertainties
of empirical knowledge-a belief rooted in his striving for

"necessary" truths, without which he felt no knowledge is
worthy of the name. According to him, the fundamental laws
of motion and collisions between bodies can be discovered
independently of experience, by careful analysis of the con
cepts of extension, body, motion, resistance, etc.
Thus, if mere negation of non-phenomenal "essences" suf
ficed to earn a thinker the titl e "positivist," Descartes (like
Leibniz ) would be a full-fledged representative of the tradi
tion. But because, at least in the light of the development of
positivism over the last two centuries, this criterion can hardly
be considered sufficient, Descartes can be called a positivist
only with serious reservations. For also essential to positivism
is the conviction that knowledge is "necessary" only to the
extent that it is analytic in character; in other words, the
knowledge that deserves to be called "necessary" is not, prop
erly speaking, knowledge about the world, but a collection
of tautologies, propositions whose truth is guaranteed by the
mere meanings of the terms used, requiring no experimental
criteria for confirmation and not even benefiting from such
as might be supplied. By the same token, "necessary" knowl
edge tells us nothing about what the world is really like, in
particular contains no existential judgments, and does not refer
to factual processes taking place in the world. On the con
trary, in the eyes of Descartes, only that knowledge is valuable
that does not merely tell us that something in fact takes place,
but that something must necessarily take place. Such knowl
edge can be achieved, but by non-empirical methods, and ac
cording to him even existential judgments may have an analytic
character, as evidenced by the ontological proof for the ex
istence of God. This proof amounts to the assertion that God's
existence is an a priori truth, i.e., it can be established by mere
analysis of the idea of God as the being endowed with all
p ossible perfections ( and hence with existence, since existence
is a perfection ) . Also, Descartes' philosophical interests are
in complete contrast to positivist programs for knowledge :
metaphysical questions concerning God, creation, and the im
material soul occupy a leading place in his meditations and
are by no means treated as objects of pure faith, but, on the

contrary, as objects of crucial " rational" argumentation.
The above remarks apply to an even greater extent to
Leibniz, wh o was just as hostile to Scholastic and naturalistic
interpretations of the world, and who sought-even more stub
bornly than Descartes-to devise methods of cognition capable
of bringing to light necessary reasons for al l the world's qu al i
ties an d its very existence . Since all empirical knowledge is
burdened with contingency, and hence no statement that is a
negation of a factual statement contains any internal contradic
tion ( th at it is raining we can verify by observation, but the
assertion that it is not ra ini n g is not self-contradictory, for our
statement is "in itself" contingent) , thus no accumulation of
such knowledge will produce any kind of necessity. Discovery
of causal connections does not abolish this contingency, for
the conditions we may empirically discover to account for
any contingent fact are just as contingent as the fact itself. At
the same time our thinking is governed by the principle of
sufficient reason, which implies that every contingent state
ment has a necessary foundation; from a certain sufficiently
broad point of view, contingency is a mark of the imperfection
of our knowledge. Because the very existence of the world is
contingent-Le., because the a ss umption that the world does not
exist or that it is entirely different from the actually existing
world is not self-contradictory-we can do away with the con
tingency of existence and m eet the requirements of the p rin
ciple of sufficient reason only by assu mi n g a Being whose
existence is identical with its essence-that is, God. Viewed
from God's point of view, the world loses its contingency and
discloses that what seems to us contingent is actually neces
sary, just as the analytic truths of geometry seem necessary
to us.
We mention these philosophers in order to set clearer
boundaries to what c an be called positivist philosophy and its
historical d evelopm e nt . In the light of the foregoing, the cog
nitive program closest to latter-day po s itivis m was formulated
in the seventeenth century by G assendi, although it would b e
going too far t o call h i m a positivist without reservations.
According to him, though metaphysical truths are undemon

strable, they enjoy real status in our total image of the w orl d,
not merely as decorative additi ons , but as truths in the literal
sense. They are much truer than the results of science, which
are inevitably uncertain and have a pragmatic, rather th an a
cognitive, value.
Noteworthy in the seventeenth century were attempts to
develop Cartesianism in a phenomenalist and positivist spirit,
but in pe cul i ar conjunction with a theological doctrine clearly
fatalistic in tendency. We refer to the Cartesians whose doc
trine is known as "occasionalism. " This was based on the
Cartesian theory according to which there can be no causal
relation between spiritual sub s tan c es and physical objects.
Fro,m this premise the occasionalists inferred that the contents
of our observations are not caused by some p ecul i ar confor
mation with the physical world that is commonly believed to
lie before us and somehow enters our consciousness via the
senses. More than that, physical objects cannot interact
causally, for by their nature they are incapable of action.
Consequently, any correspondence whatever between the con
tents of human knowledge and the observed worl d , as well as
the entire system of relations we discern in the world, derives
not from any order inherent in nature, but can only be the
result of repeated interventions by Providence. They alone
keep the system in operation : what we take for the natural
cause is only the "occasional" cause, in the sense that it comes
down to the o c c asion o n which God pro duc es what we take
for a n atural effect. God alone is responsible for the func
ti o nin g of the universe. He sees to it that the connections be
tween events remain constant and that the contents of our
im pres s io ns correspond to their obj ective counterparts. God
Himself would be i ncap ab l e of assigning these functions to
s ec ond ary causes, since He could not change matter into sp irit
without abolishing i t as matter. Thus we are e ntitle d to assert
a permanent order in the world, but we are not entitled to as
sume that it is a property of the world itself, si n ce it is actually
accounted for solely by th e divine decisions being carried out
at every moment in the existence of the u n iverse . From this
doctrine it follows, first, that human fate is entirely independent

of human will, for we cannot by our own unaided wishes so
much as move a finger or disturb a grain of sand; second,
that our knowledge of nature does not disclose an order im
manent in it, but merely perceives external manifestations
of God's steadfastness; third, that all Scholastic explanations
of natural phenomena by forces or faculties inherent in na
ture itself are superfluous; and fourth, that any kind of wor
ship of nature or admiration of her works is always idolatry
due to ignorance-since the physical world in its entirety does
not possess eno'ugh power to move a single leaf on a single tree.
Occasionalism represented a radical attempt to destroy the
seventeenth-century belief in a natural order of things, and at
the same time to draw the ultimate consequences from Car
tesian opposition to Schol asticism. It reduced human cognition
to the observation of individual phenomena, maintaining that
their regularities are not inherent in nature itself. Clearly,
such a phenomenalism cannot be regarded as a positivist inter
pretation of the world in the literal sense. It implied belief in
divine omnipotence, in accounting for the order of nature,
and belief in the existence of a substantial human subject
wholly free from physical, spatial determinations. All the
same it formulated in its own way one of the constitutive ideas
of positivism : all "necessary" judgments are inferences "from
the essence," all existential judgments are "contingent. " In the
language of the age, this expresses a conviction that all hu
man knowledge ( apart from Revelation) is divided into
analytic judgments, which supply no information concerning
the reality of the objects they refer to, and factual statements,
which tell us nothing about "essences, " "substances," "neces
sary connections," "forces," "causes, " etc.
Berkeley's thought took the same direction, and his conclu
sions were even more extreme. He concentrated on clearly
separating those contents that are in fact present in our per
ceptions from those that h a ve been illegitimately introduced
into them. His analyses showed that the latter kind of contents
include the existence of matter. If we try to state accurately
what is the nature of any "given, " it will turn out that it
consists of qualities, and that we have no reason to assert

these are qualities of some otherwise unobservable physical
object. The over-all accord in human perception can be ac
counted for by divine guidance and does not require, even as
a hypothesis, the existence of a material substrate mysteriously
hidden underneath the phenomena. This does not mean, of
course, that to Berkeley physical objects exist "in us, " in the
sense that they are merely parts of individual human minds.
Berkeley pursued two aims : first, to eliminate from cognition
everything that is not indispensable to its interpretation ( this
is why being has no meaning apa rt from perception and "to
be" is identical with "to be perceived " ) , and second, to do
away with the atheistic conception of the world according to
which natural forces of themselves account adequately for the
totality of the visible world. ( Since no independent, "absolute"
reality is contained in the cognitive material accessible to us,
the enduring character of the world and the existence of many
subjects are unintelligible unless we assume a divine absolute. )
Berkeley emphatically differs from the positivists in his denial
of the existence of matter, fo r according to them every meta
physical assertion is as meaningless as its denial, and he also
differs from them in that his empiricism goes so far as to deny
the validity of analytic judgments. According to him, even the
assertions that were looked upon as the impregnable bastion
of any "necessary" knowledge-namely, the propositions of
arithmetic and geometry-originate in experience, and not
merely in the sense that they cannot be formulated, but also
in the sense that they cannot be p roved without reference
to experience. In other words, th ey have the same character
as all other empirical general izations. However, Berkeley's at
titude toward the physics of his time closely resembles that
of latter-day p ositivis t methodologists : he says that the term
" attraction, " which is supposed to account for a great many
physical and chemical processes , is no more than an abbrevi
ated description of the regularities it is supposed to account
for . In itself, it adds nothing to our knowledge of the regul ari
ties observed in n ature, a knowledge acquired by other means.
3. The positivism of the Enlightenment. The philosophers
of the French Enlightenment criticized Berkeley. Though it

cannot be s aid that they restored to nature the order and in
telligen ce be had taken away from it, they did restore its in
dependent existence. They c riticize d him, however, on the basis
of the same initial assumptions : to prove the existence of
a real p hysic al world outside ourselves, we have to refer to
specific experiences that can be accounted for only as the
action of external objects upon ourselves. According to Con
dillac, the experience of external resistance is sufficient for
this purpose. At the same time the philosophes maintaine d
that man is unable to attain any knowledge of "substances"
that are inaccessible to immediate e xp erience ; on this score
they followed Locke, their main authority in the theory of
knowledge. Neither matter nor spirit will ever appear before
our eyes and give up their secrets. This philosophy restored
the reality of the world of substances, which Berkeley bad
destroyed, but only in order to proclaim that they are u n
knowable. The worship of science was giving birth to the
worshi p of " facts"-a noti on not yet s eri ous ly questioned
but the same worship of science demanded that the qualitative
diversity of n atu re be reduced to a hypothetical unity. At
tempts in this d irection inevi t a bly went beyond the phen ome
n alist progra m. Repe atedly , there was recourse to more or less
risky hyp oth ese s concerning m atter's necessary properties.
Both the occasionalist and the Berkeleyan interpretations of
knowle dge had grown o'ut of the doctrine that ra di c ally opposes
human existence to the physical world; both were based on an
image of spiritual man intelligible only as alien from nature.
The Enlightenment, on the other hand, a ttemp te d a total in
tegration of m an in his natural environment. This is why
phenomenalism meant something different in each case. The
first kind of phenomenalism sought to drive a wedge between
m an-as-spirit and his ties with nature; the second, on the
contrary, acc ept e d the phenomenal world as a world forged
to the measure of man, an d saw in perc eption that which links
mankind with nature. No doubt there are limitations of human
knowledge, but only to the extent that man's existence and
capacities for p e rc ep tion are limited.
Although the typical thinkers of the French Enlightenment

cautioned intellectual restraint when it came to purely meta
physical questions, they did so in no spirit of agnostic mel
ancholy, nor did they mean to encourage disbelief in reason.
On the contrary, they taught that within the range of experi
ence accessible to man it is possible to discover, or at least to
sense, a basic order and to achieve certainty in matters of vital
importance. It is possible for us to determine nature's demands
and to discover means for fulfilling them by organizing col
lective life rationally. Empiricism was embraced as a chal
lenge to mankind to address itself to questions and tasks
within its capacities, those that entail neither metaphysical
debate nor religious soul-searching. Such debate, such soul
searching, were felt to be unproductive of knowledge and
socially and morally harmful .
4. David Hume. However, the Enlightenment gave birth to
a doctrine that, carrying the premises of empiricism to their
ultimate consequences, disclosed a certain incompatibility be
tween those premises and the intentions that inspired them,
and so led to the destruction ( or self-destruction ) of all the
hopes the Enlightenment had pinned on experience and com
mon sense. The author of this doctrine was David Hume,
one of the most brilliant minds the modern era has produced,
and at the same time the real father of positivist philosophy
chronologically the first thinker we may call positivist with
out any of the reservations we h ave to make with reference
to earlier thinkers.
The actual meaning of Hume's philosophy has repeatedly
given rise to discussion. We will pass over controversial ques
tions, however, and confine ourselves to summing up those of
his leading ideas that may be regarded as characteristically
positivist in his philosophy. In this we merely follow the
standard, if not stereotyped picture of Hume long since famil
iar in the history of philosophy.
Hume was the opposite of a learned pedant. He was a man
of letters primarily, but he was not one to express his thought
in rambling fashion or to fail to s u pply sol i d arguments for his
views. Questions that interested him he formulated with ex-
traordinary clarity, and h e weighed the possible answers with
out unnecessary rhetorical .flourishes. When his thought is oc
casionally ambiguous-as in the Dialogues Concerning Natural
R e lig ion-the ambiguity is deliberate and constructive, not the
product of clumsiness or confusion. There is hard intellectual
work behind every sentence he wrote, and his writings touch
on everything of importance in the intellectual life of his
time. He was possessed of universal curiosity, yet he also held
the conviction that to determine the limits of human knowl
edge is a matter of practical importance, for a sense of such
limits liberates us from superfluous questions, discussion of
which too readily degenerates into bitter dispute and makes it
impossible to bring order and clarity into every sphere of hu
man life.
Hume divides "the perceptions of the mind" into two classes,
distinguished "by their different degrees of force and vivacity,"
as he puts it . The first are "impressions," or immediately ex
perienced contents, "all our more lively perceptions, when we
hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will . " The
second are " ideas , " the less lively perceptions, rooted in mem
ory or imagination. Ideas derive entirely from impressions,
even are "copies" of them, as m ay be seen for instance from
the fact that any defect in an organ that receives impressions
makes a man incapable of grasping the corresponding ideas.
( "A Laplander or a Negro has no notion of the relish of
wine. " ) Every simple idea is a correspondent or a faded copy
of a simple impression ; composite ideas-figments of the
imagination, for instance-are combinations of contents known
to us from impressions ( a golden mountain, a virtuous horse ) .
More particularly, no general ide as-as , incidentally, Berkeley
had already shown-exist in the m i n d if they designate con
tents devoid of any individualizing features. Ideas are individ
ual, only the words linked with them make it possible to asso
ciate one given idea with a number of simil ar ones.
Now, any operation of the understanding deals either with
relations between ideas or with matters of fact. Among the
relations between ideas, there are some that we can study
without referring to anything outside themselves, more espe

cially without referring to observation : these are the relations
of resemblance, opposition, degree of the quality possessed,
and quantitative proportions. Study of such relations is the
real object of the mathematical sciences and affords a knowl
edge that is wholly certain but tells us nothing about the ex
istence of what it refers to. The assertion, "Three times five is
equal to the half of thirty" remains valid quite apart from the
existence or non-existence of the objects counted. It is abso
lutely true, but it tells us nothing about the existence of any
thing. This is the exact character of all mathematical proposi
tions : they are sure because they are self-evident or because
they have been legitimately inferred from self-evident propo
sitions.
The relations of identi ty, of contiguity in time or space, and
of cause and effect have a different character. Contiguity in
time and space can be ascertained without going beyond the
facts themselves : knowledge of this kind belongs to the do
main of immediate perception. Not so in the case of proposi
tions concerning the causal nexus between events. In this do
main we must go beyond observation, and the legitimacy of
this step became for Hume a problem that he recognized as
especially significant. In the struggle against philosophical
prejudice, also error in ordinary reasoning, he ascribed the
greatest importance to solvin g this problem.
According to Hume, all judgments concerning matters of
fact, in contrast to mathe m atical propositions, tell us some
thing about existence : they assert the presence of a certain
event, but at the same time they imply no kind of necessity.
That something is taking place in this way or that way, we can
perceive directly, but we observe no necessity in its taking
place in j ust this way and no other. John has a crooked nose,
yet the supposition that John's nose is straight is not self
contradictory. But are there any propositions within the do
main of observation, that, without losing their empirical char
acter, could tell us more about the world than that someth ing
appears to us in this way or that way at a given moment? In
other words, is there a sphere of knowledge in which the ncces-
sity characteristic of mathematical knowledge is associated with

the reality of its contents?
Now we see why the question concerning the legitimacy
of propositions involving the invariability of causal relations
is so important. For such propositions are generally believed
to combine two cognitive features regarded as eminently val
uable, which otherwise appear only s ep arately : reality and
necessity. Unlike mathematical propositions, they are supposed
to tell us something about the real world and at the same time
to imply a character of nece s s ity distinguishing them fro m
ordinary statements of fact. The possibility of such prop o si
tions is of paramount epistemological importance, for it de
termines the meaning we are to ascribe to those scientific
propositions that we usually call "laws," and th at according
,
to Hume, take the form of propositions stating necessary

causal relations.
Hume's analysis of this question produced the most uncom
promising, unequivocal results. In propositions about causes
we p re dict that a certain event will take place on the basis of
another event. Clearly, such knowledge is not gained through
mere analysis of the terms involved; the well-known maxim
that "Whatever begins to exist must have a cause of existence"
cannot be regarded as valid on the basis of its intuitive s elf
evidence, nor on that of the very meaning of the terms used.
It is thus in contrast to su ch a proposition, for instance, as
tha t two straight lines have no segment in common. The latter
proposition cannot even be grounded experimentally, for no
geometric proj ection is ever so exact as not to arouse doubts,
were we on the basis of it alone to make statements about the
permanent properties of plane figures and solids. However,
the very ideas involved in such propositions are a sufficient
guarantee of their truth. On the other hand, from our knowl
edge about certain properties of things we cannot draw neces
sary inferences c o nc ernin g their other properties, such as
might be alleged to follow from the firs t : a stone left without
support falls to the ground, but nothing in the stone's situation
tells us a priori that the stone, once we remove its support,
will move downward rather than upward ; from the light and
34 T HE ALIENATION OF REASON
warmth of a fire we cannot infer that it will consume us. Thus

it is clear that the connection between cause and effect can
be known only by experience, never a priori. In turn, direct
observation teaches us that certain events are associated, but
this association implies no necessary connection. A cause may
be defined as " an object precedent and contiguous to another,
and so united with it that the idea of the one determines the
mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the
one to form a more lively idea of the other. " Inferences as to
cause-effect relations are thus based solely on the expectation
that certain specific events will be followed by other specific
events, and this expectation is rooted in habit. All we m ay say
is that a given object has always been associated with a given
result, but there are no rules that would permit us properly
to infer that the same result must always be associated with
similar objects . The ground of conjunction between events
is not revealed in experience ; all that is disclosed to 'us is the
conjunction itself. This explains psychologically why we be
lieve that the causal nexus is necessary-it is a habit rooted in
association-but for that very reason refutes the belief. The
necessity is in our minds only, not in the things themselves.
Analysis of our beliefs concerning "substance" leads to
similarly destructive conclusions. Here too, as Berkeley h ad
already shown, we pass illegitimately from the conjunction
of certain observed qualities to belief in the existence of an
unobservable permanent "substratum" of those qualities, es
s entially different from them. In reality, Hume says, "sub
stance" denotes an aggregate of individual qualities, nor do
we actually ascribe any other meaning to the term "substance"
when we speak or think about it. More than that, this obser
vation applies not only to physical substances, such as were
the obj ect of Berkeley's criticism, but also to spiritual sub
stances. No "substantial self" is given us in our impressions,
no particular experience discloses that they have a permanent
vehicle or medium, and all we know about the "soul" can be
readily reduced to our knowledge of individual perceptions.
The "self" is a superfluous hypothesis, for it accounts for
nothing in observation that we would not know without it.
The philosophical implications of this criticism are char

acteristic of all later schools of positivism which, j ust as
Hume did, turn a polemically cutting edge to realist meta
physics and religious metaphysics alike. According to Hume,
criticism of the concepts of cause and substance bids us sus
pend all judgment concerning the existence of anything dif
ferent from perceived qualities. The same criticism destroys
irrevocably every attempt to find in nature something on the
basis of which to make inferences concerning a divine intelli
gence ordering it. Hume's writings contain a very extensive
critique of religious belief; here, it will be sufficient to men
tion that it is directed not only against all a priori proofs for
the existence of God, but also against all arguments based on
causality or the existence of a rational order in nature . The
absurdity of the ontological proof is merely one particular case
of the absurdity that characterizes all attempts to prove the
existence of anything a priori, not to mention the fact that
even if his proof were valid, it would not tell us anything
about God's presence in the world, His activity as its creator,
as guardian and source of love-and hence would be irrelevant
to those truths upon which every religion is based. Nor do
proofs of God's existence derived from the order of the
visible world have greater force. Whatever reasons we may
adduce in favor of His existence, we can never get away from
the principle that the cause ought to be proportionate to the
effect. Following this principle it is impossible to infer the
infinite attributes of God from finite things; it could more
reasonably be invoked to prove on the basis of the world's
imperfections the imperfection of God. More generally, cor
rect understanding of causality rules out any kind of demon
stration in this domain, for if we stay within experience we
should be able to avail ourselves of at least a certain number
of constantly observable cases in which an analogous relation
obtains. Nor can we determine how the universe was formed :
to do this we should have to know many worlds and the con
ditions under which they had been created. But the universe
is one, by definition : it encompasses "all," and we cannot
reason about it by analogy. That the world as a whole is "con-
tingent" in the sense that its existence requires the assumption

of a non-contingent Being, namely, one whose essence implies
existence, cannot in any way be proved by experience. What
reasons, then, are left upon which to base religious convic
tion? Hume ostensibly resorts to the well-tested method of
defense by capitulation : he s ays-and the theme recurs several
times in his writings-that religion, though resisting all rational,
aprioristic, or experimental attempts to demonstrate its truth,
has its legitimate place thanks to the needs of the human
heart. We may keep our faith qua faith, though we must re
nounce as hopeless all attempts to transform it into knowledge.
Obviously, such an attitude is not new in the long history
of The Reason vs Faith controversy. Hume, however, carries
his reflection further. There is nothing mysterious about the
phenomenon of faith or people's need for it, nor about the
"reasons of the heart" appealed to by desperate defenders of
anti-rational religion. The origins of all this can be traced :
when w e study the history o f religious beliefs and discover
their embryonic forms, we find that religion is accountable
for by the natural conditions of human existence and is
merely a kind of infinite hope born of the wretchedness of
finite hopes. In the end it turns out that a rational religion is
impossible, and an emotional or more generally irrational reli
gion is accountable for by natural causes. Are we, despite this
fact, i.e. , despite the fact that we know its natural origins, en
titled as rational beings to enjoy its b enefits? It would seem
that Hume's answer to this question is negative, at least when
we carefully compare his various statements on the subject.
In other words, Hume does not confine himself to suspending
judgment in the matter of religious belief, but leaves man
without any solace, intellectual or affective, any sanctuary
where such beliefs would have a legitimate place. His positiv
ism thus does not advocate that we refrain from all judgment
pertaining to our view of the world, but admits negative judg
ments concerning every kind of extra-natural reality.
5. The destructive consequences of Hume's work. Just how
Hume was understood and the subsequent use made of bis
analyses have depended upon whether his thinking was ac-
POSITIVISM DOWN TO DAVID HUMB 37
cepted only in part-most often, only th e critical part-or in all

its implications. The probabilistic conception o f knowledge
and abandonment of the search for "necessary" cau se s in sci
ence have certainly owed a great deal to Hume's criticism.
Actually, however, his criticism had more in view than just the
exposure of metaphysical fictions that, instead of accounting
for the phenomena, invent names. Critics of Hume have lo ng
since pointed out that his genetic expl anations invoke the
same prin ciple of caus ality that he himself declares unreliable.
He does not confine himself to proving the illegitimacy of the
concept of a n e cess ary cause, or of religious i dea s, but goes
on to account for the origin of th e concept, th e origin of
those ideas, by their causes. Thus h e elucidates phenomena by
assuming the invariability of effects in human p sychic life ,
having previously included the l atter in the domain of nat'ure
where inferences as to the invariability of certain relations
arrived at by analogy with observed relations have no demon
strative force. Hume himself was not concerned with th is in
consistency in his own thought and made no attempt to cor
rect it. However, certain of his reflections su gge st that his
cognitive program did not consist merely in stripping our
knowledge about the world of absolute value, no r m e re ly in
adding a coefficient of unc ert ainty to all we claim to know. It
seems he was aware of the fact that consistent application of
his criticism must lead to fundamental, radical skepticism. His
criqitue of causality implies that the constancy with which a
concatenation of observations occurs in no way increases the
probability that it will occur again. When we observe a certain
connection betwe en events in only a few cas es , while observ
ing another connection in a very large number of cases, we
have stronger psychological motives for recognizing the second
connection as invariable and "necessary," but no stronger
grounds for doing so. Consequently, what can be really as
serted b eyond all doubt is limited to individual accounts of
immediate observations; assumptions c once rn ing the nature of
the world " give n" in those observations, whether touching its
reality or the nature of the observing subj ec t, are excluded.
It is easy to see that in this conce ption of knowledge, th at
which we truly know is utterly b arren and unproductive,

whereas that which helps us to live, to create a science, and
enrich our store of information generally is no longer knowl
edge in the proper sense of the term. In the l ast analysis, ac
cording to Hume, there is no such thing as rational knowledge
about the world : this is expressed in his saying that the reason
we are convinced that fire warms and water cools is that the
opposite conviction woul d lead to suffering.
Thus we may conclude that Hume's criticism does not
merely amount to a dramatic destruction of the cognitive
ideals of the Enlightenment-a destruction achieved by his at
tempt to formulate them fully. By his rejection of the legiti
macy of inductive reasoning-and such was the actual con
sequence of his radical criticism of causality-Hume lessened
the cognitive value of all knowledge other than descriptions
of individually given observable qualities. Every kind of
knowledge that goes beyond such description , however in
dispensable to life, is valuable only because we cannot do
without it, not because it tells us what the world is really like,
still less what it is, and still less what it is exactly. The mean
ing of k nowledge thus becomes purely pragm atic, knowledge
turns out to be a collection of guidelines, useful and indis
pensable in practice, but devoid of cognitive value. We must
keep this peculiar consequence in mind, for it turns up more
than once in the subsequent history of positivism.
Hume's conclusions turned out to be glaringly incompatible
with his in tentions. This phil osopher had set out to eliminate
the "false bricks " in the edifice of knowledge, that is, to keep
only such components as can present a valid experimental
pedigree. Closer examin ation, however, showed him that no
human knowledge has or can have such a pedigree, apart
from individual observations, which are cognitively and sci
entifically sterile in the sense that no further inferences can
be drawn from them. Intended to provide science with un
shakable foundations, Hume's analysis deprived it of any pos
sible found ation. Having scoured the body of knowledge of
metaphysical impurities, Hume was in the end left empty-
POSITIVISM DOWN TO DAYID HUME 39
handed. His quest for an ab solutely reliable knowledge in the

end disclosed the chimerical nature of bis undertaki n g .
Hume's failure, however, cannot be regarded as the tot al

defeat of p os itivism; rather, it enables us to di scern , in Hume's
own thinking, a strand that be borrowed, perh aps uncon
sciously, from the very metaphysical doctrines he was battling
-a battle be was most anxious to bring to a victorious con
clusion-namely, the seventeenth-century metaph ysical sys
tems. The originators of these systems maintained that they
had contrived methods thanks to which we can le arn some
thing more about the world than its visible qu al itie s and re
current patterns of events; that it is p oss ible to know the
ground of what is, not merely what is in fact to be o b s e rved;
to know what the world must necessarily be, not m erely what
it is. Hume opp o s ed these simpl ific ations , but he did so in
the hope that he would at last be able to show what is really
compelling and necessary in our cognition As it turned out,
.
however, there is no such thin g The destruction of kn owl e d ge

.
to which Hume's doctrine was led by its own premises is thus

accounted for by bis strivin g to en dow "true" knowledge
with the very character the s eve nte enth century metaphysi
-
cians had claimed for it, namely, an absolutely c o mp ellin g

character. He implicitly accepted the criterion of kn owl edge
applied by the traditional ori ginators of sys te ms , but he ap
plied it to his own doctrine and to science as a whole in order
to show that it cannot be applied anywhere at all. In th e last
analysis, his was an abs olutis t p o int of view : he demande d of
science that it p ro vid e u n shakabl e c ert ai nty , b eyond all p o s si

ble criticism , and this was to demand of it ideals it could

n ever real ize.
Positivism inherited from Hu m e the que stion he could not

elude and reg ar ded as fundamental : Is there any th in g ab
solutely certain in our knowledge, and if so what? None of

the later positivists followed H um e in his rej e ctio n of th e le
gitim acy of induction , but all of them had to cope in one
way or another with the question of i ts le gitimacy. Since logi
cal analysis as well as the developm en t of science itself had
m ade clear that no knowle dge of the world can lay cl ai m to
absolute validity, the further question arose : Can knowledge

acquired by, or with the help of, experience ( an experience
that cannot be replaced by anything else, and that, though
not absolutely certain, deserves consideration for other than
purely pragmatic reasons ) -perhaps also any scientific or com
monly recognized truth-can such knowledge be accounted
for solely by practical, rather than cognitive reasons? In other
words : What is inductively acquired knowledge? Is it a socially
conditioned reflex merely, which bids us accept a certain state
of affairs as permanently present because to accept it is bio
logically more advantageous than to reject it? Or is it a valid
method for establishing certain truths about the world, truths
relative in the sense that they are subject to revision, but not
in the sense that something true at one time could be false
at another time? How we answer this question is crucial for
all our convictions concerning the meaning of science and
philosophy, for all our statements about reality. According
to the first interpretation, there is no such thing as "knowl
edge" in the current sense of the term : what we know is
merely the articulation of collectively conditioned reflexes,
and it makes no more sense to inquire into their "truth" in
the traditional sense of the term than into the "truth" of the
behavior of a rat that, trained by repeated experiences, se
cretes digestive juices on perceiving one light signal, adrenalin
on perceiving another. In this case, knowledge is not, strictly
speaking, a description of the world, but a certain mode of
human behavior which makes use of accumulated experi
ences. This is the pragmatic interpretation of knowledge. The
second interpretation-the one in which we assume that knowl
edge has not only a pragmatic but also a cognitive meaning,
that it entitles us to think something about the world, to be
lieve that it is rather one thing than another-this interpreta
tion is confronted with the task of supplying us with a valid
foundation for all methods of getting information that go
beyond the collecting of individual facts. Then we must show
what, exactly, is the basis for assuming that methods exist,
thanks to which not only can we ascertain the admissibility
of any piece of information, but also are entitled to suppose
it actually tells us something about reality-independently of
how this reality is interpreted philosophically.
Positivism as such never felt constrained to accept the first
interpretation, which has the merit of simplicity and readily
permits the legitimizing of anything on the ground of its use
fulness, even the metaphysical doctrines that positivist criti
cism has always been concerned to refute. Although the prag
matic interpretation has been advanced by certain positivists
in a much more explicit version than Hume's, it is not shared
by all of them. As for the other interpretation, it has to face
the question raised long ago by the Greek skeptics, which is
always turning up again in new versions : Can induction be
validated without referring to induction? In other words, is
there a way to prove that human knowledge has cognitive
value without falling into a vicious circle of argument?
In raising this question we are obviously going beyond an
account of Hume's philosophy, but we must do so if we are
to gain a clear understanding of his revolutionary role in the
history of culture, especially in reference to science's con
tinuing effort to achieve self-knowledge. Hume carried em
piricism into its radical latter-day phase, making use of cri
teria elaborated by anti-empirical systems, and in this way he
brought about the self-destruction of the empirical doctrine.
His philosophy certainly belongs to the culture of the En
lightenment, but it reflects the impotence, so to speak, of the
Enlightenment, its helplessness in the face of the questions it
raised-a kind of helplessness always to be discerned in any
period by those who come after it, but which yet always turns
out to have been formulated by someone in the period itself.
Hume's philosophy contributed something else, which we
have not yet mentioned, to the positivist style of thinking.
That is, there is a direct tie-in between his philosophical doc
trine and his political opinions. Hume was convinced that
political freedom provides the most important criterion for
distinguishing between good and bad methods of government,
and that freedom is prerequisite to development of the arts
and sciences. At least as Hume saw it, his political opinions
derived from his investigations into knowledge.
It must be added, however, that the extremer consequences

of his philosophy, those that strike us today as reflecting hop e
lessness or despair, did not at all have that character in his
own eyes. Nothing could be more false than to picture Hume
as the sort of man or thinker who holds his head in pain,
racked at the purely destructive character of his own dis
coveries. Hume was relentlessly consistent in his pursuit of
the ultimate roots of knowledge : he sought the truth at any
price. At the same time, however, he was anything but a fa
natic, anything but insensitive to the claims of ordinary life.
His outstanding characteristic was moderation; far from im
posing his convictions in any overbearing manner, he resorted
(though reluctantly) to compromise on several occasions,
rather than be involved in violent controversy, for he valued
a "middle-ground" position in social life and personal con
duct. Although theoretically convinced of the fragility of hu
man knowledge, even of its built-in incapacity for living up to
the expectations of scientists, he did not infer from these con
victions that scientific research is pointless and should be
given up as a waste of time. On the contrary, there was noth
ing he valued more. He hated every kind of fanaticism, quar
rels over religion, disputes over metaphysics. We who sense
great drama in his vision are very different from Hume ; be
was not in the least aware of it.
In this respect Hume's positivism represents one version or
variant expression of tendencies common to all the thinkers
of the Enlightenment. D'Alembert, whose name is frequently
mentioned as a precursor of latter-day p ositivism, was far less
radical than Hume in his epistemological criticism, tempering
its possible extremes with common sense or with principles
that in his day passed for those of common sense. He never
doubted the existence of physical bodies and was in sym p athy
with the aims of "natural religion, " which makes no choice
among the various denominations but rather bids us confine
ourselves to a few basic truths concerning the existence of
God and the soul. He was convinced that the increase of
knowledge has more than a purely pragmatic significance,
that it leads to real insight into ever more numerous and in-
creas i n gly b etter org anized properties of the world. Yet at

the same time, his fundamental ideas and initial intentions are
sim il ar to Hume's. Any k nowl edge worthy of attenti on derives
from sense impre ssion s , and the mathematical sciences serve
to o rde r the material i mpr ess ion s s upply, with the aid of a
system o f s ymb ol s, and in thi s way progress is assured toward

the ultim ate goal of the u n ity of the sciences. "What are the
maj o ri ty of those axioms geometry is so proud of, " h e asked,
"if not the expression of the s ame simple idea with the aid of
two s i mpl e signs or words? Does a man who says th at two
and two make fo'ur p o ss e ss more information than a man who
says tw o and two is two and two ?" Science orders elementary
facts, and the fewer or d eri n g principles it employs the better.
His ideal is a situation in which it would be possible to reduce
all kn owledge to a single p rincipl e exp l ai nin g-o r , rather, or
de rin g-eve rythin g . "To a man c apabl e of encompassing the
u n ive rse from one point of view, i t would become, if we may
say so, a single homo gene ou s fact, one great truth."
Th us the Enlightenm ent had a p ositivism all its own, just
as the age of the great h is to ri o s ophical systems in the first
half of the n ext century was to h av e, in the work of Comte,
its own form of positivism ada pte d to its own interests and
as pir atio n s . The positivism of the Enlightenment was an at
tempt to view mankind in its n atural, this -worldly, phys ical
and social environment, an attemp t to minimize differences
among men by a s e nsatio n al ist theory of kn o wle d ge (every
human bei n g comes into the world a tabula rasa, "blank
slate" ) , an attempt t o p roj ect a life in time freed of chimerical
"wrestling with God," designed to imp rove the co n crete con
ditions of human existence throu gh c o- ope ration, to speed up
the accumulation of knowle d ge , to do away with prejudice and
barren specul at ion . It sought to replace th e despair created
by human pretensions to absolute knowl edge with rati on al
investigation of the co gnitive pos sibilities , b ase d on empiricist
prem is es ; to replace m et aphysic al constructions with system
atic study o f concrete human needs and the conditions of
their collective s atis faction ; instead of hammering into peo
ple's heads obscurantist dogmas by terror and violence, it
sought to discover educational methods that would appeal to

the individual's self-interest and at the same time teach him
the value of sympathy, mutual understanding, and collabora
tion. Within this intellectual climate, the positivist theory of
knowledge turns out to have been a radically destructive tool
that, with the help of a few simple rules, sought to drive out
of human history all that hinders agreement among men,
slows the advancement of science, makes it harder to teach
people to work together, upholds tyrannical government
whether secular or ecclesiastical, hinders the circulation
whether of ideas or commodities.
Needless to say, this vision of the world was not uniformly
optimistic. At least some outstanding thinkers of the age were
aware that conflicts and difficulties would arise if serious at
tempts were made to carry out such optimistic proj ects in
the real world. We shall not, however, go into these matters
here, inasmuch as we have assumed, somewhat arbitrarily
but indispensably, that it is possible to expound the main
stages of positivist thought without writing (as no doubt one
should) a general history of philosophy. It will be enough to
note here that Hume clearly enunciated the basic principles
of positivism; that they were one factor in the Enlightenment's
struggle against superstition, metaphysics, inequality, and des
potism; that the internal antinomy in Hume's theory of knowl
edge came to light in his own works, and that as a result the
next generation of positivists was c onfronted with unresolved
problems. The question whether a knowledge, at once abso
lutely reliable and yet not devoid of content, not reduced to
sterility by being confined to individual facts, was possible
this question turned out to be a concentrated expression of
everything the theory of knowledge is concerned with. Hume
has the l as tin g merit of having formulated this question clearly
and fully.
CHAPTER T H R EE
Auguste Comte :
Positivism in the Romantic Age
1. The quarrel over Comte. It must be noted that the term

"positivism" is most naturally associated with the name of
this philosopher, although his doctrine contains a particularly
large number of elements looked upon as alien to currently
accepted positivist preoccupations and even incompatible with
them. Hence all the discussion over whether and to what ex
tent it may be legitimate to call Comte a positivist, although
he himself not only so called himself but actually originated
the term. Here, however, we have to distinguish between his
life and his thought. Some of Comte's earliest disciples held
the view that his thought can be divided into two distinct
stages, the first of which is the source of positivism proper,
whereas the second is at least a partial negation of the first
and should be regarded as an unfortunate aberration, ascrib
able to the fact that the great philosopher was affiicted by a
recurrence of his mental illness toward the end of his life.
This picture of the situation has been altered, however, by
twentieth-century historians. Unlike earlier students, they find
that the so-called second phase of his thought, in which he
elaborated his "religion of humanity," is a natural develop
ment from the earlier, its crowning achievement rather than
any sort of falling off. Thus, depending on the p articul ar
sense they give to the term "positivism," some conclude that
Comte never was a positivist-since the utopian vistas of his
later works are in a way prefigured in the earlier ones-while
others decide to adapt the meaning of the term to Comte's
case, seeing no reason why the philosopher should be denied

the name he created and applied to himself.
Nevertheless, it must be admitted that his philosophy is a
vast historiosophic synthesis of a sort most latter-day positiv
ists approach gingerly, if at all. Though it lends itself to suc
cinct presentation (Comte himself exercised extraordinary
consistency, and his disciples were prompt to draw up shorter
versions) , it is still not free from certain ambiguities, especially
when treated in the context of a history of positivism. These
will be mentioned a little later.
2. Biography. Auguste Comte was born in Montpellier on
January 1 8 , 1798, the son of a civil servant. At an unusually
early age, while still a schoolboy, he displayed brilliant mathe
matical gifts. By the time he was sixteen, he was teaching
mathematics to boys of his own age. He was admitted to the
Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, but expelled with a group of
other students for having greeted Napoleon's return too en
thusiastically in the period of the Hundred Days. Later, he
began medical studies at Montpellier, but after some time
returned to Paris, earning his living as a translator, and pur
suing various studies on his own . In 1 8 1 7 he met Henri de
Saint-Simon, who had been reflecting for many years on the
lamentable state of post-revolutionary France and on how
society could be radically improved. The result of these re
flections was a project for the fundamental reconstruction of
society along socialist lines as Saint-Simon 'understood them,
with particular emphasis upon making full use of human pro
ductive energies. His project was to create a planned economy
free of political and social anarchy and economic crisis, and
thereby free of war and poverty. Won over by the sixty-year
old Saint-Simon's schemes for reform, the young Comte joined
forces with him, served as his secretary, and acted as co
editor of his publishing enterprise. Their association lasted
for several years, but eventually differences of opinion led to
a complete break between the two . Harsh references to Comte
in writings by the Saint-Simonians are evidence of this break.
The rest of Comte's life was devoted to developing his doc
trine and making it better known. He lived from hand to
AUGUSTE COMTE 47
mouth and for a time supported himself meagerly by tutor

ing. In 1 826 he launched a co urs e of l ectures intended to
acquaint the public, particularly men of science, with the
princip le s of what he called "the p o sitive philosophy. " Soon,
however, a severe mental derangem ent forced him to stop.
The lectures were resumed in 1 829 after he recovered. In
1 830 the first volume of his Course in Positive Philosophy
appeared. The sixth and last was published twelve years later.
But neither the lectures ( Comte also gave public lectures on
astro nomy for many year s ) nor the books brought in any
money. He gave p rivate lessons in mathematics, then was
appointed examiner at the Ecole P olytechnique; his attempts
to o b t ain a permanent academic post were unsuccessful. For
some time he received funds from Engl and, which John Stuart
Mill collected for him, but to the end of his days he was tor
mented by money worries. His m arriage in 1 825 was unsuc
cessful and ended in sep ar ati on . In 1 845 he met Clotilde de
Vaux, and although their friendship was short-lived ( she died
ab ou t a year later) , this remarkable woman greatly influ
en c ed his later works. His worship of her is reflected in his
views on the impo rtant part women and "universal affection"
were as si gned in the "po s it iv e society" of the future .
Comte publish ed many more b ooks : Elementary Treatise
on A nalytic Geometry ( 1 843 ) , Philosophical Treatise on Pop
ular A stronomy ( 1 844 ) , Discourse on the Positive Spirit
( 1 844) , The Positive Polity ( 1 85 1-1 8 54 ) , Positive Catechism
( 1 8 54 ) , Subjective Synthesis or Universal System of Ideas
Concerning the Normal State of Humanity ( 1 8 56 ) . These
and his published lectures never secured him any social p os i
tion, but won him a growin g circle of discip les , the m ost
p rom in ent of whom was Emile Littre, a zealous popularizer
of Comte's views. Toward the close of the 1 840s a Positivist
Society was founded, and from then on Comte's doctrine be
gan to gain adherents . In accord with Comte's own plan, the
society became more and more a kind of secular religion
with its own ritual; something of it survives to this day in
France, although it has preserved greatest vitality in Brazil.
Comte spent the greater part of bis life in Paris, and d ie d there
on September 5, 1 857. He was cantankerous, stubborn, and

hard to get on with, like so many people who are unshakably
convinced they have a mission radically to improve the world.
3. Ideas of social reform. Comte's whole doctrine, includ
ing the theory of knowledge, becomes intelligible only when
grasped as a grandiose project for universal reform encom
passing not only the sciences but all spheres of life. Reflection
on the France of his day led him to the conviction that the
organization of society needed overhauling from top to bot
tom, and that one prerequisite was reform of the sciences and
of understanding generally. Reform of the sciences, he be
lieved, wo'uld make it possible to create an as yet non-existent
science of society, without which social life could not be re
constructed on rational foundations. Uniform organization
of the totality of human knowledge was indispensable to pave
the way for a full-fledged science to be known as "sociol
ogy," which alone would make possible the projected trans
formations of collective life.
Comte's plans for social reform are linked with a historio
sophic schema whose leading idea he took over from the
Saint-Simonians. This schema (like that of Joseph de Maistre's
philosophy, which has other features as well in common with
the utopians) divides human history into alternating epochs,
some "organic," some "critical. " The organic epochs are
those in which societies are bent on preserving the inherited
order, when social differentiations are regarded as a natural
division of necessary social functions. In such epochs society
is treated as a supra-individual entity with a value of its own
superior to that of individuals. In the critical epochs, bent
above all on destroying the existing order, society on the con
trary sees itself as merely the sum total of separate individ
uals; as such it is devoid of independent existence and its
values do not differ from those associated with individuals
taken separately. The alternation of organic and critical ages
in history is not, however, merely a succession of swings of
the pendulum, but has a directional character and results in
progress. The re-emergence of an organic epoch after a criti
cal one is not just a return to the old order, but a restoration
AUGUSTE COMTE 49
of the collectivity's organ ic nature in keeping with higher
prin ciples of social life. Pivotal to this progress is the trans
.formation of modes of thinking, intellectual development as
such. In the next organic phase toward which present- day
hum anity is moving-in the "positive so ciety " of the future
basic structural features of feudal society will have to be re
stored, among others a division between spiritual and secular
authority. However, the new spiritual organization will no
longer be based on theological dogmas and Christian beliefs,
but on scien ce. The only possible way to overcome the an
archy and disorder the French Revolution ushered in is to
create a single authority, but this is not ( at least to begin
with) to be tied up with any single doctrine. In this connec
tion Comte praised the Convention and criticized those who
ideal ized the British parliamentary system and wanted to
transplant it to French soil. He also expressed approval of
Louis Nap oleon' s co'up d'etat, believing that a dictatorship
without a doctrine may eventually, once complemented with
a suitable social ideology, restore the organic unity of society,
political life, and religion. Comte thought that his own dis
coveries, leading to the creation o f a true science of society,
could re store the lapsed unity. Once scientific principles have
been universally recognized by mankind, the revolutionary
metaphysics will be supplanted by a true social physics. It is
of the utmost importance that what is constant in the condi
tions of human life shoul d be properly understood; utopian
thinkers, who suppose that the underlying con dition s of life
can be transformed at will, do not encourage progress but
delay it. Before projecting anything, we must carefully study
the natural resistance of things-this is as important where
transfo rm ing society is concerned as where the in du strial
pro ce ssin g of raw materials is concerned . Comte was firmly
convinced that he had success ful ly resisted the temptation the
utopians had not resiste d , to envis age a perfect so ciety in
capable of practical realization. His own projects were
ad apte d, he believed, to the n atu ral and necessary charac
teristics of social life. Whereas the thinkers of the Enlighten
ment assumed that human solidarity and co-operation exis ted
only because they were useful to individuals, Comte asserted

the existence of a social instinct at least as strong as selfish
aspirations and entirely independent of them. The harmoni
ous co-existence of human beings is possible only thanks to
this instinct, not to any alleged reconciling of private inter
ests via a "social contract." Contrary to individualistic doc
trines, society is not just an instrument for reg'Ulating conflicts
between individuals, but an organic whole in its own right,
and we are part of it because we have an innate tendency
to live together, which is independent of individual interest.
This tendency is permanent and therefore must be taken into
account in all plans for social reform.
More generally, no social development can be called prog
ress if it violates the permanent structural features of col
lective life as such. Private property, for instance, is one of
the permanent features, and hence the utopian followers of
Babeuf do not contribute to progress. The organic and ra
tional society of the future must be based on science : the
principles of its organization will be scientifically elaborated,
and all its members must adopt scientific modes of thinking.
What this scientific mode of thinking should be can be de
termined only by studying the history of science. The point
is of crucial importance in Comte's thinking. He makes no
attempt to decide arbitrarily what is or what is not science,
but founds his norms on the basis of historical inquiry into
how human knowledge has evolved. In other words, the laws
of the development of human knowledge are historical par
excellence. From study of these laws sociologists and histori
ans can demonstrate that earlier, already transcended phases
of human evolution were not mere "errors," but had, so to
speak, their own rationale; they were inevitable stages of intel
lectual development, and the ideas produced in them were
true-that is, were adequate to the totality of needs felt in
each successive epoch. Comte's famous Law of the Three
States cannot be grasped unless we keep clearly in mind that
it describes sociological realities, treats the content of human
knowledge as a component of social life. It is no mere enu-
AUGUSTE COMTE 51
meration o f the good, bad, and indifferent possibilities of hi.I

man thought, abstractly conceived.
4. Reform of the sciences. The Law of the Three States.
Science, then, is a sociological fact, and it is from this point
of view that its past stages must be described, and its future
possibilities assessed. Science is an instrument serving to in
crease man's control over the conditions of his natural and
social life. This does not, of course, mean that our practical
abilities correspond exactly to the state of our knowledge, for
occasionally we are able to achieve results without prior prep
aration in the relevant field of science. However, the main
touchstone of effective knowledge is practical applicability. In
his reflections on the utility of the sciences Comte often lapses
into an astonishingly narrow dogmatism which leads him to
dismiss extensive domains of already existing or emerging
knowledge as fundamentally useless or "metaphysical. " In
this spirit he disposed of the theory of probability, astrophys
ics, cosmogonies extending farther than the solar system, in
vestigations into the structure of matter, the theory of evo
lution, and even study of the origin of societies. In his opinion,
discoveries in these fields can never be practically exploited,
and hence represent a waste of scientists' time and energy.
Such apodictic pronouncements, which, fortunately, failed to
arrest research in the disciplines involved, are sometimes ex
cused by Comte's defenders on the grounds that they implied
no absolute prohibition but merely a demand that investiga
tions that afford no immediate practical advantage be stopped
for the time being. Comte was not l aying down the law once
and for all, they say; yet even if their apology were well
founded, we have to notice today how extraordinarily limited
was Comte's conception of the utilitarian tasks of knowledge.
The Law of the Three States is often presented as the "key"
to Comte's doctrine. According to it, the history of the human
mind can be divided into three successive "states " ( o r stages) .
These can be traced through every branch of knowledge. The
first, or theological stage, covers mankind's progress from fe
tishism to polytheism and on to monotheism ; it corresponds
to the most primitive stage of social life-theocracy. Every
science inevitably passes through this stage of development,

which is not to be thought of as merely a collection of super
stitions, but as an embryonic form of knowledge, which an
ticipates future achievements in its rudimentary endeavors of
observation and reflection. At this level, the human mind is
searching for the hidden nature of things, trying to find out
"why" things happen as they do, and it answers these ques
tions by constructing a divinity in man's own image. The
course of nature appears as a series of miracles deliberately
performed by higher powers governing the visible world.
Modem astronomy, for instance, would never have been born
had not practical concerns stimulated early astrologers to de
velop an art of observing the movements of the heavenly bod
ies and, eventually, a method of computing and predicting
their movements. Love of truth for its own sake could not as
yet provide a sufficiently strong motive; the earliest astronomi
cal observation owes its existence to belief in hidden connec
tions between the motions of the stars and the fate of indi
vidual human beings, and to the possibility of predicting
future events on the b asis of astronomical computations. Simi
larly, fetishistic beliefs, totemic religions, and fortune-telling
practices called attention to various peculiarities of the ani
mal world, which otherwise might have gone unnoticed; in
this field too, primitive superstition made possible the accumu
lation of a basic store of scientifically important data : the
domestication of animals derives from this source. Relics of
its theological beginnings are still to be discerned in mathe
m atics, the science first to emancipate itself, especially in the
mystical Pythagorean approach to numbers, which incontest
ably contributed to the increase of real knowledge. In short,
the superstition that invariably characterizes the early stages
of knowledge is not to be simply deplored as anti-knowledge,
but recognized as a natural stage in intellectual development,
the earliest form in which mankind's store of observations
and data gets organized.
Each intellectual state is correlated by Comte with a spe
cific system of social organization. The transition to mono
theism, the highest achievement of the theological state, was
AUGUSTE COMTE 53
bound up with the development of a defensive military sys

tem intended to encompass the entire Western world. The
Middle Ages, intellectually dominated by monotheism, is not
to be looked upon merely as an epoch of darkness and de
cline, according to Comte. On this score he displayed a strong
sense of historical relativism in pointed antagonism to the
eighteenth century's clich e s. His rehabilitation of the Middle
Ages stemmed from a conviction that the culture of this
epoch, too, marked a necessary stage in the intellectual de
velopment of mankind. Thanks to the democratic principles
that governed ecclesiastical life, the Middle Ages abolished or
undermined the rigid caste system inherited from the past and
provided a new intellectual framework for the further prog
ress of knowledge.
A new stage of development is Ushered in with the second,
or metaphysical state. Now the human mind has become ma
ture enough not to look for supernatural causes of events. It
still inquires into the "nature" of things, still wants to know
the "why" of phenomena, but it accounts for what happens
differently, by creating secular or natural divinities, as it were,
which man now holds responsible for the observed facts :
"forces," "qualities, " "powers, " "properties, " and other such
constructs characteristic of the metaphysically oriented stage
of science. Bodies form compounds by virtue of sympathy,
plants grow thanks to their vegetative soul, animals are sen
tient thanks to their animal soul. As Moli ere put it, opium
puts one to sleep because of its "dormitive virtue. " The meta
physical state undergoes a development similar to that of the
preceding state, culminating in a kind of secular monotheism,
which compresses the multiplicity of occult powers into the
single over-all concept of "nature, " regarded as capable of
accounting for all the facts. The metaphysical conception of
the world contributed to the advance of knowledge tremen
dously in several fields, and in its terminal phase p aved the
way for the turning point in human history-the opening of a
third state, the "positive era."
The positive stage of intellectu al development is distin
guished from the metaphysical, among other ways, in that it
does not try to answer the questions of earlier epochs in a

different way, but rules out the questions themselves by un
masking their fruitless, purely verbal character. The positive
mind no longer asks why, ceases to speculate on the hidden
nature of things. It asks how phenomena aris e and what
course they take; it collects facts and is ready to submit to
facts; it does not permit deductive thinking to be carried too
far and subjects it to the continuous control of "objective"
facts. It does not employ terms that have no counterpart in
reality. Its sole aim is to discover invariable universal laws
governing phenomena in time, and for this purpose it makes
use of observation, experiment, and calculation. The positive
spirit leads not only to certainty, insofar as certainty is ac
cessible to man, but also to the abolition of the illusory cer
tainty and satisfaction that use of empirically uncontrolled
terms designating metaphysical "divinities" gave rise to. As
alchemy was supplanted in the metaphysical era by the posi
tive science of chemistry, astrology and worship of the stars
by positive astronomy, so vitalist speculations are being sup
planted by positive biology. Fourier formulated the quantita
tive regularities of thermal phenomena without bothering
about the "nature" of heat. Cuvier discovered the laws gov
erning the structure of organisms without advancing a single
hypothesis concerning the "nature" of life. Newton described
the phenomena of motion and attraction without engaging in
metaphysical speculation concerning the "essence" of matter
or movement.
The positive mind presupposes a deterministic interpreta
tion of phenomena-not in the sense that it believes in the
existence of metaphysical "causes," but in the sense that it
seeks to determine the universal l aws governing every ob
served phenomenon. It is convinced that these laws, or rather
regillarities in observed phenomena, encompass the totality
of the world. Comte's conception of science is purely phe
nomenalist, though by no means subjectivist. According to
him, the human brain shoul d be a faithful mirror of the ob
jective or der, and knowledge of this order serves as th e mind's
own ordering principle. Mere introspection cannot lead to
AUGUSTE COMTE 55
cognition of the principles according to which the human

mind operates; it discovers the principles of its own operation
by observin g things and discovering the laws that govern
them. Intelligence by itself is both impotent and dangerous :
impotent, because it lacks sufficient incentive in itself-only af
fective impulses and practical needs set it to work; dangerous,
because unless it is subordinated to fact it tends to create
speculative metaphysical systems. Humility in the face of
compelling facts and practical inspiration-such are the dis
tinctive features of the positive intellect. No wonder, then,
that the positive stage was attained first in those domains of
knowledge where the human mind could most readily grasp
that things do not submit to the whims of the human imagi
nation, where the mind itself must bow to the demands of
reality if it is to avoid costly errors. Such a domain is that of
the mathematical sciences-the first to enter upon the positive
stage of development, at a time when the others were still in
their infancy.
According to Comte, although all the sciences pass through
similar stages of development, they do not all do so at the
same rate of speed. We also note that the transition of any
one science to a higher stage is not accidental, but deter
mined by the nature of its investigations as well as by its con
nections with particular social needs.
Consequently, the sciences form a certain natural order.
This is not the result of arbitrary systematization, but clearly
disclosed in the light of historical analysis. The sciences are
classified according to two interconnected principles, which
lead to identical results : decreasin g generality and increasing
complexity. The rank order that results is as follows : the least
complex in subject matter and the most general in their range
of validity are the math ematical sciences, which deal with
every sort of measurable relation between phenomena in
terms of quantity-quantity being the most universal, simplest
property of things. Astronomy comes next. Its range is more
limited than that of mathematics, but it is richer for bringing
within the range of science a further feature : force. Physics
introduces further qualitative distinctions, such as heat and
l i ght . After physics comes chemistry, which de als with quali

tat ively differentiated substances. An even greater number of
qual ities , though a narrower range of matter for investigation,
characterizes the biological sciences, which i nvestigate or
ganic structures. Last among the sciences comes sociology, the
place of which will have to be discussed separately : its ob
ject, obviously, is the most comp lex and the le ast universal of
all th e matters for study. Neither m etap hysics nor psychology
figures in this list. Comte subsequently added the science of
morals as a separate discipline.
The above order is at once logical, historical, and p ed a gogi
cal. That it is logical is apparent from the fact that it is b ased
on mutually consistent p rinciples. We realize it is historical
when we observe that each science reached the p osit ive stage
at a different point in time. Mathematics liberated itself be
fore any other science, having already reached the positive
stage in ancient Greece. Astronomy emerged from the meta
physical mists only thanks to the discove ries of Copernicus,
Kepler, and Galileo. Physics attained its positive m aturity at
the end of the seventeenth cen tury thanks to the work of
Huyghens, Pascal , Pap in , and Newto n . The next century saw
chemis try achieve the status of a positive science th ank s to
Lavoisier, and biology was not born until the nineteenth cen
tury when, turning its back on teleologically oriented specu
lation about entelechies and vital forces, it began to concen
tr ate on p ositive investigati o n into the laws governing relations
between organisms and their environments on the one hand,
and how the structural feafures in living beings endure on
the other. There remains sociology which, as a p ositive sci
ence, is still at the programmatic stage. Comte set o ut to
realize its program himself.
The above arrangement, we observed, is also pedagogical.
This means that the sciences should be taught in the order of
their d evelopment, so th at they m ay form a coherent system
in the student's mind. Comte proj ected an ideal of knowledge
at once encyclop ed i c and Cartesian, in which the sciences
are so closely interdependent in both their logical c oheren ce
and their practical appli c ations that it is impo ssible to prac-
AUGUSTE COMTE 57
tice any o ne of them without being a cquainted with the oth�

ers. Each more compl ex, less general science presupposes those
preceding it in the rank order , a n d convers ely , since the sci
ences are practice d for the purp o se o f p redicti on and social
applic ation, a positive knowledge of social p henomen a is in
disp ens abl e to the orientation of kn owledge as a whole. More
than that, science itself is a social phenomenon, and its con
tent depen ds on the historical conditions under which it was
formulated . The latter observatio n must be tre ated with c au
tion, lest we fall into the extreme rel ativism that ne glect s the
value of s cientific achievement in other ep ochs and so fail to
appreci ate that intellectual autonomy is in di sp ensabl e to the
advance of knowledge. Wit h this reservation, the statement is
basically true.
This ordering of the sciences achieves a twofold purpose.
It rejects the doctrine that would reduce all di s cipl ines to
"lower" ones . This doctrine-whic h Comte, more or less in
keeping with the philosophical climate of his day, c alled "ma
terialism "-fails to take into account the qualitative diffe rences
betwe en the science s and labors under an illusion, either that
the laws go verning the more c ompl ex domains of reality can
be deduced from those govern i ng the less complex ones, or
that th e ones are simply to be id en tifi ed with the others (the
purely physical interpretation of l ife , the biol ogical interpre
tation of soc iety, etc . ) . Actu al l y , ac c ording to Comte, the
more complex sciences presuppose the less c omplex ones, and
the more complex phenomena a re obviously dep en dent on
s impler ones (the biological conditions of social life such as
food, sexuality, etc. ) , but this does not imply that th e com
plex p heno men a are not subject to irreducible l aw s of their
own. Thus, the principle of scientific auton omy rules out any
"social phys ics " in the eighteenth-century sense, also any re
du ction o f organic life to mechanical motions in sp ace. The
unity of th e sciences is not as s u re d by any leveling proc e ss ,
but by recogn izin g their i nterd ep end enc e, by viewin g them as
parts of one and the same human activity, as differentiated
el em en ts of o n e and the s ame social reality. Comte thus comes
closer to th e histo rical relativism th at interprets s c ien ti fi c f acts
58 T H E ALIENATION OF REASON
as social facts and makes sociology the universal science, than

to the mechanistic theories that seek to describe the world in
its total diversity in terms of the movements of non-quali
tative bodies in space.
Although the autonomy of the intellectual processes that
create science must be recognized, it cannot be permitted to
invalidate the fundamental criterion of the value of knowl
edge-usefulness. If it is not to bog down in fruitless specula
tion and waste man's intellectual energies, science must con
tinually be reminded of its social tasks, which in the last
analysis determine its value. This practical control of knowl
edge has a historical and social character; it is not effected
in the minds of individual scientists, but is effected continu
ously by the human species as a whole. In the last analysis,
then, what science needs is what society needs, n amely, the
ability to predict events and to influence them practically. In
this respect, the sciences differ. Our ability to predict events
is in inverse ratio to our ability to influence them. We can
predict a great deal in the field of astronomy, but we cannot
influence the worlds under observation in any way whatever.
The opposite is true in the domain of social behavior : here
our actions can have considerable influence, but our prophe
cies, at least down to the p resent, are highly problematical.
Just which scientific knowledge is worth pursuing is sug
gested by the foregoing. The laws scientists discover are rela
tive in the sense that they are approximate. We may regard
them merely as hypotheses sufficiently confirmed by observa
tion, but this does not make them uncertain or useless. We
may not, in ascertaining l aws, go beyond the actual limits of
observation; more generally, there is no reason to make them
more exact than considerations of practical utility demand. If
a given law enables us to predict and influence the phenom
ena it refers to, efforts to formulate it more precisely serve
only to satisfy curiosity. For instance, Comte thought that it
was superfluous to have made corrections in Boyle-Mariotte's
law, because he did not expect them to give rise to any prac
tical benefit. Nor, in his opinion, do we need quantitative re
search in the biological sciences : the phenomena of life are
AUGUSTE COMTE 59
too complex to be measurable; we should expect practical re

sults, rather, from comparative study of different organic
structures. Nor does the theory of evolution inspire confi
dence, for it rules o'ut permanent classification-and the per
manence of the species seems to be a condition for the very
existence of biological science. What Comte wanted, above
all , was orderly, lasting classifications; he favored Cuvier,
whose method, in his view, could ascertain the exact, un
changing structural laws governing organisms. He supported
Gall because he thought that phrenology would do away with
the old psychology and its absurd speculations on psychic
functions without regard for their organic localization; rather,
we should assume that psychic functions are closely corre
lated with the structure of the brain, and that each function
has its own organ. As for the enigmatic "core" of psychic
life, the initial monad or "I" conscious of itself, it is nothing
but a survival of theological ideas about the soul. The latter
must be eliminated from positive knowledge, for it refers to
no scientifically useful reality.
This style of thinking dominates throughout Comte's phi
losophy. His ideal is firm and uncompromising : perfect clas
sifications, with organ and function permanently correlated
in a one-to-one correspondence. Those areas of the world that
disclose fluid classifications, continuous qualitative transi
tions, or any enigmatic features whatever, annoy and irritate
him. His sure sense of the historicity of knowledge is com
bined with a peculiar aversion to genetic research, which, in
his opinion, is of no help in understanding the phenomena
studied. Comte is a fanatic on the score of searching for a
definitive, "once and for all " order.
5. Sociological program. Comte coined the linguistic hybrid,
"sociology. " This is no doubt why some textbooks .refer to
him as the founder of this science. So far as that goes, Comte
himself claimed to be its Galileo. In the history of Reason's
progressive emancipation, the extraordinary complexity of so
cial facts inevitably required that the science dealing with
them should come last. Moreover, sociology is logically de
pendent upon the other disciplines because social facts occur
in a biologically determined reality; it is small wonder, then,

that the eighteenth century's rudimentary attempts at a sci
entific interpretation of society relied on biology and geogra
phy to account for human history. However, to constitute
sociology a science is also to make it independent of the
other sciences, in the sense that this obliges us clearly to dis
tinguish between areas of social life determined by permanent
conditions of organic life and those governed by purely so
cietal laws. Once the distinction bas been drawn, it will be
come clear that all the sciences are social facts, just like other
social facts, and hence depend on sociology. True knowledge
is always at the service of human needs . Thus, sociology
alone gives meaning to the rest of human knowledge.
As science, sociology above all exposes as ill'usion those
earlier theories according to which all social structures are
attributed to "original" compacts or contracts concluded in
the spirit of self-interest, in calculation of profit or loss. Un
derlying all theories of the social contract is a philosophy that
ascribes reality to individuals only and regards the collectivity
either as a mechanism devised for convenience or as a the
oretical abstraction. Positive sociology will show, however,
that the opposite is true : it is the "individual" that is a mental
construct, and society is the primordial reality. Social life as
such is as "natural" as the functions of the human organism
and requires no fictitious contract to account for it. Mankind
lives in society because such is the nature of the species, not
because people expect that by living together they will enjoy
advantages they would not enjoy separately. Mankind, a real
living being with its own continuity and identity, thinks and
creates, and in no purely metaphorical sense. Mankind has
its childhood, its youth, and its maturity. Like organisms, it
has its own structure and structural properties, which never
change, and which historical progress never does away with.
The functions indispensable to the life of society are embod
ied in perm anent organs. For example, social differentiation in
the form of castes or classes is merely an analogue to the
way tissues are differentiated in any living organism. Simi
larly, a perfectly homogeneous society is just as inconceivable
AUGUSTE COMTE 61
a s the disappearance o f qu alit ative distinctions among the tis

sues of a living body. Progress takes place within the particu
lar organs, but since th ey are permanent conditions of man
kind's existence, they are not subject to change : these organs
include the fam ily, private property, religion, language, secu
lar authority, and spiritu al authority. The structure of th e
social organism is j ust as unchangeable as the solar system,
the stars, and the biological species. The three-stage evolution
is confined to specific structural elements; moreover, changes
invariably occur first of all in modes of thinking, and thence
spread, as it were, to the soci al structure. S imi larly , social
revolutions do not affect the structure of socie ty, but only its
form : they are not "critical" epo ch s in the Saint-Simonians'
sense. Revolutions merely introduce disorder, a symptom of
reorganization.
Nor is there any reason to suppose that society's funda
mental institutions will be abolished in the future. In particu
lar, the distinction between spiritual and secular authority is
not a medieval invention, but an essential feature of all col
lective life. The divisi on of authority between Pope and Em
peror is to be replaced with a di vision of power between sci
entis ts and industrialists. The fact that society has yet to be
rationally organized is accounted for by the shortcomings of
public instruction and the l ack of a scientific knowledge of
society. But now (thanks to Comte ) the basic intellectu al re
quirements have been met : we need only popularize positive
knowledge, and the history of Reason's emancipation will be
completed once and for all. Human history will have attain ed
its final form. True, sociology does not just include "statics, "
that is, the science dealing with the permanent structural fea
tures of society, but also dy nam i cs , " that is, the science of
"
progress. But once the p ositive spirit has been victorious,

progress will no longer face obstacles created by prejudice,
ignorance, and myth.
6. The religion of humanity. While the po s itive system abol
ishes the old religions based on theological beliefs, it does not
abolish rel ig ion itself, for this is a permanent el em ent in the
social structure, the indispensable bond that holds thi ngs to -
gether ( according to Cicero, the very term religio denotes

this function) . This idea of a secular religion has been re
garded by some as implied in Comte's great synthesis, by oth
ers as merely the wanderings of a sick mind. Today almost
all students of Comte discern elements of "the religion of
humanity" in his thinking from the very earliest writings.
In the positive religion, Humanity takes the place of the
mythological gods. Humanity transcends the individual : it is
composed of all living, dead, and yet unborn individuals;
within it, individuals replace one another like cells in an or
ganism, without thereby affecting its independent existence.
Individuals are products of Humanity : their thoughts, feel
ings, beliefs, talents, abilities-all are functions of the single
great organism's life. Humanity deserves the worship once
given imaginary gods. As it has always done, religion will
unite human beings and order their lives, will keep alive the
consciousness of their ties to the Higher Being, and teach
p eople their duties (never rights ) . In contradistinction to the
old myths, the positive religion will be able to bring about per
fect harmony between m ankind's emotional and intellectual
needs.
It is noteworthy to how great an extent Comte was fasci
nated by the sway of Catholicism, its universalism, its ability
to encompass all forms of human life. The religion of hu
manity will meticulously imitate the system the Church cre
ated, cleansing it of superstitious theological beliefs but pre
serving its unifying p ower. Rituals and sacraments, the
calendar, a priesthood to teach the dogmas of the new faith,
secular baptism, secular confirmation, and secular last rites-all
this will be preserved. The new dogmas are ready-they are the
Comtean doctrine and the laws of science. In addition there
will be a new and positive conception of the guardian angel :
this is the role assigned womanhood in the new faith. Nor
did Comte neglect to give new, positive names to the months
and days of the week (each month will be named after a saint
of the positive religion, and each day will be dedicated to one
of the seven sciences : the magical number seven was reached
once positive morality was added to the original six sciences ) .
AUGUSTE COMTE 63
Also, temples will be erected to the positive religion which,

being based on scientific principles, will all be identical. The
priesthood will be presided over by a positive Pope, wh o will
share power with the positive secular authority The latter's
.
function will be primarily to further industrial development

and to harness new intellectual conquests to practical tasks.
For we think in ord er to act more effectively : the mind works
to satisfy the body's needs.
However, man is not just a thi nking being with physical
needs, he also has feelings. Altruistic feelings flourish in fam
ily life, hence the family must be the cornerstone of th e col
lective edifice; consequently, the positive society asserts the
rights of parents over childre n and prohibits divorce. Woman
is ass ig ned a particularly sublime function : she is to be the
guardian and the source of human affections, and it is she
who will secure the triump h of the positive spirit on earth.
It is well known that feelings hold sway over the mind-not
in the sense that the mind has no i ndependent rules of opera
tion, but in the sense that only feeling aetually inclines it to
act. In the perfect world the worship of womanhood will be
universal, and there will even be a Virgin Mother giving birth
to c h il d ren by means of artificial insemination . Comte goes so
far as to calculate the exact number of families each national
unit s hou l d contain in the future : he favo rs small states, as
being the easier to administrate efficiently.
At this point, we must make a brief digression. It may seem
i nc redible that a writer able to treat a number of scientific
questions so meticulously, one endowed, moreover, with so
keen a sense of the historicity of human institutions, seriously
imagined that the structure and forms of the Catholic Church
could be taken over intact, all its beliefs rejected and replaced
with others-on th e model of emptying a pail of sand and re
fi llin g it with water But this seeming absurdity is actually a
.
logical consequence of his doctrine. Comte is faithful to as

sumptions that are not his exclusive property but from which
he, unlike others, drew the u lt i m ate consequences. Once you
assume that man is defined by a sum total of needs which
remains constant (without, of course, neglecting emotional
needs ) so that only the way in which they are satisfied

changes with the advance of knowledge; further, when you
assume that intellectual life and religious life have, strictly
speaking, no separate existence and do not express different
needs but are merely functions ( or "forms" ) of more primi
tive needs; and finally, when you assume that man acts as he
does (intellectual behavior included) under the influence of
affective stimuli that are constant and predictable so that ra
tional social organiz ation can encompass them all-once all
this is assumed, there is nothing astonishing about the sup
position that it should be possible to manipulate the inherited
means of expression at will for the purpose of organizing any
and all social phenomena. In a general way Comte was aware
of the resistance of things and the non-voluntary character of
human reactions to the world, but he nonetheless believed
that his own theory of unchanging structures covered the to
tality of this resistance. He recognized the historical necessity
of the "lower" forms of intellectual life, but not the inde
pendent power of tradition. In other words, he entertained
the belief that the society of the future, once it had adopted
the positive way of thinking, would no longer be subject to
the weight of its own p ast, and that its necessities would then
take on a purely natural character, connected with biological
necessity to unchanging organs of social life. Thus, at bottom,
he believed in the total obliteration of history in the future
order, in the possibility of completely rationalizing every
sphere of life. His aversion to "Utopian" thinking applied
only to the kinds he detected in other thinkers. His historicism
was purely retrospective, for it stopped at the positive stage.
He believed in the end of history.
7. The results of Comte's thought. The Saint-Simonians
were among Comte's earliest critics. They found his ideas
concerning progress weak and also criticized his "material
ism " : their own goals included a return to true religion with
a true god and true priests. They opposed any program that
would subordinate artistic creation in the society of the future
to tasks determined by science-and Comte did believe that
in the future industrial needs will dictate to poets and artists
AUGUSTE COMTE 65
what they are to do; their function will be that of stimulating

people, by artistic means, to achieve the desired productive
results. As it seemed to his critics, this took all cultural ini
tiative away from the artist. They also criticized him for bis
opinion that scientific hypotheses are just as verifiable as facts
-according to them, this was the error that led Comte to
atheism, for he destroyed the very idea of faith when he re
placed it with a monopolistic rule of science over the human
mind.
These criticisms, however, made no great impression, nor
did they check the spread of Comte's ideas, save on the score
of his program for a positive religion : from the outset, the
leading popularizers of Comteanism, especially Littre , had
quietly removed this superstructure. Although a Comtean sec
ular church has survived down to this d ay, it has nowhere
played a significant part in intellectual life. Comte's doctrine
has been influential, not in its complete "universal" version,
but only fragmentarily. Wh a t might be called its "scientistic"
features became a lasting part of subsequent positivist
thought: the L aw of the Three States, the rejection of meta
physics, faith in the essential unity of the sciences, the ideal
( actually unattainable, as Comte himself admitted; a norma
tive guideline rather th a n a program ) of reducing all knowl
edge to a single universal formula, and the interpretation of
knowledge as ultimately of practical value or nothing. Comte's
sociology has turned out to be important, not so much for its
historiosophic content as for its clear formulation of meth
odological principles that have subsequently been adopted by
many sociologists. These in clude the treatment of social facts
as realities sui generis, independently of their psychic back
ground ; abandonment of the social-contract theory; the treat
ment of hum an thought, science, belief, and modes of be
havior as social facts par excellence-that is, as referring not
to individuals but to the collectivity.
The Law of the Three States is in rough approximation cor
rect concerning the history of science. Comte formulated the
tendencies characteristic of modern scientific knowledge in
periods of normal development, though at certain critical mo-
ments it unexpectedly discloses more in common with philo

sophical thought than Comte suspected. His basically phe
nomenalist attitude to the world (we do not penetrate into
the "nature" of things or investigate underlying "causes," but
merely boil down the multiplicity of phenomena to "laws" )
long seemed merely to represent the actual attitude of re
searches in a number of fields of knowledge. It was some
time before doubts arose concerning the notion of "fact, " the
fetish that Comte took for granted as self-evident. Eventually
such doubts led to abandoning the conception of science as
a fact-gathering activity purely and simply, an agency whose
task has ended once "laws " summing up the facts have been
arrived at.
To be sure, some parts of the Comtean doctrine that strike
us as absurd today ( apodictic pronouncements as to what
science may and may not concern itself with, the dogmatic
rejection of certain fields of knowledge as 'unproductive or
"metaphysical," belief in the absolute permanence of the
basic divisions of the world and fascination with botanical
and zoological classifications as models of scientific thinking,
excessive enthusiasm for "order, " the picture of the world as
made up of neatly labeled, indexed, filed "contents" ) are not
direct consequences from positivist premises. Nevertheless,
they demonstrate one possible way-a way that remains pos
sible today-of interpreting those premises, a way that could
endanger the progress of knowledge if taken seriously. Comte
realized, of course, that scientific research cannot be carried
on in flat obedience to immediate practical demands, that it
must be guided by purely theoretical considerations in order
ultimately to produce practical results ; he grasped that the
most fruitful discoveries in the history of science, including
those that underlie all our latter-day technology, were born
of cognitive curiosity. More than that, he was aware that the
"theological" and the "metaphysical" stages of human
thought were preconditions for science's eventual "positive"
flowering. For all that, when he turns to consideration of the
new era his own work opens up, in which the totality of
knowledge-as represented by its final component, sociology-
AUGUSTE COMTE 67
has entered the positive stage, his historicism su ddenly be

comes impotent, and all his previous reservations dis appe ar.
Everything relative in scientific development now becomes a
thing o f the past, and now that the absolute state bas been
attained ( at least in respect to basic principles) there is no
further place for historical criteria. Like other Messianic doc
trines, Comte's scientistic on e never considered the chance
that it might in time itself become a matter for historical ap
praisal and relativization. Comte bad an admirable historic al
understanding of everythin g except bis own place in history.
We have no reason to wonder whether this philo sophy has
a right to be called positivist-even me asu ri ng it against the
stereotype of positivism current in our own day. It is a positiv
ism, th ou gh largely expressed in c atego ries typi cal of the
ep och that produced Hegel and Romantic ph ilo s op hy gen
erally. It represents an all-embracing historiosophic construc
tion, crowned by a Mes si an ic vision all it s own. This
construction is actually deterministic in character although it
renounces metaphysically conceived causality in favor of pbe
nomenali stic ally interpreted laws. It also holds out the hope of
a total transformation of th e world and the impen ding advent
of the abs olute state, thanks to the advance of scientific
knowledge. Its rehabilitation of Christi anit y and medi eval ctll
ture connects it with other productions of the Romantic era,
although in Comte this has a sense all its own. His is no
worsh ip of the past as such, no respect for tra dition merely
because it is tradition : after all, he reco gnizes real progress
even in res p ect to religio us forms and hence the authentic
histori c al continuity of the human species . On th i s score he
breaks away from the eighteenth-century cl icbe of "the ages
of darkness and superstition. " Also, Comte's sc ientistic ideals
are combined with a firm conviction that man is essentially an
affective bein g-that only affec tive stimuli induce him to act,
and that rational thought is at the service of p ra ctical needs.
On the other hand, Comte believed that it is po ss ibl e to
ach i eve a state in which ma nk ind , having cl e arly recognized
its own invariable needs, will effectively harmonize emotional
needs with rational prediction, and thus be transformed into
CHAPTER FOUR
Positivism Triumphant
During the ten years following Comte's death, Eu rope a n cul

tu re was enrich ed by the fo ll o w ing works, among others : The
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, Introduction to Experi
mental Medicine by Clau de Bernard, Utilitarianism by John
Stuart Mill, the first volumes of Herbert Spen c er s System,
'
an d the first volume of Capital by Karl Marx. In their differ

ent ways, each illustrates a trend away from Comte's
utopianism.
The Messianic hopes ch erish ed in the period known as the
" S pringti m e of Nations" were n o w in eclip se , utop i a n social
ism among th em . A more e mpiri ca l , exp erim en tal approach to
social phenomena was fin d i ng expre ss io n . Socialist thou ght
was ce as in g to be a colle ctio n of vi s io nary dreams and, in
stead, was d rawi ng strength from slow but real advances be
i ng made by working-class mo ve m ents . In the sciences, a
number of recent discoveries suggested that a new s ynthes is
was becoming possible, th at there was a b asi s for unifyin g th e
ever proliferating, ever more ti gh tly "spe cialize d" sciences.
The principle of the conservation of energy supplied one such
formula, applying, as it seemed to do, to all natural phenom
ena. The theory of evolutio n was another, for it encompassed
the totality of organic phen ome na , i ncludi n g human life. Ad
vances in the bio logic al sciences were especially notable at
this time, and deeply influenced certain a spec ts of positivist
thou gh t.
1. Claude Bernard: The native positivism of science. The
th o ught of Claude Bernard in particular ill u s trat es the impact
of developments in biolo gy and the trend away from the more
grandiose aspects of Auguste Comte's positivism. Although he

had literary ambitions in his youth, Claude Bernard ( 1 8 1 3-
1 878 ) was not a philosopher even in intention. His life was
devoted to research in the fields of medicine and physiology,
which earned him worldwide fame. At the same time, how
ever, he gave noteworthy expression to "the scientific atti
tude," and himself supplied a model of it. Tireless and scrupu
lous in experimental research, he exemplified modesty and
impersonality in the making of scientific claims and remained
deliberately, consistently neutral on all philosophical
questions.
His discovery of the glycogenic function of the liver, his
studies of the pancreas and the physiology of the nervous sys
tem, and of the action of such poisons as curare and carbon
monoxide-these are regarded, not just as essential contribu
tions to physiology, but as marking a real turning point in the
history of science. The principles of scientific method and
rules of experimental procedure he set down in his Introduc
tion to Experimental Medic ine and some shorter works have
become the canon of modern scientific method and of the
positivist tradition.
Claude Bernard was highly critical of Comte's doctrine. In
his view, the religion of humanity was even more absurd than
the already existing religions, and he did not believe that
Comte's "positive state" could ever become historical reality.
He took the line that human beings will never cease to reflect
on the first causes and to search for a purposeful order in the
conditions of their existence, but that s'uch reflection and such
search for meaning fall outside the domain of knowledge.
Insoluble problems have no place in science. Actually, were
"first causes " ever to be discovered, something like the end
of the world would have come about, for there would be no
spur to further investigation . Mankind would have attained
the Absolute. Fortunately, there is no reason to take such a
prospect seriously.
Nonetheless there is a certain relation to Comte in the more
fundamental features of Bernard's thinking, for all that they
derived from his own experimental research rather than from
POSITIVISM TRIUMPHANT 73
the writin gs of Auguste Com te . His b as i c rules of scientific

m ethod can be stated in a few s im p le senten c es :
First, the scientist should submit unreservedly to th e facts,
an d sacrifice without hesitation any the o ry that is c le arl y in
comp atib l e with the facts.
Sec o n d , s cientifi c investigatio n can be effective o nl y on the
as sump tion that all phenomen a are s tric tly determined. This
determinism, however , is not a met ap hys ic al theory of the
universal inevitab ility of things, b u t rather a rule of th umb , a
m ethodol ogical p rin ciple . It a s s um e s that the same phe n o m en a
occur un d e r the same conditions, and that if the re su lts of an
exp erimen t are u nexpected, we should look for unknown
conditions to acco u nt for them. The purpose of science is to
discover re l at ionship s between phenomena and the c o n d iti o ns
under which they occur , to as ce rtain links between matters of
fa ct and the mechanisms that govern th eir occurrence. For
th i s purpose, we are to refrain from any and all reflection on
"underlying principles , " and are never to ask "Why?"
Third, science is a bso lut ely neutral where philosophical
ques tio n s are co ncern ed . Whether materialist or "animistic"
( in Cl au d e Bernard's terminology ) , m etap hy s ics has no heu
ri s tic value for positive k nowl e dge ; nor is it pos sible to formu
late any met aphysi c s in such a way as to p e rm i t experimental
verifi cat ion . Although philosophic thinking is a "natural" phe
nomenon in th e sense th at it reflects a real need of the human
mind, it may not assign limits to science no r ask s ci en ce to
s olv e chimerical problems.
Fourth, one crucial way of settling sc ie nti fic qu esti o n s is
the m e th o d Claude Bernard called "counter-proof. " Here he
fo rm ul ated an idea that is p e rhap s m o re wi dely know n to d ay
in Karl P opper' s formulation of it : No sc ientific hypothesis
can be re gard e d as established so long as th e scientist knows
only the facts that confirm it and has not undertaken to dis
cover facts that dis p rove it. E d ucati o n al l y speaking, the prin
ciple is an essential one : setting up experiments to d ispro v e a
given hy po thesis is a fund a me nt a l featl.Jre of " s ci en tific moral
ity." Ignoring it is to enc o u r age the all-too-human tendency
to facile exp l an at ion , rash generalization.
"The whole of natural philosophy is summed up in a single

phrase : to discover the laws that govern phenomena. Even
the most elaborate experiment comes down to predicting and
controlling phenomena . " These words most concisely sum up
Claude Bernard's thought and at the same time show its es
sential affinity with Comte's. Science is inconceivable without
determinism, but the latter is taken in a purely phenomenalist
sense : in order to formulate any laws at all, we have to as
sume that identical conditions produce identical phenomena;
science admits of no accidental occurrences or "exceptions "
t o its "rules"-if b y this term w e mean anything more than
our ignorance of the factors that alter the course of the phe
nomenon observed.
Furthermore, Claude Bernard believed that once biology
has rid itself of metaphysical "vital principles, " final causes,
unproductive, purely verbal disputes as to the meaning of life,
and adherence to any and all confining "systems" whether of
thought or feeling-then we will become aware of the homo
geneity all phenomena display and be better equipped to de
scribe them as such. What appears as a distinction between
two cognitive and existential orders-the organic and the inor
ganic-derives from vitalistic prejudices. In the eyes of science
life is not the product of some distinct mysterious force : it is a
c ontinuous process of combustion and assimilation, and al
though it is governed by regularities that neither physical nor
chemical laws account for-above al i the evolutionary proper
ties that determine the development of a seed in one specific
way (the "egg's memory" ) -these regularities can be ascer
tained only as an empirical sequence of morphological and
chemical changes, just as in any other scientific domain. The
ultimate cause of invariability in organic development is not a
legitimate object of scientific inquiry. Human thought, too, is
a biological fact. The brain is an organ like the others, and
thinking is an organic functio n , not some mysterious product
of some mysterious subjectivity. Scientific interpretation of the
evidence cannot lead to any other conclusion.
Yet Claude Berna rd did not regard scientific activity as
purely utilitarian. Although the social purpose of science is
POSITMSM TRIUMPHANT 75
to enable us to manipul ate things, he does not seem to con

clude from this that the me an i ng of e mp iri cal statements is
reduced to p ractical directives. Such statements describe that
part o f the real world that is accessible to human cognition .
The scientist devises exp erimen ts and adv anc es hyp othes es ,
but when it comes to describing his re s ults he must keep his
pers o n al involvement to a minimum and be c ompl et e ly obedi
ent to nature's indications. Claude Bernard was aware that it
is easier to formulate this princip le than to apply it in p ractice :
it dem an ds an attitu de of consta nt and utmost ale rtne s s a g ainst
p reconceived ideas, personal prefe re nces , and the au th ority
of men and words. He also warned against abuse of th e classi
fic ato ry p rincipl e. It is not enough to label a ph enomenon and
ass ign it a sub divisi on in a rank order. It is not correct classi
fication that matters, but un ders t and ing the mechanism gov
e rning the phenomena.
Claude Bernard was not ov e rc on c erned with perfect pre
cision in his reflections on s cie n ti fi c method. He merely took
cognizan ce of the rules that gu i de d him in his work and that
he had found ade qu ate . First he investigated, then reflected
on what he was do ing; to reverse this order, as Bergson sub
sequently observed, never produ c es results. He took the no
tion of "fact" for granted and knew what he had in mind.
Many of his ideas h ave an "unfinished" c haracte r, and many
were elaborated more carefully by l ater methodologists. The
special role h is Introduction has played in the his tory of s ci
entific method is due to the fact that it was a direct ou t g ro wth
of his la b orato ry investigations, not the work of a methodolo
gist who p rescri b es rules for s cien tists while doing no scientific
research himself. Al so, bis formulations refl ec te d the needs of
contemporary science.
This is not the place to evaluate Claude Bernard's co ntribu
ti on to a so - c al l e d methodology of science. His importance in
philosophical refle c tion consists in this, that he was perhaps
the first to formulate so clearly the d ivi d ing l in e b etwe en phi
losophy and science. He made no attack on philosophy, but

s imply regarded it as a differe nt kind of activity from s c ien tific
research. Though phil o sophy may now and then s timu late an
individual scientist (not by supplying hyp othe ses to be tested,

but b y engaging his fee l ings and intellectual interests ) , it can
never hope to define the tas k s of science or account for the
results of research. This s eparation between science and phi
lo sophy , not surprisingly, has been interpreted in different
ways. It has been maintained that specifically p hilosophic
statements are meaningless, devoid of co gni tive content, so
ci al ly harmful. It has also been maintained that the task of
philosophy is to provide interpret ations of reality that cannot
be p ro vided by scientific meth od s, even that philosophy gains
access to spheres of being inaccessible to s cien tific i nvesti ga
tion. However, the point of view that Claude Bernard ex
pou nded in especially striking form became permanently
rooted among both scientists and p hilosophers , with very few
exceptions. B ergson, Husserl, a nd Heidegger, who have ser i
ously criticized the extremer form s of " scienti sm, " all take the
separation for granted.
2. A positivist ethics: John Stuart Mill. For a very long time
the English did n o t read G e rma n writers, so their own reflec
tions are not attempts to refute or go beyond the doctrines of
the German idealist metaphysicians. In this resp ect England
differed from France, or at least English thinkers from French
p h ilos opher s . This is why nineteenth-century English ph i loso
phy shows an easily discernible continuity with its own tradi
tio n of the Enlightenment. The empiricism of John Stuart Mill
( 1 806-1873 ) does not differ ess entially from Hume's. We
shall therefore confine ourselves to a very brief expos iti on of
his thou ght , concentrating on those parts that disclose a new
aspect of the "p ositivist spiri t, " namely, his utilitarian ethics.
Like Comte, John Stuart M il l was interes ted in the practical
refor m of so cie ty . Comte's work at first made a tremendous
imp ressi on on him, and in fundamental questi ons p erta ining
to the theory of knowledge he shared Comte's ideas; not so in
th e field of so ci ol o gy, however, nor in p roj e cts for the future
organization of s oc iety . Comte's social system, Mill says, "as
u nfo l d e d in his Systeme de Politique Positive, aims at estab
l is h i n g . . . a despotism of society over the individual, sur
passing anyth in g c ont e mplate d in the p o li ti c al ideal of the
most rigid dis cipli n arians among the philosophers. " As for his
own social views, he writes that at first he had thought it
possible to temper social inequali ties by un iversal instruction
and limitation of natural population growth ; he had been, as
he puts it, a democrat but not a s ocial ist. With time he
re ached the conviction that a considerably greater transforma
tion is both possible and ne c ess ary, and that the essential
question the future must settle is that of how to combine the
greatest possible individual freedom of action with co mm on
possession of the world's raw m ate rial s and equal shares to
all men of the profits derived from work performed in com
mon. Thus Mill's social thinking took a socialist direction, al
though he never supposed his ideals could be realized in any
way save through slow, gradual reforms.
Mill 's philosophic al work was intended as part of his educa·
tional activity in the popul ariz ati on of his ideals. He regarded
his System of L ogic-an extremely long, extremely peda ntic
book, unusually precise by the st andards of his age-as his
contribution to the struggle against superstition, outmoded
tradition, and uncritically accepted opinion. He th ought that
false metaphysical and social doctrines, like harmful political
institutions, are based primarily on the belief that the human
mind can arrive at true knowledge of the world without ob·
servation and experience. Accordingly, his logic is built upon
radically empiricist premises and on associational psychology;
he consi dered the latter to be the fou nd atio n of all rational
k n owl ed ge about man.
The leadi n g ideas of Mill's theory of knowledge derive di
rectly from Hume, although his logic in the strict sense in
troduces many novelties and improvements that are regarded
as marking great progress in the history of this discipline.
He defined the task of logic more exactly than his pre d ece s
sors. In his opinion it formul ates the rules of reasoning, and
is not a description of the worl d ; he also drew a clear di st inc
tion between logic and the th eo r y of knowledge. According
to him, the rules of reasonin g are valid because they are the
laws of the psychology or physiology of thinki n g. This theory,
called p s ycho logism, dominated logicians down to the begin·
ning of the twentieth century when Husserl's radical criticism

of it caused it to be almost completely abandoned. Mill's
formulation and detailed exposition of the canons of inductive
reasoning in the empirical sciences are held to be important
achievements; these canons are considerably more exact than
those previously expounded by Francis B acon. By way of in
vestigating similarities, differences, and parallel changes in
events, they are intended to ascertain causal connections be
tween phenomena. They are rules for testing hypotheses
rather than rules for discovering previously unknown regulari
ties, and are modeled on the methods actually Used by scien
tists. Mill did not ascribe any metaphysical meaning to the
concept of "cause," he interpreted it in a purely empirical
sense : i.e., roughly speaking, to him a cause is any phenome
non that observation discloses to be the sufficient condition of
another phenomenon. Mill's entire theory is based on strict
adherence to the rules of empiricism and associationism : what
is actually given in human knowledge is individual impres
sions ; the cognitive subject is merely a sequence of impres
sions, and external bodies are never experienced in any other
way. The existence of the physical world is reduced to the
constant possibility of the impressions we experience, and in
this perspective the metaphysical problem in the strict sense
does not arise. The main purpose of science is to group its
truths in such a way as to enable us to encompass at one
glance the greatest possible range of the universal order. On
one essential point Mill's empiricism is carried farther than
Hume's : according to Mill, the so-called deductive sciences,
too, are entirely based on experience (he is not clear about
the difference between the question of method and that of
origin ) . The "necessity" attributed to m athematical proposi
tions is an illusion, for the axioms referred to by any deductive
reasoning are in reality results of experience. Thus, although
human knowledge is taking on an increasingly deductive char
acter, deductive reasoning merely serves to make thinking
easier, to combine-automatically, as it were-various observa
tions in order to give them coherence. For instance, Mill says,
if b always follows a, and c always follows b, we may infer
that a will always be followed by c; this is an elementary

deductive reasoning, and the rule permitting this inference
itself derives from observation. But there are no truths a
priori, i.e. , truths whose alleged necessity can be established
without appealing to o b s ervatio n ; the elementary truths of
geometry are merely the results of observation. The syl logism
does not lead to new knowledge, since its conclusion is always
implicit in the premises; we must know the conclusion before
we can formulate the premises, and so syllogistic reasoning
is caught up in a vicious circle.
Mill's empiricist doctrine is most clearly associated with his
ideas in the domain of "practical reason." The s ame tendency
that in science does away with metaphysics in favo r of psy
chology, in ethics does away with valuation based on inten
tion in favor of valuation based on results. Mill's essay on this
ethical doctrine is entitled Utilitarianism.
The essential principles of utilitarianism were not originated
by Mill . Jeremy Bentham ( 1 748- 1 8 3 2 ) had expounded them
in his Princip les of Morals and Legislation and other works.
Bentham carried the ideas of the Enlightenment p ractic ally
unchanged into the nineteenth century. His enormous influ
ence on English political thought suggests that in England the
boundary between the culture of the Enlightenment and the
culture of the industrial nineteenth century was far less clearly
drawn than on the Continent.
Bentham was primarily interested in legislation because he
b el ieved that rational laws based on the psychological laws of
association will unfailingly secure the dominance of moral
patterns of conduct in society. One of his titles to fame was a
project for a mod el prison. However, all his life he sought to
allay the rigors and abolish the cruelties of the penal system.
And he constantly reflected on how to devise legislation to
bring s ecurity and prosperity to all.
Bentham's utilitarian ethics is founded on a purely descrip
tive statement. It says that human behavior is entirely moti
vated by the desire to gain pleasure and shun pain. Utilitarian
ism takes this fact for granted as the foundation of its social
doctrine. Utilitarianism itself is a normative formula, accord

ing to which human actions are praiseworthy or the reverse
depending on whether they increase or decrease the sum of
human happiness. It must be added that to Bentham the terms
"the good, " "pleasure, " "utility," and "profit" are synony
mous. The interest of society is identical with the interests of
the individuals who make it up. The principle of utility ap
plies universally, without exception, in both private and pub
lic relations, and from it we can derive norms regulating every
sphere of human life. The principle itself cannot be proved,
but should be set down at the beginning of every demonstra
tion; after all we cannot ask for proofs ad infinitum. The
principle of utility has this advantage, that everyone is actually
guided by it, as is apparent from the fact that even its critics
unconsciously appeal to it. For instance, ascetic morality,
which is seemingly at the opposite pole from the principle of
utility, rests upon the same principle though falsely inter
preted : those who profess such a morality have observed that
the pursuit of pleasure is often accompanied by unpleasant
experiences, and they absolutize this observation in the rule
that bids us refrain from all pleasures in order to avoid pain.
In other words, they apply the same principle, only they fail
to live up to it. Similarly those who place the will of God
above the principle of utility are actually appealing to the
latter. For how do they decide what is the will of God? By
showing that it is j'ust, hence good, hence useful. In short the
criterion of utility is applied so universally that what is needed
is not so much to prove it as to become conscious of its
implications and to ascertain the factual circumstances of life
in order to apply it infallibly. Therefore Bentham imagined
that once the sources and varieties of pleasure and pain have
been properly classified-which is the very undertaking be set
himself-and once a scale for measuring them according to a
few criteria has been designed ( intensity, duration, certainty
or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness, fecundity, purity,
extent ) , then it will be possible to apply rules derived from
the basic principle in every particular connection and to de
cide infallibly concerning the value of every human action.
This theory, derived from Hume, Helvetius, and Beccaria,

was intended to supply the rational foundations for a perfect
moral code in which every human action could be properly
evaluated. As a result, legislation and ethics were to become
as exact as the mathematical sciences.
Clearly, Bentham's confidence in the normative omnipo
tence of the principle of utility was rooted in the Enlighten
ment's belief in an essential harmony between individual as
pirations and the social interest, and in the possibility of doing
away with all social conflicts by means of rational legislation.
We need not add that whereas Bentham appealed to the prin
ciple of utility in order to defend parliamentary democracy,
othe rs (for instance, Godwin) in the name of the same prin
ciple advocated the ideals of an egalitarian anarchism or even
purely theological doctrines.
One of the active propagators of Benthamism was James
Mill, whose son, John Stuart Mill, took over this doctrine and
intro duc ed a number of corrections and further distinctions in
response to criticisms and for polemical purposes. But the
main tenets remained as before. Mill agreed that the supreme
rule governing human actions-in other words, the supreme
value or ultimate purpose of life-cannot be proved; whether
a thing is good in itself, not just as a means to an end, lies
beyond discussion, is by definition unprovable. But recogni
tion of the principle of utility is not the result of caprice or
arbitrary decision, it rests upon an immediate, universal, and
un iformly accessible intuition (not of the kind operating in
particular observations, but rather of the kind that underlies
our recognition of the axiomatic truths of science) . The only
"proof " that happiness is desirable is the circumstance that
mankind does in fact desire it; similarly, the only way to
prove that a thing is visible is to show that we do in fact see
it. In tum, if we are to make infallible decisions in conflictual
situations, if the moral code is to operate efficiently and settle
all particular cases unequivocally, the basic principle, i.e., the
supreme value, must be one and one only; or, if there has to
be more than one, then the principles must be arranged in a
clear hierarchical order.
82 T HE ALIENATION OF REASON
The ultimate purpose of every kind of valuation and every

kind of commandment or prohibition is a life as free of suf
fering and abounding in as many of the highest pleasures as
possible. "Pleasures" and "pains" are not to be taken here in
a purely biological sense : the principle of utility encompasses
specifically human experiences, which we 'usually value higher
than those that animals share with us. The last-mentioned rule,
too, is based on universal consensus : after all , no one would
agree to exchange the fate of an unsatisfied man for that of a
satisfied animal.
There remains the question of rules governing particular
choices, which requires exact standards for comparing alter
native goods. In this matter, according to Mill, we should
consult the opinion of men who have tried both of two possi
ble alternatives. The principle of utility affords a rational basis
for choosing between different kinds of conduct, both con
ceivably desirable. If some choices are nonetheless hard to
make, this is due to the complexity of human relationships.
However, there is nothing to prevent us from continually
improving on the various rules for our guidance, and we may
hope one day to achieve perfect exactitude in this matter.
"Utility" or "happiness" is defined as the supreme value
not in respect of the individual, but of all men; morality is the
system of rules that envisages the greatest happiness of all ; it
is assumed that all specifically human pleasures are accessible
to every man individually . Mill was convinced that the basic
sources of suffering-poverty, sickness, failure-can be com
pletely controlled. The utilitarian rule does not exclude the
value of sacrifice insofar as it may be useful to someone, and
insofar as it does not denote self-inflicted s'uffering for another
purpose. The motives of our actions are not the object of
moral rules; they refer to the rule of duty, but it is not as
sumed that a mode of conduct must be motivated by a sense
of duty for it to be moral. The criteria of utilitarianism do
not refer to the value of the agent, but to the consequences of
his actions ; evaluation of the action and of the agent are in
dependent of each other, although value of an individual can
be determined only on the basis of his conduct as a whole.
Mill did not i n the least s e t out t o change current norms of

behavior or to invalidate recognized values. On the contrary,
he believed that values asserted by other doctrines could be
readily integrated in the utilitarian code. For instance, the
value of justice, i.e., the conviction that certain claims are
legitimate, is unchange d : it is enough to ascertain that every
kind of claim can be evaluated by the standard of universal
utility.
Suc h , briefly stated, is the utilitarian theory. As can be seen,
it is based on the following assumptions, among others :
1 . The objects of moral valuations are not moral values but
other kinds of value.
2. It is possible to compare all human goods without excep
tion , i.e., it is possible to discover a rule that reduces all goods
to a certain homogeneous scale.
3. There is a universal and primary intuition that justifies
the p rinciple of utility.
All th ese assumptions have been subjected to criticism . Ad
herents of Kantian and other transcendental ethics have
rejected utilitarianism chiefly on account of the first of the
assumptions mentioned. Accord ing to them, this doctrine ig
nores or even excludes specifically moral motivations-those
that Kant particularly stressed when he said we must do our
duty because it is a duty, not for any other reason, at least if
our conduct is to deserve m oral approval, whereas utilitarian
ism bids us evaluate human actions by their consequences, so
that an action performed out of a sense of duty has the same
moral value as the same action performed out of vanity or
under constraint. In the eyes of those brought up in the sp i ri t
of Kantianism, this idea simply annihilates moral values as
separate and distinct from biological values. Although Mill
disti nguishes between the value of the action and that of the
agent, the distinction as he interprets it does not get around
this objection, since evaluation o f the agent coincides with
evaluation of a large number of his actions.
O ther critics do not regard this objection as essential. They
agree that in the overwhelming m aj o rity of cases it is hard to
discover other practical standards of evaluation in our
world. But they object to two other features of the utilitarian

doctrine.
The first, they feel, is a sort of mystification involved in the
utilitarian claim to cognitive grounds. The falseness of Mill's
analogy between the relation "seen-visible" and the relation
"desired-desirable" is so obvious that it scarcely needs to be
mentioned (what is "visible" is that which can be seen, not
that which deserves to be seen ) . Less glaringly false but
equally misleading is another principle on which the utilitar
ians rely a great deal, and which they take for a descriptive
statement of human conduct : " Men always strive for happi
ness. " Close scrutiny shows readily enough that every kind of
human conduct confirms this thesis ( a man who strives for
suffering obviously finds happiness in suffering, a man who
sacrifices himself obviously finds a source of pleasure in sac ri
fice, etc. ) . In other words, this theory, just like the old doc
trine according to which "man is always selfish," can always
be justified because it is at bottom tautological : it does not
discover any specific characteristic in empirically known varie
ties of human conduct but merely calls "happiness " that which
men strive for. The doctrine cannot be refuted, that is, it is
impossible to point to any conceivable fact that would con
tradict it; any conceivable fact will always confirm it. Thus
the theory does not meet the condition required of really
empirical assertions : it is a definition presented in the guise
of a description. For this reason it cannot serve as a descrip
tive premise indispensable to any normative code; yet Mill
maintains that the supreme rule of utilitarianism comes down
to the assertion that there is an innate impulse to happiness
in all human beings. Since this alleged discovery is a purely
tautological statement, it cannot serve as foundation for an
effectively applicable code of moral standards.
The second, perhaps more important objection, empha
sizes the utter uselessness of Mill's theory in practice. To ac
cept it we must believe that a common measure for all values
is to be discovered in the human world, that it is possible to
put something like an exchange value on emotional qualities,
reducing them all to one single quantitatively measurable
characteristic ( "pleasure" ) . Could this really be done, moral

conflicts could indeed be eliminated, for it would be possible
to calculate which of any pair of alternate possibilities of
human conduct is the more valuable in a given situation. But
the conception of one uniform scale of values is altogether
:fictitious, and on this score utilitarianism is as hopeless as all
monistic normative systems (i.e., those that seek to set up a
single principle of valuation capable of arriving at infallible
moral decisions in any and every concrete situation ) . The
world of values is differenti ated qualitatively, and any single
standard of valuation is arbitrary and artificial. Human con
flicts are caused by the lack of uniformity with which situa
tions demanding choice present themselves. One example of
this lack of uniformity is the irreducibility of human individ
uals to a single scale, and h ence the impossibility of deciding
which of two individuals' goods carries the greater weight in a
given situation when each of them experiences the situation
in his own way. Even if we could predict what pains will be
linked with the pleasures expected-and, as is well known,
such predictions are highly fallible-we could never manage
to draw up sum totals of the positive and the negative possi
bilities and compare them like debit and credit columns in
double-entry bookkeeping. In actual fact our choices are
guided by vague intuition or spontaneous impulse, and fa
miliarity with the utilitarian principle is of no help in making a
rational choice. This is why the utilitarian philosophy is in
capable of resolving real conflicts and ineffective as an edu
cation in morals.
The utilitarian philosophy is rooted in the conviction that
all hu man conflicts are traceable to insufficient knowledge,
and that proper public instruction m ay result in a rational or
ganization of the juridical system, and by the same token settle
all conflicts between individual interests as well as b etween
individual and social needs. Thus, at bottom, the utilitarian
program relies on an implicit belief, characteristic of demo
cratic philosophies, that all the values and qu alities to be
taken into account when we reflect upon society are those
common to all men, i.e., those that refer to the undifferenti

ated notion of "man" or "mankind. "
This is not to imply in any way that utilitarianism reflects
totalitarian aspirations ( though this may be suggested by Ben
tham's contempt for the metaphysics of "human rights" ) .
What distinguishes Mill is, on the contrary, his championing
of the greatest possible individual freedom in a rationally
organized world. However, like the majority of nineteenth
century democrats, Mill treats human individuals as abstract
and essentially uniform elements in the juridical system ; that
is, he believes that when individual freedom is as fully realized
as possible ( limited only by the rule that it must do no h arm
to others ) , the interests of all can be harmonized once a
sufficiently high level of education is reached. In this system
the human individual appears as the embodiment of the uni
versal abstract essence of man plus a modicum of private
preferences which differentiate him from others, an d which he
is left free to exercise provided that his freedom is not in
compatible with the rational interests of others. Man is con
ceived of as a sum total of specific generic needs and a few
private needs, and it is assumed that his generic needs can
be satisfied by an intelligent social organization, while his
private needs can be reduced to the point where they will not
matter to others, as is the case with a pe rso n s general ap
'
pearance, color of hair, etc.

In the light of experience that shows how strongly individ
uals can be affected by their desire to impose their own beliefs
or their own conception of happiness, all these assumptions
appear more than dubious. However, they were in keeping
with the spirit of the times that produced them, especially in
England. The utilitarian conviction that all values are meas
urable is merely the resolve to recognize as value only that
which is measurable. The anti-Romantic tendency expressed
in this statement can be discerned both in latter-day positivist
philosophy and in the literary current usually associated with
it. In this view, every kind of irrationality is an evil, but an
evil that can be eliminated by the progress of pub l ic enlighten
ment. Even the severest criticism of the world does not, in
these circumstances, undermine the fundament al optimism of

such a view of human affairs.
3. Herb e rt Spencer: evolutionary positivism. We have al
ready h ad o ccasion to mention the tremendous influence
exerted on positivism by the biological sciences in the second
half of the nineteenth century. The theory of evolution con
tributed crucially to consolidating the image of a world in
which all situations in human life can be reduced to biological
situations, and all human institutions to instruments for bio
logical survival. Thus it immensely stren gthen ed and, so to
speak, added a substructure to, an essential tendency that
had long been inherent in the positivist style of thi nking, and
made it possible for the latter to take on a more exact and
more fully elaborated form.
Lamarck's theory of ev ol ut ion was based pri m arily on ob
servation of morphological abnormalities in the development
of animals and viewed these abnormalities as results of adap
tation . In this sense the evolutionary processes were governed
by a kind of immanent teleology. By contrast, Darwin's theory
of natural selection was in part conceiv ed under the influence
of Malthus's reflections on specifically human phenomen a .
Darwin assumed that the changes that occur in generic char
acteristics have a mutational, accidental character, and that
only s u b s equently do certain of these changes turn out to be
useful , others harmful, to the exi stence of the genus. The use
ful changes are inh erited , and in this way the best- adapted
populations-but adapted as a result of accidental variations
-survive in the struggle for existence, whereas others, which
ha d happened to acquire harmful characteristics, are doomed
to extinction. The survival of the human species, too, can be
accounted for within this schema, and specifically human
characteristics-among them moral motivations and codes, re
ligious beliefs, intelligent actions-can be interpreted in terms
of bi ol o gic al usefulness, as instruments of the efficient adapta
tion that has secured for mankind such overwhelming superi
ority in the over- all ecology of the planet.
Discovery of links between m an and the rest of organic
nature, the possibility of interpreting spec ifi c ally human ca-
pacities and institutions as instrumentalities for the satisfaction

of biological needs, the inclusion of reason and civilization
within the ecological situation of the species-all this favored
tendencies characteristic of the positivist style of philosophiz
ing. The theory of evolution made it possible for positivist
thought to go beyond methodological programs and to apply
our knowledge of biological regularities to all types of hu
man conduct and creation. One synthetic conception of this
way of thinking is to be found in Herbert Spencer's works.
However, Spencer ( 1 820-1 903 ) attempted to formulate the
theory of evolution in such a form as to encompass not only
organic nature but all spheres of existence, and he treated
their transformations not merely as individual instances of
the operation of identical evolutionary laws, but as aspects of
one and the same process gradually extending to ever more
differentiated areas of the world. The universality of evolu
tion does not therefore merely come down to structural anal
ogies between different lines of development, but to their all
being dependent upon one and the same energy. According
to Spencer, the guiding ideal of knowledge is to reduce it to
a single formula or "supreme law," in other words, to ac
count for the totality of phenomena by the operation of one
and the same force. In a unified science, unlike or qualita
tively differentiated forms of transformation could be ex
pressed in the same language. Like many positivists, Spencer
looked forward to a systematic reduction of knowledge,
thanks to which the seemingly irreducible multifariousness of
the world will appear as different manifestations of one and
the same cause.
Philosophy is to perform this task of unifying all knowledge.
With a certain number of basic truths at its disposal-the in
destructibility of matter, the continuity of motion, and the
constancy of force ( Spencer's conception of force does not
coincide with that of physics and is not free of a certain
vagueness ) -philosophy looks for synthetic truths to encom
pass every sphere of investigation. It discovers certain laws
equally applicable to all. One of these laws, for instance, says
that movement takes the line of least resistance. Another as-
serts that matter and motion are conti nu ously redistributed,

that integration of matter is always concomitant with dissipa
tion of motion, and vice versa; thus constant transformations
take place in the universe, consisting now in integration with
concomitant loss of motion, now in disintegration with con
comitant increase of motion.
We observe these two kinds of ph enomena as evolution and
dissolution, but evolution do e s not come down simply to an
integrating process. It also - and primarily-consists in differen
tiation, in steadily incre a s ing heterogeneity. At the same time,
evolution is a single process, not a numb er of similar trans
formations; when the whole evolves, its components evolve,
not in accordance with any principle of analogy, but as a re
sult of a single energetic process. The evolution of the solar
system is a part, not an analogon, of the evolution of the uni
v e rse; the same applies to the evolution of the earth, of living
organisms, of the human species, of society .
Thanks to this knowledge we can construct a concept of
progress free of value judgment, and hence ascertain what
transformations deserve to be called p rogres s without appeal
ing to our own human interests. The standards supplied by the
general theory of evolution are exact on this score. The nature
of progress consists in increasing differentiation, i.e., passi n g
from homogeneous to ever more heterogeneous structures.
Within the range of knowledge accessible to us , we observe
this first in the history of the solar system : an originally homo
geneous mass began to condense at certain points; this was
followed by differentiations in density and temperature, and
later by rotational movements. The history of the earth is a
continuation of the same process : a homogeneous liquid mass
became differentiated into various layers as it cooled and
produced a hard crust; the latter in turn was at the origin of
various climates depending on the degree to which various
p arts of it were exposed to the action of the sun. Next we can
trace the process of differentiation in the history of living
organisms and in the history of the human species, which is
divided into differentiated races. The history of human socie
ties presents the same picture. The originally homogeneous
collectivity began to be differentiated by the division of labor,

then into rulers and ruled, the spiritual and the secular au
thority, castes and classes. The institutions of civilization and
the instruments of human survival evolve accord i ng to the
same principle. Speech becomes differentiated in grammatical
forms as well as into different languages and dialects. Decora
tive artifacts serving ritual or political purposes gradually be
come differentiated starting from the primitive common trunk
into written characters, painti n g, and sculpture, and each of
these branches grows s malle r and more carefully differentiated
sub-branches. Similarly, out of the race's original rites and
rituals there gradually develop separate domains of poetry,
music, and d ance.
The ultimate cause of this indefatigable process of differen
tiation is unknown. The most general cause we do k now is
this : every action of a force produces more than one effect.
The state of homogeneity is a state of precarious balance
which , in any system, is upset by the action of the slightest
force. Consequently, every mass tends to become unbalanced,
and this occurs inevitably, because the individual parts of a
system are not 'uniformly exposed to the action of external
forces. It is apparent, then, that d ifferent i ati o n is a self
reproducing process, every single differentiation is itself the
source of the succeeding ones, and the increasing complexity
of effects is, so to speak, automatic. Each differentiated part
serves as a nucleus for subsequent differentiations , for by be
ing different from the other p arts it is a source of specific
reactions to its surroundings and thus multiplies the v ari ety
of active forces, and, by the same token , their effects. There
fore we m ay assume that the m u ltipl i cation of effects pro
ceeds in geometric ration to the increase in heterogene ity. In
this way we arrive at the conviction that progress is not an
accidental characteristic of the world, not a product of h u m an
will or imagin ation It is the necessary result of transforma
.
tions, and we may assume that this necessity is beneficial to

the species.
This is not to claim that w i t h t h i s account we h ave pene
trated the 'ultimate mystery of existence. Its ultimate secret is
inaccessible. Beyond the domain o f science lies the domain of

the Unknowable. At the end of every reflection on infinity,
consciousness, knowledge, we come up against a boundary
that knowledge will never cross. Every attempt to cross it by
philosophical speculation is illusory and purely verbal. Ma
terialists and spiritualists quarrel over words, for both assume
illegitimately that they understand something that cannot be
understood. Every advance of knowledge brings us up short
against a wall beyo n d which "something" lies-but we do not
know what it is. Materialist and spiritualist arguments are
equally valid : the former grasp that what our consciousness
experiences can be described as mechanical motion ; the latter
grasp that the actions of matter are accessible to us only as
facts of consciousness, and conclude that the forces active in
the external world are of the same nature as consciousness.
But the dispute between the two can never be settled. We have
to distinguish between spirit and matter, but b oth must be
understood as manifestations of some other absolute reality,
which we can never hope to know.
According to Spencer, this idea of a purely negative tran
scendence or the idea of an Unknowable can be of practical
assistance in reconciling science with religion by setting proper
limits to the claims of each. When we ask why religious beliefs
are so universal or, more generally, inquire into the orig in of
religious feelings, it occurs to us at once that they are at all
events products of nature, and therefore must perform some
useful function in human life. Positive knowledge does not
completely satisfy the mind, which invincibly aspires to some
thing beyond cognition and beyond the domain of any co n
ceivable experience. Consequently there is a place for rel igion
in human life, although this place is rigorously fenced off
from scientific activity . Science consists of everyday observa
tions, multiplied and perfected. Astronomy grows out of such
simple observations as that the sun rises early in the summer,
late in the winter; chemistry is based on such observations as
that iron rusts, fire scorches, and meat decays. Science is
the systematic classification of facts of this kind, and its use
fulness is obvious. But since religious feelings and beliefs are,
like science, "natural" results of evolution, we are compelled

to acknowledge that religion and science can co-exist without
conflict, and that at the highest level of being there is some
thing that unites them and subordinates them to more gen
eral tasks. Because of the very n ature of our mind, extra
phenomenal reality or absolute being is forever inaccessible to
us; at the same time, belief in an absolute being is a necessary
component of human consciousness. Scientifically accessible
phenomena can be treated only as phenomena, i.e., as mani
festations of something else : the known world will always
appear to us as the manifestation of a world about which we
know nothing; incidentally, the same assumption is made at
least tacitly by every philosophy. Matter, Motion, Force-all
are symbols of an unknown reality. Even if science one day
realized its ideal, reducing all knowledge to one all-embracing
formula, it would merely be a systematization of experience
that in itself adds nothing to the content of previously made
observations. Science reduces knowledge to symbols, simpli
fied and generalized as far as possible, but is inevitably con
fined to relative forms of existence and cannot go beyond
them.
Religion is simply awareness of the boundary beyond which
cognition does not reach. Although it lays claim to positive
knowled ge of that which cannot be known, although it is ex
pressed in false dogmas and assertions, it is important to ma n
a n d irreplaceable. I t saves m a n from being wholly swallowed
up in immediate experience. Religion properly understood
must renounce apodictic pronouncements about the Unknow
able, must cease to talk about a personal God and similar
beliefs without foundation . It should recognize the . limits of
human knowledge and the unknowability of the ultimate
cause. Religion and science are compatible, not because their
contents are compatible, for religion has no positive contents
at all, and science no dogm atic limitations ; they are compati
ble from a functional point of view so long as they do not
transgress their boundaries-something religion continually
does. Religion is not any knowledge about the world, but
awareness of the limits of knowledge, a direct contact, so to
speak, with the barrier behind which the Unknowable lurks.

Consciousness that this barrier exists is extremely important,
for thanks to it we can get our knowledge into perspective;
the dogmas of positive religions are a clumsy expressio n of
this state of affairs.
Within the capacious categories of a positive knowledge so
conceived, Spencer develops his theories of human society as
a continuation and extension of cosmic evolution. Every form
of society develops in accordance with natural laws, is never a
man-made product. We also observe a real and far-reaching
analogy between the structural and functional features of so
ciety on the one hand and the corresponding qualities of liv
ing organisms on the other. In both cases we observe tremen
dous growth in the course of development, the progressive
differentiation of functions, increasing interdependence of
structural parts, and at the same time we see that the life of
the whole is independent of the survival of the individual
components.
To be sure, there are diffe rences, but they are not essential,
and often merely apparent. Thus it is true that society has no
definite outer form, but the same applies to the lower organ
isms. The constituent parts of a society are not physically
linked, but such links are absent also in the lower species, and
moreover the "space" separating people is not empty but filled
with institutions or other human creations, which are equally
parts of the social organism since human life depends on
them. It might be thought that the components of the social
organism are mobile in a way different from the components
of biological organisms, but this only appears so : though peo
ple move about like physical objects, as social components
they no longer can do so, and organs remain unchanged al
though the cells are in constant flux. Even the observation
that living organisms, unlike social organisms, possess only a
single organ of awareness is not quite exact : the social dif
ferentiation into educated and uneducated classes produces
an analogon to the organic local ization of consciousness.
On the whole, then, the organizational principles are iden
tical in both cases. The division of the embryo into the en-
doderm, which gives rise to the alimentary system, and the

ectoderm, from which the motor organs develop, has its social
counterpart in the historical division between rulers and ruled
(the latter being the food-producing class ) ; and just as a
third, vascular layer develops subsequently in the living or
ganism, so society gives rise to a third intermediate class of
merchants and middlemen. It is also easy to find counter
parts of further specializations in organic tissue. Certain re
sidual external forms (for instance, the segmentation of the
annelids) have their social counterparts in anachronistic ad
ministrative divisions. Common to both types of organism also
is a kind of competition among the individual parts. The influx
of blood into one organ causes loss of blood in another; simi
larly, the circulation of capital brings to mind the circulation
of the blood. Just as the ectodermal tissue, more sensitive than
the others and more contractile, produces tissues specializing
in contractility and sensitivity, so the more flexible and more
talented ruling class specializes, in a way, by separating the
executive from the legislative branches of government. Parlia·
ment, so to speak the brain of the system, balances the op
posed interests of the v arious tissues.
Spencer calls speculations of this kind "transcendental phys
iology" ( "transcendental" stands here for physiological prin
ciples formulated in such a way that they apply equally to all
organic units-the "transcending" is of the individual dis
ciplines ) . General relationships, for instance those between
an organ's functions and its growth, or correlations between
functional changes and development, have universal validity.
The over-all pattern of organic development from the em
bryonic stage onward ( differentiation of organs and linking
up of parts that perform identical functions ) is repeated in
the history of societies. Both biological and social organisms
disclose three types of integrating processes : merger of tissues
performing similar functions ( cf. merger of Manchester with
its suburb s ) , monopolization of functions by a given tissue
while other tissues performing similar functions die out ( cf.
monopoliza tion of textile production by Yorkshire at the ex
pense of western England ) , increasing spatial closeness b e-
tween analogously func ti on in g p arts (cf. the concentration of

cer tai n trades in sp ecific London districts ) . At the s ame time,
transition to higher forms is associated with in creasing inde
pendence of the external environment ( greater rigidity of
form, loss of elastic ity, pro gres s iv ely i ncreas ing in depen denc e
of the environment in chemical composition, weight, tempera
ture, m ob ility ) .
Spencer believed that discovery of such structural and func
tional analogies represents a real contribution, n ot just to
s ociological but also to b iolo gic al kn o wledge . C o rre c t ge n erali

zation makes it poss ibl e to deduce some pro p er ties of organ

isms from other empirically d iscovered laws ; for instance,
since the oxidation of tissue s is a condition of life, we can
pre dict th at org anisms whose surface is small in rela tio n to
their mass must have a separate breathing organ. S imilarly,
once we have established that germs must become differen
tiated, we can predict their de v elo p m ent if we know the
differences in the action of external forces on the individual
parts of the system. Of course, this does not account for
everyth i ng : after all, a duck's egg will still h atch a duckling
even when a hen sits on it. Hered ity limits the influence of
external circumstances, but we are un able to u n d ersta nd this
phenom enon . On th e other hand we observe th e phenom e non
of heredity in social life, namely in the inertia o f tradition:
for instance, colonies founded b y various nations on foreign
territories have kept the characteristics of the mother or
ganism.
Spence r did not believe he owed anything to Comte. He
did not read the l atter until late in life and found m a n y ideas
he regarded as false, doctrinaire, and altogether fantastic.
Among these were many fu nd a ment al to Comte's system : the
Law of the Three S tates , the cl assification of the sciences,
the i mport anc e of ideas in h is tory, and, needle ss to say, the
rel ig i o n of humanity with its authoritarian implications . Spen
cer also criticized Comte for c ompletely neglecting the
biological-evolutionary ap pro ach , for his failu re to t ake into
acco unt th e ch angeabi li ty of sp e ci es . He expre ss e d agreement
on certain p oints that were not specifi cal ly Comte's but re-
fleeted "the spirit of the age" ( such as the aspiration to create

a scientific sociology, the organic interpretation of society) .
In ethical matters, Spencer polemicized against Mill, and
opposed an ethics of his own based on purely biological
premises to the latter's utilitarianism. For all that, the funda
mental ideas of utilitarianism run through Spencer's thought.
Spencer does not try to formulate principles generalizing cur
rent moral views, but wants merely to integrate moral phe
nomena within the general l aws of nature. According to
him, the biological l aw of the survival of the fittest is the only
possible · foundation for moral life, and there is no morality
other than the one that takes for granted actually operating
rules of co-existence-or rather struggle-governing human life ;
there is no " good" outside nature, and principles or ideals
incompatible with the laws of nature are meaningless. The
struggle for survival and its consequences-the elimination of
the unfit-are laws actually operative, and they must be rec
ognized as the norm in any scientific view of the world. In the
last analysis Spencer's premise is the same as Mill's : we m ay
regard as good only that which is a positive good in the
biological sense. This excludes as possible goods whatever
does not in practice increase pleasure and enhance human
energies : "good intentions" or " good will, " as well as actions
motivated, for instance, by pity or benevolence are so ex
cluded. Popular versions of Spencer's view of the world can
be found in literature at the turn of the century, particularly
in Jack London's novels.
Briefly stated, the most important features of Spencer's
thought are as follows :
1 . Mechanism ( reduction of changes occurring in the world
and of cosmic and universal evolution to the mechanical op
eration of forces ) ;
2. Belief in the oneness of the universe ( not merely the
simil arity of all its metamorphoses ) : the totality of the world
undergoes the same process, parts evolve in the same way as
wholes ;
3 . Naturalism ( rejection of any "good" different from bi
ological usefulness; biological interpretation of the divisions
in s ociety-the latter, incidentally, just a new and more de

tailed version of a traditional theme) ;
4. An empiricist theory of knowledge, despite the p resence
of transcendent horizons ( science is the description of a great
number of experiences, which adds nothing to their contents ) ;
5. Reli gi ous agnosticism.
It might be supposed that some important components of
Spencer's doctrine are incompatible with the positivist way of
thinking, in particular his assumption that the phenomena ob
served by science are manifestations of someth ing else, and
hence must refer to some realm of the "noumenal" beyond
observable reality. However, Spencer banishes the 'unobserv
able world from the entire domain of cognition, also from
language, to a sphere of vague feeling. Transcendence is no
more than the sensing of the limit, and has no positive scientific
content. Therefore Spencer clings to the main constitutive
features of positivism ( abolition of the difference between es
sence and appearance; assertion of unity of method and of
unity of t he structure of the univ e rse ; a nominalist inter p reta
tion of kn owle dge as a well-ordered record, the systematizing
and symbolizing of current experience) . One specific feature
of this variety of po sitivism is the biological interpretation of
the human world and the legitimization of philosophy, which,
though denied a method of its own, has its own task-to for
mulate a synthesis of the sciences.
Under the influence of Spencer and Mill there developed

in England and outsid e it a b road intellectual current em
bracing scientists as well as humanists, historians, and writers.
It was characterized by the belief that science is entirely neu
tral on metaphysical questions and that it is p os s ible to limit
scientific knowledge to the symbolic record of exp eri ence.
Under the influence of S p ence r the history of morality and
customs was studied in the s p i rit of b iological interpretation,
and analogies between social life and the behavior of living
organisms were pursued in greater detail. Among other ex
amples, the theory of races ( Gobineau ) may be regarded as
an instance of this tendency to " biolo gize" the s o ci a l world.
A certain inconsistency became discernible, however, be

tween two leading positivist themes in this epoch-the one
that was summed up in empiricist slogans, and the one that
aimed at the perfect unification of all knowledge. Unity in
the sources of cognition as a premise and unity in the results
of cognition as a postulate-these two aspirations could not
always be harmonized. The former pursued an image of the
world completely cleansed of all "additions" to the experi
mental record; the latter, an image of the world free of con
tingency and qualitative differences. It was hard to reconcile
the two ; to radical empiricists, every kind of totalitarian
mechanistic or other-doctrine with aspirations to a universal
accounting of phenomena savored of metaphysics. Some
positivists leaned toward a naturalistic monism that laid stress
on 'unitary elucidation of the world and abandoned many
earlier positivist slogans (when H aeckel embraced Spinoza's
m onism, for instance, he committed himself to a metaphysical
position of the kind that was most sharply condemned by all
positivists ) . Others leaned toward a subjectivism that sought
to eliminate from experience everything that did not actually
originate in experience; the contents thus reduced often turned
out to be psychological in character.
Positivism dominated the "spirit of the age" to such an
extent that even Kantians sought to interpret Kant-or to
amputate his thought-in such a way as to retain only what
was compatible with a broadly conceived positivism ( Helm
holtz, Lange ) . Kant's transcendentalism, his theory of the a
priori conditions of knowledge, and the whole critique of
practical reason were shelved; all Kant spoke about, it was
found, was the part empirical psychological consciousness
plays in shaping our image of the perceived world. All that
was left was a purely biological relativism, and there were
even attempts to give it a physiological foundation. The
"thing in it�elf" was rejected as metaphysical, and this nega
tive attitude toward metaphysics led to psychological sub
jectivism.
Mill and Spencer, next to the historians and novelists they
influenced, made the most effective contribution to a certain
positivist attitude that was widely held in many European
countries in the second half of the nineteenth century. In
cluded in this attitude were opposition to the conservative his
toricism of the Romantics (i.e., refusal to grant value to any
thing merely because it is o ld, enduring, firmly rooted in
tradition ) , exclusive recognition of "positive" values, and a
ten dency to rationalize social life. This positivism was marked
by a passion for reform combined with the abandonment of
irrational ideals rooted in tradition (nationalist ideals espe
cially fell into disrepute) ; it professed the principles of so
cial freedom, which it linked genetically with the conditions
of co mpetitive capitalism, but which it justified by biological
theories and the principle of laissez faire. The latter ensures
victory to the strongest, stimulates h'uman energy and initiative,
eliminates the weak, and favors the survival of individuals
beneficial to the species. In terms of everyday life, the empiri
cist and anti-metaphysical theory of knowledge was interpreted
as the conviction that only those human actio ns whose re
sults are tangible, measurable, and calculable are valuable, and
that only those ideals deserve recognition that help make life
easier, satisfy essential needs, speed up communication, and
increase productivity. Contempt for "Romantic" values went
hand in hand with the cult of positive science-a science
whose task was not to solve metaphysical problems nor to
choose between materialism and spiritualism, but to perform
practic al utilitarian functions. Hostility to religion, whether in
the form of outright rejection of religious values and beliefs,
or in the g'uise of a contemptuous agnosticism, was part of this
view of the world, which may be regarded as dominant among
the educated strata of European societies down to the 1 8 80s,
and in some countries even into the 1 890s.
CHAPTER FIVE
Positivism at the Turn of the Century
1. The place of empiriocriticism in culture. In the last quarter

of the nineteenth century positivist thought displayed stronger
psychologistic and subjectivist tendencies. As for the range of
its interests, there was a noticeable return to questions con
cerning scientific method and genetic epistemology, while the
desire for a general theory of progress or an all-embracing
vision of social life was distinctly on the wane. One leading
characteristic of this period was an attempt to do away with
subjectivity: the subject or "self" now comes to be regarded
as a construct without counterpart in reality, something added
to the content of experience either illegitimately or purely for
convenience.
The primary aim of this subjectivism without a subject was
to formulate the idea of "pure" experience. For this purpose
it was necessary to track down those elements in the current
scientific image of the world that had been "thought into" it
not necessarily, nor even primarily, in order to reject them
entirely, but in order to demystify them, to grasp their origin,
and to assign them their proper place. This kind of positivism,
the most complete philosophical exposition of which is known
as "empiriocriticism," was concerned above all with genetic
problems. It inquired into the origins and function of knowl
edge, asked whence it arose and what biological tasks it serves.
It elaborated a psychological theory of knowledge and a pro
gram for experimental philosophy. It derives from Hume
and owed little to Comte-at any rate, neither Mach nor
Avenarius, the two men who entirely independently of each
other launched this "movement," were much interested in
1 02 THE ALIENATION OF REASON
Comte or in their affinities with him. They had been brought

up in the German philosophical tradition, and so their point
of departure was very different from Comte's or Spencer's.
The latter two thinkers took for granted the results achieved
by the natural sciences in their day and envisaged a universal
system without metaphysical underpinnings. Avenarius and
Mach, on the other hand, asked fundamental questions con
cerning the meaning of all scientific statements and how far
they are valid. To them, positivism ( a term, incidentally, they
avoided, even rejected-Avenarius's disciple Petzoldt was the
first to adopt it) was not so much the culminating synthesis
of scientific knowledge as a return to a "natural view of th e
world," which they felt h a d been obscured by an uncritical
acceptance of preconceived ideas for at least a century. This
desire for naturalness and this search for an idea of experience
purged of illegitimate "additions, " relates empiriocriticism to
the "modernist" ideologies of their day, which also retreated
from the ideal of rationalizing the world and proclaimed a
quest for some purely "natural" man.
The effort to discover man "as he really is," stripped of all
mystification and adornment (which pass for natural only be
cause they are strongly rooted in habit) , is expressed in so
many different ideologies that to group them together ( even
as "modernism " ) might seem a paradoxical 'undertaking. And
yet, though it is hard to define, there is a real affin ity between,
on the one hand, Nietzschean biologism and the "philosophy
of life" or "vitalism" to which it gave rise, and modernist
literature and the variety of positivism that flourished at the
tum of the century, on the other. What they have in common
is their attempt to discover the source of all values in natural
or primitive man, uninfluenced by scientific prejudices and
other habits peculiar to civilization. Kant's question (though
not his answers ) as to the conditions under which knowledge
is valid was revived by this philosophical movement, which,
though faithful to the essential assumptions of positivism,
gave them new meaning.
A second peculiarity of this philosophy, which also relates
it to much else in the intellectual climate of the period, was
POSITIVISM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY 1 03
what might be called its "activism," its abandonment of the

idea that human knowledge is the truer the more it submits
to reality and the more faithfully it mirrors the laws governing
it. Like the literary voluntarism of the period (in striking
contrast to Zola's "experimental novel" ) , the empiriocriticist
interpretation of knowledge is in keeping with an idea of man
as a being primarily characterized by his active role in the
world. " Pure experience" was not conceived of as a kind of
mirror in which reality is reflected, but as the active life of
man as n atural, spontaneous organizer of all data. For this
reason, attempts were made to invalidate the claims of sci
ence to " objective" knowledge, and these led to destruction of
the concept of "fact." The l atter demolition j ob was accom
plished by physicists related to the empiriocritical school and
the so-called conventionalist school of epistemology.
2. A venarius: the idea of a scientific philosophy. Richard
Heinrich Ludwig Avenarius ( 1 843-1 896) was a professor of
philosophy, first at Leipzig and then from 1 877 on at Ziirich,
where he died. In 1 877 he founded the Vierteljahrschrift fur
wissenschaftliche Philosoph ie, which he edited with Wundt
and Heinz, and which was the most important philosophical
organ of the new school. His prose makes very hard going: he
sought deliberately to rise above the terminological habits
of previous philosophy so as to eliminate the intellectual
prejudices they conceal. Because of his numerous coinages
and other linguistic complexities, he was read only by profes
sional philosophers, for the most part very perfunctorily. As
a result, his thought was long misunderstood and often mis
interpreted.
Avenarius was convinced that every science naturally aims
at satisfying the desire for unity alive in the human mind. For
this reason each of them aims at a synthetic view of its field,
a view governed by some ultimate, supreme concept. It follows
that only monism can satisfy this need for unity. Furthermore,
every science-including logic and the theory of knowledge
is experiential in the genetic sense, and yet each by virtue of a
kind of inertia tends to philosophy, which alone can secure
the desired unity. Thus Avenarius starts from the assumption
of a certain epistemological monism, conceived not as an in

vented ideal, b'ut as the description of Reason's aspiration in
th e world. If philosophy is a science-and Avenarius was firmly
convinced that it can and should be a science-it plays a spe
cial, irreplaceable part in realizing the mind's monistic aspira
tions. Like other sciences it is empirical and logical, but unlike
them it deals with problems more general than those of any
particular science. Its mission is to analyze and construct the
concepts that, in each and every science, perform a synthesizing
function (i.e., embrace the totality of objects investigated by a
given science ) , and eventually also the concepts that will serve
to unify the totality of knowledge. For this reason philosophy
must inquire into the fundamental principles of all experience.
In this sense philosophy is indispensable to every science, if
science is to satisfy its implicit need for unity : it is only in
philosophy, namely, in the highest and most general concepts,
that the sciences take on their definitive form. The goal of
philosophy is to construct a unified scientific view of the
world, in which every particular discipline will be assigned its
own place.
3 . A venarius: the critique of experience. Avenarius's
Critique of Pure Experience ( 1 8 8 8-1 890 ) , from which the
philosophical movement under discussion derived its name,
opens with an analysis intended to separate the actually
" given" from all foreign additions. First of all, it must be
noted that all human thinking is a response of the organism
to some disturbance of its biological balance and, as such, is
subject to the laws that govern all organic processes. Avenarius
refrains from inquiring into the "nature" of the cognitive
process or its "validity" in the transcendental sense, under
taking rather an empirical investigation into the part played
by cognitive processes in organic activity. That is, he treats
cognition as a biological fact associated with the central
nervous system. Every cognitive act aims at restorin g the bal
ance of the organism exposed to environmental stimuli. Ex
penditure of work and absorption of energy by the nervous
system are processes Avenarius calls "vital series. " He dis
tinguishes between independent-purely mechanical or chemi-
cal-series and dependent series, which result in cognition,

i.e. , i n which restoration of b alance involves a co gnitive act.
In the nervous system many processes occur in which bal
ance is restored immediately, but when they involve a cogni
tive act , we are de aling with a dependent series and study its
effects as the function of the organism's homeostatic tendency.
Certain characteristi cs of cognitive contents ( e . g. , qualitative
differentiation, ple asure, pain) are correlated wi th movements
going on in the nervous system, but specific cogn itive contents
are always subordinated functionally to the needs of the or
ganic system s eeking to restore its balance. Philosophical doc
trines such as idealist and materialist systems, also religious
representations, can be ev al u ate d from the same point of view :
namely, we c an ask under what conditions organic b alance
is re s to red by m e ans of materialistic, idealistic, or theological
ideas.
This is not to imply, however, that cognitive contents are
wholly dependent on the i ndiv idu al organism's given situation.
Needs are satisfied by way of co-operation, which requires a
communicable store of experiences independent of individual
contingencies. As science grows and develops, it gradually
creates a store of "pure" experience-that is, an experience
i n de p en den t of in divi d u al persons-although the complete
"purification" of experience in this sense remains an ideal
yet to be re al iz ed .
Experience is not identical with the contents of sense
im p ression s , for traces of earlier imp ress i ons always help to
determine the contents of present impressions. Nor ought we to
identify perception with impressions, for perception always
inv o lv es a selection by means of which it constitutes its ob
ject out of those components that most readily give rise to the
cognitive act, primarily the components that recur. Thus all
per ce p tio ns involve something l ik e intuition, and in addition
elem e nts derived from other sense impressions ( for instance,
in optical percep ti on the third dimension or igin ates in kines
thetic impressions ) . Thus e xp e ri en c e invariably takes on a
certain concep tu al form, however rudimentary; it is a h om o
geneous combination of perc eptio ns , which for their part are
organized collections of impressions. What we call "experi

ment" (rather than "experience" ) consists of those collections
of perceptions that are suitable for the construction of scien·
tific concepts.
There is no way to get beyond experience. Even episte
mological criticism must refer to it, and a valid theory of
knowledge must be based on observation of actual cognitive
processes in their various aspects, and hence must m ake use
of empirical psychology and anthropological data. The con
cept of experience is central to Avenarius's thought. Thanks
to it we can construct a monistic interpretation of the world
that does away with the "naive" ( as Avenarius puts it ) op
position between the physical and the psychical, also that be
tween the "is" and the "ought to be. " No such opposition
exists in experience; only that which "ought to be" in ex·
perience, i.e. , that which is regarded as an ought is in fact
given. This paves the way for a scientific solution of ethical
problems.
Abolishing the dualism between physical and psychical
worlds in favor of one homogeneous "experience" is one of
the most important results of Avenarius's philosophy, achieved
with the help of a few auxiliary concepts, which we will
briefly describe.
4. Critique of "introjection." Co-ordination between the self
and the environment. From the naive empirical viewpoint,
Avenarius s ays, psychical phenomena were treated as qualities
or processes located in "the soul," conceived of as a substan·
tial entity different from the body, which determines vital
goals. Because of difficulties involved in this naive theory, it
was superseded by the naive-critical one that attempted to
study "psychical phenomena" without reference to a "soul"
and treated consciousness as " internal" in opposition to the
" external" body. The former attempt is a purely verbal expedi
ent; as for the latter, it is based on a widespread fallacy,
which Avenarius calls "introjection . " To have exposed this
fallacy, he considered, was one especially important result of
his critique .
According to Avenarius, we imagine falsely-and the error
is not one of origi n al exper i e n c e , but the result of ac qu ire d

prej udices-that we can, in experience i tself, dist in guish the
thing from ou r ment al im age of it. Thus we divide the world
into th i n gs "ou tsi de ou rs elv es " a nd i ma ge s "inside ourselves, "
and con s truct two d i fferent realities, which are g ive n p hil o
sophic exp ress i on in d u al is t i c systems. Now, this in troje c tion
( l oc ating the images of thin gs in an alleged p sy chi cal "in
side " ) is at variance with the natural view of the universe,
which should be the s tar ti n g point for any s ci entific view of
it. To b e sure, in the n atural view we divide exp erienc e into
one p or ti on that is "o ur own " ( our bodies, thoughts, feel
ings ) an d another p o rti on c o mp os e d of the bodies around us.
But this does n ot j ustify the assumption of two different sub
s tances , still less two realities, one out e r and one inner, n or
of parallel series in two in tri n s ic ally d iffe ren t w o rl ds . B o th
thing s an d ide as come in to bei n g as the result of interaction
between the central nervo u s system and the environment.
Between myself and my environment there is a constant
n e ces s a r y rel ationsh ip, which Avenarius terms "essential em
piriocritical co - ordination. " Both term s of the rel ati onsh ip ,
however, fall within the same experienced reality. Avenarius
terms "self" the "centr al part" of this relati ons h ip , and the
environment its "counterpart. " In the cognitive act we alwa ys
distingu i sh these two components. Each concrete " self" is
correlated with a defi ni te counterpart, and v ice versa. I ex
p erience o th er p e opl e as bei n gs like m ys elf, that is, I a ss oci ate
with their beh avio r a certain meaning th at is not p urely me
ch a nic al , I treat them as "central p arts " in t h e essential co
ordination. Their counterpart and "my own" may be i den tic a l ,
or we may be " cou nterp arts" to each other.
It is at this p oi nt that th e vicious p ri n cipl e of introjection
comes in, a p rinciple uph e ld b y p sychologis ts, but at com
plete v arian ce with the natural view of th e world. For intro
jection induces us to interpret the not-purely-mechanical b e
havior of oth e r p eop l e as a collection of "i mpres s i on s found
in ourselves," i.e., localized in the brain. Whe re as , what we
ou ght to a s s u me is that when another person tells us of his
impres s i o ns ( e. g., when he says, "I see a s to ne" ) his words
mean the same thing as my own when I state my experience.

That is, I ought to assume that the same correlation occurs
between the other man and the stone as between me and the
stone. The trouble with the principle of introjection is that it
transforms the "stone as seen " into a collection of impressions
localized in the brain, and so conceived of as "impressions in
myself." Thus introjection puts the object inside me as a thing
seen, makes of it something "within myself," or the mani
festation of something "outside " me. This is to reduce the
environmental component to a mental component. Obviously,
then, introjection goes beyond anything experience entitles us
'
to conclude from it : n amely, it interprets the meanin g of an-
other man's behavior as somehow different from my own be
havior, it makes us suppose that environmental components
are images "inside" us, and hence that another man does not
see the stone as I see it, but as an image "inside" him.
Such an "inner existence," such a division of the single
homogeneous world into inner and outer, subject and object
-all this is a purely man-made product of introjection and
has no foundation in experience. By the same token, every
dualism or psychophysical parallelism is disclosed as a simi
larly smuggled-in prejudice. There is no "inside" and there is
no need to internalize perception : we experience things, not
"inner images." In experience there is no opposition between
"inner" and "outer"-the sense of the division is purely
m ethodological. Experience is metaphysically neutral ; it always
includes an individual, but "self" and "stone" are components
of experience in an identical sense, and the difference between
them consists in this, that "self" contains certain additional
components, for instance, feelings of pleasure or pain. Some
parts of experience permit us to characterize objects with the
help of specific qualities : these are elements (such as sounds,
colors, etc. ) that are of interest to natural science, and to
psychology also to the extent of their dependence upon the
individual and his central nervous system. But psychology is
wrong to conceive of a "psychic" element opposed to "what
lies on the other side . " Unless deformed by psychological
prejudice, experience does not differentiate between matter
POSITMSM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY 1 09
and spirit, the thing and its "inner" copy, the traces it leaves.
It would, however, be erroneous to assume-according to
Avenarius-that doing away with the introjective fallacy does
away with the distinction between self-cognitive and non
cognitive components of the environment. For when I say that
I know this or that, I am saying that my "self" i s a collection
of things and thoughts, and that this collection has been in
creas ed by the action of a stimulus, whereas the non-cognitive
component is not increased in the same situation, cannot
( that i s ) be regarded as a "central part" of the essential co
ordination in which this stimulus is the counterpart. But the
statement that the "self" differs from the inanimate compo
nents of the environment "by the cognition within it" is mean
ingless, fo r we do not know of any "non-cognition" in these
inanimate components, and the "self" is nothing more or less
than one component of experience. The psychical is not a sub
stance localized in the brain, neither a function nor a state of
the brain : it is a mode of describing experience.
The question arises, How can we conceive of an environ
ment without a "central part " ? Fo r instance, what meaning
can be ascribed to events that are not directly observable?
According to Avenarius, natural science does not ask questions
concerning the environment "in itself, " but describes an en
vironment assuming an observer acting as a "central part. " It
treats an actual environ m en t as the "counterpart" to a non
observable ( theoretical ) situation. In other words, Avenarius
denies that the idea of essential co-ordination reduces or
changes the actual meanin g of scientific descriptions referri n g
to unobservable situati ons .
Thus, the ultimate a im of Avenarius's critique of introjec
ti on is to do away with the dualism of subject and object by
reducing both to experience, assumed as the primordial c ate
gory. Whether the subject is reduced to a certain kind of
thing or thin g to subj ect, the re su lt is the same : the b re aking
up of subjectivity and identification of the "self" with th e
other fo rm s of experience. Thus it m ay b e said that Avena
rius's "subjectivism" (if this term is not too unfair ) does not
reconstruct reality by referring it to the subject, but destroys
the reality of the subject itself-which, incidentally, is in

keeping with the positivist tradition. Adversaries of empirio
criticism pointed out that by taking "experience" as his basic,
metaphysically and epistemologically neutral category, Avena
rius did not eliminate dualism : rather, he unwittingly inter
preted it now in a realistic, and now in a psychological sense.
But Avenarius himself held that every interpretation of this
kind is metaphysical and has no place in science. He assumed
that our natural, prescientific view of experience is sufficiently
clear, and that we do not spontaneously regard it as a product
of the self nor as an "inner reflection " of transcendent beings.
Avenarius's fundamental intention is transparen t : he wants
to do away, not just with metaphysical, but also with episte
mological questions. His critique of experience is purely de
structive, and the philosophy he advocates is neither a theory
of knowledge nor a theory of being, but is confined to analyz
ing the actual results of science and subsuming them under
the most general categories. The purpose of his "purifying"
undertaking is to eliminate metaphysical prejudices and to
blaze the trail for a pragmatic-minded science.
Apart from a certain vagueness surrounding Avenarius's
concept of experience, his whole project is grounded in an
even more general concept. This is the so-called "principle of
economy," which among other things serves to justify the
attempt to reconstruct the world of experience and to purge
it of "introjective" notions.
5. The principle of economy. Wh at figures under this name
in textbooks on the history of philosophy can be reduced to a
few logically independent statements in which it is possible to
discern a common intention. One early, well-known version of
the principle of economy is "Ockh am's razor" : "Entities are
not to be multiplied unnecessaril y . " This comes down to the
empiricist principle : we are entitled to assert the existence
only of those things and properties that experience compels us
to recognize, and we must renounce all others. This version
is not an ontological statement, but a methodological rule.
There are several formulations as well of ontological or
descriptive versions of this principle. There is a theological
P OSITIVISM AT THE TURN OF T H E CENTURY 111
version, formulated by Malebranche and others, according to

which God in administering the world always uses the simplest
means to His ends : that is, He does not waste natural resources
when the same result can be obtained at less cost. The same
principle was formulated by Maupertuis in purely physicist
terms : every effect in nature is achieved with the least possible
expense of the energy required to pass from a given initial
state to another state. A somewhat narrower formulation
(however, it is not necessary that the principle be stated in
its full generality) is the biological version stated by Spencer,
among others. According to this, the acts of living organisms
are executed with minimal loss of energy, and since the hu
man brain serves the system's self-preserving functions, think
ing is subject to the same law. In this form, the principle of
economy can be applied to intellectual behavior, and provides
the biological foundation for epistemological inferences-as
suming that such inferences can be based on observation of
nature.
As understood by Avenarius, Mach, and related writers,
the principle of economy is not a physical law with an ontologi
cal meaning, but a description of the behavior of the central
nervous system, which accounts for the actual course of
scientific thinking, the history of human knowledge in gen
eral, the history of science in particular. The gradual accumu
lation of knowledge can be described in terms of the mind's
tendency to economize. Scientific concepts, laws, hypotheses,
theories-all are a kind of shorthand that economizes intellec
tual labor, thanks to which acquired experience can be re
membered and handed down. The only task of science is to
relieve people of the need to experiment continuously, by mak
ing accessible to them the experiences of others. No general
scientific statements reproduce particular facts in their en
tirety; they cover only some of their characteristics-the ones
important to man for biologi cal reasons. They economize
effo rt; they make it possible to take in at a glance a multitude
of particular events, viewing them from a vitally important
angle. Science is experience economically ordered, and its
real content does not go beyond experience. Concepts such
as those of "substance," "thing, " etc. are similarly products

of the mind's tendency to economize : in the totality of ex
perience we distinguish certain qualities as more permanent
than others and synthesize these as some one "thing," gradu
ally separating it out from the original qualities so that in
time it becomes an unchanging "substratum. " Language ar
rests this cognitive process, and so unproductive metaphysical
ideas arise. In actual fact the concept "thing" is useful, since
it fixes in abridged form certain recurrent characteristics
manifested in series of successive experiences ; there is no
reason to re nounce traditional modes of speech, yet we have
to free words of the metaphysical meanings ascribed to them,
which are not justified by any real need of the cognitive or
ganism. The same is true of the concept of "force, " which is
used to denote characteristics of various physical reactions.
The concept is useful as a short-hand notation of a certain
quality recurrent in many experiences, but we must guard
against associating it with any metaphysical idea.
Proper understanding of the principle of economy will en
able us to turn our backs on many metaphysical problems,
and the totality of human cognition-its processes and its
contents-will be accounted for as genetically and functionally
related to biological needs that are satisfied with the help of
our brains . Biologically speaking, the central nervous system
operates purposefully. Two factors cooperate in the produc
tion of ideas : apperceptive m asses ( the expression is Her
bart's ) , i.e., ready-to-hand, fixed residues of old apperceptions,
which perform assimilatory functions, and elements newly ap
perceived. The former have an active character : from among
the experienced contents they pick out known components
and needed components ( and hence they operate in accord
ance with the principle of economy ) . From among the passive
contents of experience, the apperceptive masses appropriate
new, unknown elements by associating them with the known
ones. The apperceived components are less well defined than
the contents of the apperceptive masses, and the cognitive
process consists in this, that the brain endows the appropri
ated contents with definition, choosin g from among them with
POSITMSM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY 113
th e h elp of familiar ideas. The neural mechanism un derlyin g

the acti vity of the app er c eptive masses accounts for the pres
ence of permanent ri gid no t io ns i n ou r im ag e of the world.
It also casts li ght on the functions of language : language is
comp osed of signs intended to economize the assimilatory
effort. Every intellectual oper a ti o n presupposes the presence
of a mass of ready-made concepts under which we c ontinu ally
subsume experienced con te nts with the help of the simple st,
most general available ideas. In reference to thi s mechanism,
the pri nciple of economy can be formulated as follows :
when new elements make their app earance in exp erience , the
change that consciousness undergoes in the process of as
s i mila ti n g them is the least p o s s ib l e in the given situation.
When we consider the hi s tory of science from this view
p oin t, we observe that science gradu ally eliminates those com
ponents that are not present i n p u r e expe rie n c e and that are
superfluous for the effective assimilation of data. Among s uch
dispensable components are values, anthropomorphic n oti o ns ,
the me tap hys i cal concepts of substance and cause, "u n iver
sals, " etc.
As can readily be seen, the prin cipl e of economy tells us
n oth i n g about the truth of s c i en c e in the common sense of the
term, merely describes the b i olo g ic al law g overni ng the as
similation of co gn iti ve c o nt en t s. Alth ou gh i t stre s s es the obj ec
tivity of n o tion s, this objectivity consists in their applicability
to individual elements of experience, and thus has a pu rely
operati onal, not a metaphysical sense. The prin ciple of econ
omy is the only possible criterion for determ i ning the val i d ity
of concepts.
The empirical version of this principle aroused much criti
cism, of the kind that has always greeted rel ativi stic or skepti
cal doctrines. This principle, it was said, involves the p aralo
gism of "the liar" (it must be applied to itse lf, since it covers
the t o t al ity of human thinking ; c on se quently it c an n ot be
re pre se n te d as true in the traditional sense, but at best as the
result of the very m ech anism it de scrib es ) . It was al s o ob
jected to on the ground that it renders imp o s sib le the distinc
tion between facts and theories ( o r scientific fictions ) , for
within experience such fictions are just as "given" and real as

other facts, and the facts themselves have been picked out by
the apperceptive masses. Consequently, it is impossible on the
b asis of the principle of economy to distinguish between
authentic and fictitious elements of experience. After Avena
rius, Poincare, Duhem, Le Roy, and others analyzed the con
cept of fact in greater detail.
Empiriocriticism, and especially the principle of economy,
was supposed to avoid the difficulties involved in Kant's
critical problem. But its adversaries objected that the under
taking was futile. In the empiriocritical image of the world,
the principle of economy and the concept of pure experience
presuppose one another; the principle can be formulated only
once we have determined the concept of pure experience as a
constant system of reference ( in order to know what cognitive
elements are to be eliminated as incompatible with the economy
of thought, we must have a model for the reduction of the
"given " ) . On the other hand, we arrive at the concept of pure
experience by making use of the s ame principle of economy.
Thus, in the last analysis, we get a new version of the same
circular reasoning that is the starting point of Kant's critical
problem : the standards by which knowledge is evaluated are
justified by a model of cognition in the construction of which
the same standards are used. Accordin g to Husserl, who criti
cized the principle of economy in his Logische Untersuchun
gen, no theory of knowledge that makes use of the results of
experimental science can withstand criticism, for it is impos
sible to inquire into the validity or non-validity of knowledge
if we presuppose the validity of specific results achieved with
the help of the very criteria that are in question.
6. Ernst Mach. In his writings, Ernst Mach ( 1 8 3 8- 1 9 1 6 )
formulated m any ideas similar t o those o f Avenarius, but
independently of him. Unlike the latter, he was a practicing
scientist, an experimental and theoretical physicist. He taught
mathematics and physics at Vienn a, Graz, and Prague, and in
the last years of his academic career lectured on philosophy
at Vienna-more accurately, on the history and theory of the
inductive sciences. Pondering the need for over-all views in
POSITIVISM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY 115
connection with new branches of physics arising in his day,
he was led to historical study in the hope that learning how the
basic concepts of physics were arrived at would cast light on
their true meaning and supply clues to the direction further
work should take. For this reason, he devoted a great deal of
attention to the history of physics.
It is perhaps because of his historical interests that Mach,
though related in many resp ects to Avenarius, had a much
stronger sense of the relativism of knowledge than the latter.
Avenarius, it would seem, was firmly convinced that as sci
ence progressed experience was continuously "purified," and
that it was possible to come ever closer to the ideal of an all
embracing synthesis within a radically purified experience. He
was far more system-minded than Mach and far more inclined
to traditional philosophizing, although he interpreted the
meaning of science in purely biological terms. Mach, on the
other hand, was deeply convinced of the provisional charac
ter of every given stage of science and of all scientific asser
tions. An important part in his philosophical reflection was
played by his radical anti-dogmatism, his conviction of the
harm caused to science and to life in general by stubborn
adherence to inherited formulas. He did not believe that any
sort of opinion is above criticism, and thought that physics
itself stood especially in need of a thorough housecleaning.
In his early youth M ach had read K ant' s Prolegomena an d
it made a great impression on him, stimulating him to reflect
critically on current metaphysical prejudices. In his mature
writings, however, he completely rejected the fundamental
ideas o f Kantianism. He reached the conclusion that "the
thing in itself" is a completely superfluous hypothesis, and
that there is no foundation for believing in any a priori con
ditions of experience whatever; he found assertion of the ex
istence of synthetic a priori judgments especially absurd. Ac
cording to him, the history of science shows incontrovertibly
that there is no clear-cut boundary between prescientific every
day experience set down in ordinary language, and the theoreti
cal constructions of modern science. Science is a continuation
of the same shorthand, symbolic systematizing of experience
that people have pursued spontaneously throughout history.

Cognition is a specific p art of human practical activity, an
organic response or a process of adaptation to the environ
ment, and there is no reason to ascribe transcendental mean
ing to it. Thus, like Avenarius, Mach sought to do away with
metaphysical notions by constructing a leading epistemological
category ( experience) of a kind that does not inquire into the
"existential" status of experienced reality. He is also related
to Avenarius by his biological and methodological conception
of the principle of economy.
If we reflect-having discarded all metaphysical assumptions
-on the real content of what is given in cognition, we find,
according to Mach, certain complexes of qualities that may
be called "elements. " The question whether these elements are
"in themselves" physical or psychical is meaningless. Physical
ity or psychicality is not a characteristic of any component of
experience, but a specific mode of the cognitive organization.
Neutral "in themselves, " these elements ( color, sound, space,
time-in short, all the traditional primary and secondary quali
ties ) are called "things" to the extent that we link them to
gether in more or less permanent combinations and study the
laws of their simultaneous occurrence, as natural science does.
The same elements are called "impressions" to the extent that
we refer them to the body that perceives them. Either inter
pretation is secondary in relation to the presence of the ele
ments in experience, and the rule governing interpretation is
precisely the principle of economy, this unconsciously pur
posive regulator of the organism's self-preserving activities.
Scientific laws and theories do not add anything to experi
ence not contained in it in the first place ; their role consists in
selection and symbolization; they do not have to reproduce
an absolute world, but to select from it the biologically im
portant components and order them, so as to enable us to
predict them and to forestall their dangerous effects or to ex
ploit their biologically useful qualities. Indispensable in this
ordering activity is the discovery and recording of certain
recurrent combinations of elements we call "things . " When we
mentally separate a relatively permanent body from its chang-
ing environment, we are merely trying to fix in our memories
the differences the various elements display on the score of
their variability or invariability-a characteristic of the utmost
practical importance. One incidental effect of this activity is
the illusion that once we have subtracted all the qualities there
remains some indefinite substratum or "thing in itself. " In
reality, from a purely empirical viewpoint, bodies are mental
symbols that stand for more or less permanent combinations
of elements. This also applies to such phenomena as space,
time, and causality. Apart from observations concerning the
permanence of certain connections, the metaphysical concept
of cause is of no use to us. Time is an independent variable
which by its values characterizes certain relations between
phenomena and, no more than causality, requires that we
ascribe to it any ontological reality. Similarly, Mach thought
-this inspired a violent attack by Planck-that atoms and
other particles have only symbolic reality. He treated the
concept of individuality or self in the same way : individuality
is a symbol around which we group certain specific qualities,
and to this extent it is instrumentally useful.
There is no such thing as a knowledge telling us something
about the world that does not originate in experience and
have an experiential content. Mach regarded it especially im
portant that we should grasp this. Geometry, insofar as it
applies to experience, is an experimental science in the same
sense as mechanics : it describes spatial relations between
things in a shortened, hence idealized form. Non-experimental
mathematical propositions have a tautological character-they
are not synthetic a priori judgments-and they do not refer to
things, but formulate rules of reasoning. All our statements
about the world, both records of individual observations and
so-called principles, laws, theories-all are subject to the con
trol of experience, and thanks to the possibility of such con
trol, perform the vital functions assigned them by the human
species. Science is a specifically human mode of biological
behavior, a means of effective communication that is not pro
vided by experience alone, although the real content of knowl
edge never goes beyond experience.
Mach acknowledges having been influenced by Darwin's

work, which was published just as he was ending his uni
versity studies. It persuaded him to view the evolution of
science as a particular case in the over-all biological process
of adaptation. "Expressed in the most concise terms, the task
of scientific cognition consists in adapting thoughts to facts
and thoughts to one another. Every beneficial biological proc
ess furthers self-preservation, and hence is a process of adap
tation. . . • For the physical, biological behavior of Jiving
beings is co-determined, and supplemented, by the inner
process of cognition : thinkin g . "
This interpretation also gets r i d of the distinction between
scientific "description" and scientific "explanation." Once we
have described a given system as exhaustively and economi
cally as possible, there is nothing left to be "explained . " More
over, according to Mach, the distinction is itself harmful and
results in waste of scientific energies, for it leads to construct
ing unnecessary hypotheses devoid of empirical meaning,
and encourages the ridiculous pretension that a universally
and eternally valid science can be created.
Thus, apart from a short period when he subscribed to
Kant's point of view and sympathized with Berkeley, as he
tells us himself, M ach arrived at "a natural view of the world,
without speculative metaphysical ingredients. The dislike of
metaphysics implanted in me by Kant, and the analyses car
ried out by Herbart and Fechner led me to a point of view
close to Hume's. "
According to Mach, this n atural view of the world con
tains no difficulties and entails no paradoxical consequences.
It p ermits and even necessitates recognizing a world of ex
p erience common to all men, and thus a physical experience
distinct from the psychical world accessible only to each hu
man individual separately. Nor is there any reason not to
recognize the existence of other minds ; we are forced to do
so by irrefutable analogies between other individuals' behav
ior and our own. "The material world rests upon established
connections between elements, and relations between hu-
P OSITIVISM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY 1 19
man impressions are o nly a p art icular instance of such
connections."
This view fully satisfies the r equirements of its own leading
rule, namely, the principle of economy. Once the met aphysi
cal and ep istem ological que stions that vitiate not only " pure
p h iloso phy " but also physics have been weeded out, man
kind's intellectual energies will be concentrated on their real
needs, which it is science's task to satisfy.
Science is not a collection of individual facts , gathered and
added to in view of makin g "gener alizations. " Science nor
mally pro gresses through the d is covery of facts that of t hem
selves d isclo se the law gov ern i ng them through direct experi
ment. One case of this is the way color varies with the angl e
of refraction o f light. Elementary activities of the s ame type
as are fou nd in science make their appearance at an animal
level : animals' conditioned reflexes are rud im entary concepts,
the l atter term being taken in an op eratio n al, not a philo
sophic sense. Science op er ate s with a similar store of "pre
concept ion s , " i.e., ready-made r e l atio nship s that have been
dis covere d exp eri mental ly a n d reco rded in the conceptu al sys
tem . The ope ration al values of the i nd ividual components of
this system are subject to constant revision in order to deter
mine to what extent our expectations based on this system
are or are not fulfilled. In th i s respect, there is no difference
between o rd inary exp erien ce accessible to any being en dowed
with a nervous system an d s c i en ti fi c ally organ ized experiment.
There is no break in continuity between sc ience and spon
tan eo us eve ryday exp eri ence, nor even between science and
modes of behavior characteristic of the entire animal world.
Progress here consists p ri m a rily in greater differentiatin g abi l
ity and greater richness in the qualities observed in the world,
some of wh ich are useful , others h armful. Any as su m p tion
that the hu man concep tu al system contain s so m ething more
than the sense exp eri ences from which it d eriv es is compl etely
unfounded : it is merely more effectively organized. Human
speech is the earliest basic mode of organizin g experience, for
it en abl e s us to ha nd down in divi du al achievements to pos
terity and fix them in the collective memory. Science is a
continuation of the process that produced language, by means

of which the human species , in contradistinction to the lower
species, accumulates and preserves empirically acquired
knowledge.
Like most positivists, Mach did not look upon himself as
either a philosopher or a positivist. If, in addition to his ex
perimental research in physics and the physiology of the
senses ( his researches are regarded as especially valuable in
the fields of optics, acoustics, wave theory, and the theory of
auditory and kinesthetic impressions ) , he concerned himself
with historical questions, this was because he hoped to dis
cover the biological sense of scientific pursuits and to rid him
self of "metaphysical ghosts. " At a time when official German
philosophy was almost exclusively dominated by different ver
sions of Kantianism, Mach expected his doctrine to perform
primarily destructive tasks.
This is why, although according to Mach meaningful state
ments can be made only within the limits set by scientific
experience, theory also performs ( and was intended by him
to perform ) the functions of a philosophical view of the
world. In a treatise devoted to Mach's doctrine, Richard von
Mises says that it marked the second stage in "emancipa
tion as well as humanization" ( Hume marked the first ) , for
it restored purely practical meaning to human knowledge, did
away with the alleged authority of a transcendental world of
truth, and made man the actual creator of the intellectual
system that apprehends his natural environment. It was a doc
trine that ruthlessly weeded out all mythical and religious
representations from the world picture. It also shook up a
certain "melancholy of disbelief" popular at the time, thanks
to the writings of Du Bois-Reymond, among others. Accord
ing to them the "essence" of space, time, consciousness, cau
s ality, also the connection between sensory impressions and
states of matter, will be forever inaccessible to man. In Mach's
view, this ignorabimus derives solely from falsely formulated
questions ; once the primacy of experience has been recog
nized, it will be clear that concepts such as material parti
cles, the "self, " and causality have purely experimental mean-
POSITMSM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY 121
ing, an d that there i s n o reason t o look fo r some deeper

reality underlying our conceptual constructs.
Mach and his adherents deny that the reduction of human
personality or "self" to a symbolic abstraction created solely
for practical purposes entails dangerous moral consequences
( "There is no saving the 'I,' " Mach wrote) by ignoring the
ethical value of individual life. On the contrary, they argued,
this doctrine prevents us from overestimating our own "self"
and despising others, furthers a conception of mankind as
one co-operating, interdependent whole, ends the idle diver
sion of human energies from the struggle for self-preservation,
and does away with intellectual fetishism.
7. A rguments against empiriocriticism. Mach's theories
aroused a great deal of criticism from different quarters.
Apart from the antinomy implied when the principle of econ
omy is regarded as the main rule of cognition-the antinomy
already referred to-critics often pointed out that Mach's as
sumption of primary "elements" is no less arbitrary than the
contrary assumption. Mach's seemingly primary components
may be regarded as results of analysis, just as well as records
of spontaneous everyday perceptions that require no further
assumptions. Husserl attached particular importance to the
skeptical consequences of empiriocriticism : renunciation of
"truth" in the sense this term has had throughout the history
of European culture, reduction of knowledge to a specific
type of biological reaction. These consequences, which Hus
serl regarded as disastrous because they were destructive of
all the values 'upon which this culture is based (the presence
in cognitive contents of a "truth" independent of man, the
absoluteness of the fundamental rules of moral evaluation ) ,
are arrived at by unsound reasoning. For empiriocriticists
analyze the cognitive process with the help of experimental
psychology and empirical studies of history, and then ascribe
"objective" meaning to their results in order to prove that no
knowledge can pretend to any objective meaning so under

stood. The empiriocriticists' assumption that they make no
philosophical presuppositions is therefore erroneous, and a
theory of knowledge based on uncritical acceptance of the
results of empirical knowledge cannot avoid the vicious circle.

Only a provisional renunciation of the results of empiricism
and of the findings of particular fields of knowledge will en
able Us to discover the ultimate sources from which derive
science's claims to "truth. " Empirical methods alone can
never lead to a theory of knowledge.
Another disquieting consequence of empiriocriticism was
its denial of real being to personality. Empiriocritical sub
jectivism broke up the subject into elements of just the same
kind as things are constructed out of, while at the same time
it discarded the question of how the "external " qualities of
things are correlated with the contents of perception. This was
one of the reasons why B ergson opposed this kind of posi
tivism.
To be sure, the radical monism toward which empiriocriti
cist thought tended did not consist in reducing the world to
a p art of the psychological subject; rather, the subject was
what it did away with. However, the doctrine owed its co
herence to a peculiar way of homogenizing the world, b ased
on a conception of experience that involved considerably
greater difficulties than idealism. The assumption of absolutely
primary elements of experience, neutral in relation to the
dichotomy between "psychicality" and "physicality" seemed
to many critics arbitrary and unprovable, and not a bit Jess
obscure for being referred to as "primary. " Many critics
thought that the dichotomy " transcendent/immanent" could
not be avoided, and hence interpreted Mach and Avenarius
as partisans of immanence-an interpretation Avenarius
strongly protested. At bottom the empiriocriticists wanted to
do away with the traditional epistemological problem, which,
in their view, was falsely formulated, and to go back to the
cognitive situ atio n they regarded as "natural. " However, in
order to achieve their aim, they resorted to arguments that
presupposed a far from self-evident category of experience.
According to their critics, an "experience" reduced to atom
like constituent parts is even more abstract a construction
than " bodies," "space," and "causes" were to Mach. As is
custom ary with attempts to discover the ultimate, indivisible,
POSITIVISM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY 123
"given" elements of knowledge, the final result was uncon

vincing, since its methods involved the use of non-definitive
or unanalyzed dat a of experience.
In connection with the question whether empiriocriticism
should be interpreted in psychological or immanentist terms,
we must take cognizance of the criticisms Lenin voiced in
his Materialism and Empiriocriticism, published in 1 909. This
book is a violent attack on the Russian adherents of this phi
losophy and their Western sources. Especially after the failure
of the 1 905 revolution, empiriocriticism enjoyed considerable
popularity among the Leftist intelligentsia in Russia, particu
larly among the Social Democrats . A number of members of
the party's Bolshevik wing were drawn to the doctrine, the
most prominent of these being A. A. Bogdanov. According to
its Russian adherents, empiriocriticism was perfectly consist
ent with the revolutionary spirit of Social Democracy and
its p olitical radicalism, for it stripped our view of the world
of mythical ideas, prescienti fi c and pseudoscientific notions,
and so paved the way for a strictly scientific view of the
world, purged of the idle verbalism of old metaphysical sys
tems. Moreover, as we may judge from Valentinov's memoirs
( he was an active member of the Russian empiriocriticist
movement) , the very subjectivism of this philosophy attracted
the revolutionaries, who imagined it to be a sort of philosophi
cal counterpart to their political doctrine of social upheaval
planned and brought about by the party. Plekhanov's writings
at the time stressed the fact that a revolution cannot be suc
cessful unless the economic and historical conditions are ripe
for it ( the proletariat cannot seize power before capitalism
has reached a certain stage of development ) . Together with
Trotsky, he accused Lenin of "Blanquism, " belief in an ar
bitrary, "conspiratorial" attempt to speed up social develop
ment. At the time, he saw a connection between the Bolshe
viks' political position and the popularity of this philosophy
among them. The Rus s ian followers of Mach were unaware
of any incompatibility between their own posi tion and Marx
ism ; they pointed to the Theses on Feuerbach, which they
interpreted in a subjectivist spirit .
Lenin, however, launched a sharp attack on empiriocriti

cism, citing the philosophy expounded in such writings of
Engels as were then known. His work is a defense of the
materialist position, and in it he regarded empiriocriticism as
a subterfuge in which lurks a content identical with Berke
leyan idealism. According to him, a philosophy that assumes
experience to be neutral in relation to the dichotomy between
physicality and psychicality is untenable; Mach, Avenarius,
and related thinkers merely reduce the experienced world to
the subject's psychical contents or treat it as a necessary cor
relate to consciousness. This position implies that all reality
is a subjective creation, and hence cannot avoid falling into
solipsism; among other things, it must renounce the concept
of truth in the sense of conformity between cognitive con
tents and a physical world independent of them. Lenin op
posed to this doctrine a materialist and realist doctrine that
he called "the theory of reflection." According to this theory,
what is given in experience is a world of bodies independent
of our perception of them, which is copied by the mind in
the cognitive process. Our impressions are photographs of
physical objects, so to speak, which themselves constitute the
only existing reality. Consequently "truth" denotes exact con
formity of cognitive contents with a world independent of
man, and this applies equally to propositions, impressions, and
concepts-the latter, too, are "reflections" of the real world.
The process of cognition is never completed, and hence the
truth of our knowledge is always relative. But this relativity
of truth does not imply that a statement is true only in ref
erence to a given stage of knowledge, to a given historical
formation, let alone to a given human individual. It means
only that scientific statements are never so exact as to rule out
the possibility of being rectified. Moreover, experimental con
trol is never absolutely perfect, and hence there is no such
thing as a judgment that has been verified once and for all.
According to Lenin, the results of science provide us with
irrefutable arguments against Mach's idealist view of these
matters. The fact that man is a product of nature and makes
his appearance at a given stage of biological evolution is suf-
ficient evidence that at one time there was a reality without

man; whereas the idealists maintain that the physical world
is a creation of the thinking self, and are thus barred from
accepting reliable scientific information. Furthermore, there
can be no doubt that thinking is a function of the brain, i.e.,
of a material object, and this is again something an empirio
criticist cannot admit, since he treats physical objects as prod
ucts of thinking.
Lenin agrees that there is no difference between the phe
nomenon and the Kantian thing-in-itself, but according to
him this does not imply that the phenomenal world under
stood as a complex of impressions is the only accessible one;
it implies only that there is nothing absolutely unknowable.
There is a difference between something that is known and
something yet unknown; nor can it be doubted that some of
reality remains to be known. Our cognitions do not form a
wall behind which we can only guess at the presence of
things, but are reflections of real things in human heads.
All these assertions can be justified by appeal to the criterion
of practice, which is the most effective means for testing the
truth or falsity of our ideas. Whenever an action carried out
on the basis of given information turns out to be successful,
the information is sufficiently confirmed; failure points to an
error in our information. The last-mentioned criterion is par
ticularly important in social practice : whether an analysis of
a given social situation is correct is tested by the effectiveness
of political action carried out on the basis of it. What is meant
here is not that the usefulness of a given belief makes it true,
but that a judgment that reflects a factual state of affairs can
be verified by practical actions affecting this state of affairs,
namely, by ascertaining whether these actions had the results
expected.
Lenin also uncompromisingly criticized his adversaries for
a ccepting empiriocritical interpretations of the most impor
tant philosophic categories. Among other things, he defended
the concept of causality on the grounds that it describes ac
tual necessary connections between events, and that it cannot
be reduced to a purely empirical functional relation. He also
defended Engels' view of the cognitive functions of time and

space : though they do exist independently of bodies, they are
not subjective creations or a priori forms, as Kant maintained,
but results of empirical operations that organize phenomen a
into certain types of relationship ; they are objective properties
of material bodies.
At the same time, Lenin argued that the idealistic position
of his adversaries entails acceptance of religious belief, and
that the real intention of all idealists is the defense of religion,
as shown by Berkeley's example. This was one of the reasons
why Lenin strongly emphasized a rule he called "the party
principle in philosophy." It denotes, first, that in philosophy it
is impossible to avoid choosing between idealism and mate
rialism, and that anyone who thinks philosophically must opt
for one or the other of these two positions. Every attempt to
rise above this fundamental conflict or to avoid it is but an
underhanded defense of idealism. Second, it denotes that phil
osophical doctrines are always tools used by political parties
or institutions, and that, regardless of expressed intentions, a
philosophical commitment is always a political commitment
as well. Since idealism is always invoked to uphold religious
belief, it is inevitably in the service of the exploiting classes,
while materialism, at least in our time, is the philosophy of
the militant proletariat. As against certain Russian empirio
criticists, Lenin denied that a political position aiming pri
marily at efficient organization of party energies in prepara
tion for the revolution ( rather than waiting for economic
conditions to be "right" ) is necessarily associated with a sub
jectivist philosophy.
Lenin's book played an important p art in the subsequent
history of Marxism, particularly after Stalin summed up its
main ideas in a popular article titled "On Dialectical and His
torical Materialism, " which for several years was obligatory
reading in all Soviet schools.
When we look back over the leading empiriocritical ideas,

we are especially struck by the following features : ( 1 ) the
philosophical destruction of the subject; ( 2 ) the biological
POSITMSM AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY 1 27
and practical conception of cognitive functions, reduction of

intellectual behavior to purely organic needs, and renuncia
tion of "truth" in the transcendental sense; ( 3 ) desire to get
back to the most primitive concrete datum, to a "natural"
view of the world not mediated by metaphysical fictions. The
last-mentioned point is characteristic of various tendencies
that manifested themselves in European philosophy at the
turn of the century. We find this same desire in Husserl, also
in Bergson, although the latter's way of structuring and articu
lating it is very different from the former's. According to
Husserl, what somehow cuts off human consciousness from
direct contact with things is nothing else but pragmatic, tech
nologically oriented knowledge, that is, a knowledge organ
ized for utilitarian purposes rather than for understanding
the world, grasping the correspondence between our classi
fications and the essence of things. Similarly, according to
Bergson, practical intelligence active in everyday life and in
empirical science re-creates the world according to the prac
tical needs of the species and so, by its very nature, cannot
go beyond this attitude; it employs ready-made instruments
to break up the world into artificial but convenient abstract
fictions, taking only a selection of phenomena into account
and ignoring the rest, and thus inevitably fails to grasp change
and living time (la duree ) . In order to rediscover the con
crete, we have to overcome this practical, analytic view and
communicate directly with the object. In this way, as subjects,
we identify ourselves with the object, and are thereby enabled
to assimilate its spontaneous but inexpressible movement.
However, we repeat, in all these attempts to get back to a
"natural" view of the world, the very desire to do so makes
impossible any definitive, lasting construction of the individ
ual human subject. In the case of Husserl, this is because his
empirical ego has to b e included in the transcendental act of
reduction, and the cognitive acts within the reduced area,
though we can always distinguish the act of cognition from
its content, no longer presuppose the existence of real per
sonality, only the transcendental ego that is no more than a
storehouse of purified thought contents. In the case of Berg-
son, the empirical ego is seemingly secured thanks to the dis

tinction between the deep self and the purely cerebral func
tions, yet is it dissolved the moment it becomes clear that it is
always a kind of participation in the universal "psychicality"
of the world. On closer scrutiny, the boundaries of individu
ality become just as blurred as are the individual boundaries
of physically interacting things. If the physical object turns
out, when analyzed more carefully, to be a construct cut out
from the infinite concrete universe, we must infer that the
psychical subject, too, can in the last analysis be reconstructed
only by cognitive operations that particularize the world, since
the hidden evolutional cosmic impulse constitutes an indivisi
ble whole, just as does the universe of bodies within the sci
entist's field of vision.
All these doctrines, moreover, share the conviction that the
world organized by science-regardless of just how the de
limiting boundaries are drawn up-is the result of creative
human energy, and hence that man is in a way responsibl e
for the "thing" his scientific thought constructs. This con
viction was to become the fundamental feature of our own
century's thought and has exerted a long-lasting influence in
the most various quarters.
These two factors-return to a "natural" attitude, and rec
ognition of it as an organizing activity-justify treating this
whole period of philosophy as a relatively homogeneous de
velopment with points of contact in literary trends and world
outlooks over the same years. Though empiriocriticism repro
duces the main positivist ideas, often more radically, the sense
it gave them was adapted to the distinctive style of the age.
CHAPTER SIX
Conventionalism-Destruction of the
Concept of Fact
1. The leading idea of conventionalism. What is called con

ventionalism is not a distinct " school" of thought. The term
denotes a view of scientific method and the truth of scientific
(primarily physical) propositions. It shows affinities with em
piriocriticism, but certain French physicists and mathemati
cians arrived at it independently. (According to some writers,
Henri Poincare is erroneously regarded in France as the cre
ator of "scientific philosophy" ; they point out that Mach for
mulated his ideas before Poincare, and did so more effectively
and consistently. ) The conventionalist viewpoint also has its
counterparts in the social sciences, but historically the term is
reserved for the methodology of natural science. Conven
tionalism is characterized by the problems it deals with rather
than by a specific philosophical doctrine.
The fundamental idea of conventionalism may be stated as
follows : Certain scientific propositions, erroneously taken for
descriptions of the world based on the recording and gen
eralization of experiments, are in fact artificial creations, and
we regard them as true not because we are compelled to do
so for empirical reasons, but because they are convenient, use
ful, or even because they have aesthetic appeal. Convention
alists agree with empiricists concerning the origin of knowl
edge, but reject their empirical criterion of truth. Or, to put
the same point somewhat more accurately, the data of ex
perience always leave scope for more than one explanatory
hypothesis, and which one is to be chosen cannot be deter-
mined by experience. Rival hypotheses accounting for a given

aggregate of facts may be equally sound from a logical point
of view, and hence our actual choices are accounted for by
non-empirical circumstances.
In this sense our image of the world has a conventional
character. Some have pointed out that it is conventional in
still another sense, namely, most of the propositions of phys
ics are analytic, and so give us a sort of verbal legislation in
the guise of descriptions of observed facts. Verbal conven
tion plays quite a considerable part in the scientific view of
the world, whether out of aesthetic considerations or con
siderations of economy : the conception of science as de
scriptive "generalization" from "brute" facts, as a one-way
movement of thought from "facts" to "laws" is naive and
superficial.
The leading names of French conventionalism include the
famous mathematician and theoretical physicist Henri Poin
care ( 1 854-1 9 1 2 ) , the eminent historian of science Pierre
Duhem ( 1 8 6 1 - 1 9 1 6 ) , and the philosopher and religious
writer Edouard Le Roy ( 1 870-1 954 ) . Le Roy is also known
as a popularizer of Bergson's philosophy and as an active
member of the modernist movement in French Catholic
thought. Similarly radical conventionalist ideas were advanced
a little later by the German methodologist Hugo Dingler
( 1 8 8 1-1954) and the prominent Polish philosopher Kazimierz
Ajdukiewicz ( 1 890-1963 ) .
The French conventionalists were less concerned with for
mulating a scientistic philosophy than with problems p osed
by the advance of physics, which involved the meaning of
physical propositions-problems Einstein solved with his the
ory of relativity. (Einstein said that he owed the key concep
tion in his special theory of relativity to Ernst Mach . ) Their
aim was not primarily to do away with metaphysics, but to
define the epistemological boundary separating it from sci
ence. The} did this by ascribing a conventional meaning to
scientific propositions. Although this doctrine is not, strictly
speaking, a variety of positivism, it cannot be omitted from
CONVENTIONALISM 131
our survey because it strongly influenced the subsequent de

velopment of positivism.
2. The impossibility of proving or disproving hypotheses.
An important point in conventionalist theories is their criti
cism of the concept of "fact" as a possible confirmation of a
"scientific law." The conventionalists deny that there is any
such thing as "pure experience," i.e., facts that do not involve
theoretical presuppositions, but are recorded directly " from
nature, " so to speak. The validity of certain scientific laws is
presupposed in the very functioning of scientific instruments
and in the way we read them. Duhem and Le Roy illustrate
this with numerous examples. For instance, the law of the re
flection of light is studied with the help of flat mirrors, the
construction of which presupposes the validity of the law.
When we read a thermometer we are assuming in advance
that bodies expand uniformly under the action of heat, for
this assumption is built into the thermometer; yet to ascer
tain the uniformity of thermic expansion we Use a thermom
eter. When we look at an object through a magnifying lens,
we see only certain portions of it, disregarding the others
(e.g. , the fringes of colored bands caused by diffraction ) , an d
this is t o presuppose the validity of certain laws o f optics. Even
the simplest device implies the existence of certain laws so
that any "fact" ascertained with its help cannot be consid
ered as " given" apart from those laws. Thus the scientific
principle of verification does not just work from laws to facts,
but also the other way round : there are no "original facts, ''
"fundamental propositions, " or similar constructs, for every
description of a fact involves one or another prior theoretical
assumption.
It follows from the foregoing that the experimentu»i crucis
is impossible in science, that is, no experimental situation is
possible which can convincingly single out one hypothesis as
superior to another. For to disprove any hypothesis we must
use instruments which always presuppose one or more laws,
and these laws are just as much involved in the disproving
procedure as the hypothesis in question. Consequently we do
not know which of the logically possible statements we have
disproved-those actually tested or those p resupposed in the

construction of the instruments used. Thus there is no such
thing as induction in the traditional sense. The choices made
in such cases are not based on experience but determined by
considerations of coherence, convenience, etc. The theory of
physics is a purely man-made construction ; when we disprove
a hypothesis we are merely choosing one out of a number of
possible assertions, the one we regard, purely by convention,
as affected by the negative result of the experiment.
Since hypotheses are verified by other hypotheses, not by
appeal to the original brute facts, there always exists a num
ber of possible and mutually contradictory theoretical sys
tems, any one of which accounts as well as another for the
totality of experience. One example of such a possibility
it was not adduced by a conventionalist-is the hypothesis
that all of us live on the interior surface of a sphere, and
that the heavenly bodies are at its center; this theory allegedly
accounts for all known observations once we assume a dif
ferent curvature of light beams.
According to Le Roy, we can distinguish brute facts from
scientific facts, but only in the sense that the former or rather
the descriptions of them merely supply a record of purely
subjective perception, are introspective, and devoid of scien
tific value. A scientific fact is a convention, a shorthand rec
ord of a process observed, making use of non-empirical cate
gories. For instance, we say, "the current runs through the
wire. " But sensory experience discloses no flowing of the cur
rent. All that we actually observe are such phenomena as
shifts of the galvanometer needle, rising temperature in the
wire, flashing bulbs, magnetization of metals. We describe all
these phenomena by the term "current, " i.e., reduce them to
a single, economical, descriptive form. The expression "the
current runs" is no more than a summing up of the given
phenomena, a convenient lingu.istic tool, not the description
of an actual process. ( It must be noted that these arguments
date from a period when the reality of the atom had been put
in question. )
CONVENTIONALISM 133
Duhem , meanwhile, drew a d istin cti on between practical

facts -fin dings based on measurements-and theoretical facts·,
i.e., the recording of s u c h fi nd in gs for scientific purposes.
Now, a thermometer , for example, like other m e a surin g in
struments, is accurate only within certain l im its . A given tem
perature always admits of an infinite number of approxima
tions ; in other words, one and the same practical fact c an be
recorded by an infinite number of formulas, wh i ch we choose
amo ng "conventionally. " Imp ro vements in our instruments
of measurement do no t change this situation, for a possibl e
m argin of error is never overc o me only lessened. Even within
,
a range of me asurement as tiny as we may succeed in making
it, an infinity of interpret ation s remains possible.

Le Roy advanced an extreme v iew of the conventi o n ality
of scientific l aws. Acc ordi n g to him, the majority of these
laws are definitions. The l aw g o verning the free fall of bodies
is an an al ytic propos iti on : it merely defines the free fall . If
we happen ed to observe a body falling at a different rate of
acceleration than this law predicts, we would not change the
law but say that what we observed was not a free fall. Simi
larly we do not really test the proposition that the diagon al s
of any square intersect at right angles. We m e rely do not call
"squares" those fi gure s in w hi ch the di a go n als do not intersect
at right angles. The law of the free fall merely d efi ne s the
t erm "free fall. " In the same way, the law of the conserva
tion of mass is o ne definition of a closed system. Ag ain the ,
proposition, "Phosphorus melts at the temperature C 44 ° "-a

famous example-is not the account of any observation, but
a de finit ion or p arti a l definition of p h os ph o ru s . A body simi
lar to pho spho rus in other re sp ec ts , but which melted at a

different temperature, we would n ot c al l "ph o s ph o ru s " The
.
alleged l aws of science, then , are definitions, fo r they ch a r

acterize certain states of a thing in such a way that th e ch arac
terization is made a distinctive feature of that state. Experi
ment can neith er prove nor d i s prov e these propo s i ti on s , for
we can always dismiss an experiment dis provi n g them by s ay
ing that the o bj ect investigated d o es not fall under the con
ventionally acc epted designation.
1 34 THE ALIBNATION OF REASON
According to Poincare, the part played by conventions in

science is also apparent from the circumstance that a refute d
hypothesis can always be "saved" by supplying further hy
potheses to account for the test that disproved the former as
due to factors that modified the results expected. For instance,
there are three methods for calculating the mass of Jupiter
the first is based on the motions of Jupiter's satellites, the
second on disturbances observed in the motions of large plan
ets, the third on disturbances in the motions of planetoids.
Each method gives a somewhat different result. We could con
clude that there are different coefficients of gravitation ; such
a "solution " is logically admissible but complicated and labori
ous . For this reason we assume the presence of slight errors
in our measurements. Our motive for this assumption is our
preference for simplicity.
Every law that establishes a functional dependency in
volves a fictitious element, Poincare goes on to say ( Dingler
also raised this point) . When such a function is graphed, it
appears as a certain number of points in a system of coordi
nates : we connect these points by a curve, assuming that it
is a regular curve (though we h ave no real empirical justifi
cation for this) rather than a zigzag, that it is continuous
rather than discontinuous, and that the points that do not
fall into it are to be accounted for by errors in measurement,
which we proceed to rectify on the graph so as to obtain the
desired result. To legitimate such a graph, we should have
to carry out an infinite number of experiments, which is im
possible, and so we arrive at the law by applying the criteria
of simplicity, regularity, and aesthetic order.
Since the ultimate empirical sense of our hypotheses cannot
go beyond the actual experimental data, it makes no differ
ence, whether from a logical or a physical point of view,
which among the possible hypotheses accounting for a given
class of facts we are to single out as the correct one. The
Ptolemaic theory describes the motions of the planetary sys
tem just as correctly as the Copernican, but the latter i s pref
erable because of its simplicity, and because it accounts for
a number of facts for which the former does not account
CONVENTIONALISM 135
(e.g., the movements of a pendulum, the apparent movements

of the stars, the trade winds, the flattened shape of the earth ) .
That is, the Ptolemaic theory requires a greater number of
hypotheses than the Copernican. Physical experience alone
by no means obliges us to prefer Copernicus to Ptolemy. In
other words, different hypotheses are, in a way, different lan
guages for describing the same facts-our choice between
them purely a matter of convenience. Similarly, we can re
cord the same temperature on the Fahrenheit or on the Cel
sius scale; the numerical values differ, but the meaning of
the recording is identical. The same is true of any given col
lection of facts recorded by different and incompatible the
ories, because their empirical meaning comes down to the
same facts.
In his reflections on geometry, Poincare devoted a great
deal of attention to the structure of space, stressing the purely
conventional character of the features we usually ascribe to
it. There is no reason, of course, to look upon space as an
entity independent of physical relations between bodies. Nor
is space a characteristic of bodies in the sense we imagine ;
and, in spite of Kant's transcendental aesthetics, it is not an
a priori form present in man's cognitive system before he
experiences anything whatever. The concept of space has an
empirical origin; but the homogeneous three-dimensional
space of geometry is a result of simplifying conventions. To
begin with, different senses perceive different kinds of space,
none of which coincides with geometric space. Visual space
is two-dimensional (the third dimension originates in muscu
lar impressions connected with the accommodation mecha
nism of the crystalline Jens ) and is not homogeneous for
differen t areas of the retina receive different impressions. Nor
is the space originating in kinesthetic impressions homogene
ous, for different muscular efforts are required to reach ob
jects situated at different distances from our bodies. Geometric
space i s a convention. We imagine that it has three dimensions
because our organ of sight is built in such a way that the
movements of accommodation effected by the lens and the
convergent movements of the eyeballs are in accord, but it
is possible to make lenses that obliterate this accord, and then

space has four dimensions, for each point of the previous
space will itself constitute a continuum. However, since it is
hard to assume that suitable optical glasses increase the num
ber of dimensions in "objective" space, we must admit that
it is convenient for us to ascribe three dimensions to space.
"Convenient" here amounts to "biologically 'useful," for be
lief in the existence of three-dimensional space independently
of our experiences originates in associations between the ob
ject and bodily motions, by means of which we try to reach
out for objects or to ward off blows. The localization of things
in space is effected by reference to muscular impressions pro
duced when we reach out for things; out of the sm all space
accessible to our body we construct the great space by extra
polation or by generalizing from our own spatial environment,
imagining a giant who can reach any place at will by extend
ing his arm. The propositions of geometry are purely con
ventional-we have chosen the Euclidean system not because
our store of experiences obliges us to do so, but because it is
the most convenient in our everyday contacts with solid
bodies.
3. Criticisms. We have summed up the most important ar
guments that were advanced in support of the conventionalist
interpretation of scientific theory. Some of the illustrative ex
amples have become obsolete, but the mode of thinking char
acteristic of this tendency can be readily illustrated from more
recent examples.
However, these arguments were subjected to criticism, not
j ust with reference to particular examples, but also to their un
derlying assumptions. Poincare, and later Cornelius, Schlick,
and others rejected the idea that scientific laws have a purely
definitional character. These critics of Le Roy pointed out
that he ignored the real meaning of the terms contained in
such propositions as "phosphorus melts at C 44 ° . " "Phos
phorus" does not stand here for "a body that melts at C 44°,"
but a body with certain known physical and chemical prop
erties. The proposition in question establishes the coincidence
of these properties with the melting point, which cannot be
CONVENTIONALISM 1 37
decreed by any definition. Therefore this proposition is not a
definition, for we assert it only when we know that the ob
ject it refers to is really present.
Ajdukiewicz, who at one time expounded the idea of the
analytic character of physical laws in greater detail, aban
doned it and eventually reached the conclusion that all so
called analytic propositions, though constituting a separate
class, must be based on experiential data.
As we have seen, a number of conventionalist arguments
attempt to show that it is impossible to prove or disprove
scientific hypotheses experimentally. Critics of these argu
ments took the line that they reflect an absolutist approach
alien to actual scientific practice, for they fail to take into
account the relative degree of probability as between rival
hypotheses. To describe the cognitive situation involved solely
in terms of propositions, these critics note, is beside the point
of the scientific task : of course, when you do treat scientific
hypotheses in this fashion, then acceptance or rejection is an
arbitrary choice. What actually makes up the scientist's mind
as between rival hypotheses is consideration of their relative
probability. For instance, it was formerly thought that the
speed of light is incalculably great. The experiments that dis
posed of this hypothesis were carried out with the help of
measuring instruments operating in accordance with the laws
of mechanics. It does not follow, however, that we are free
to opt for the former hypothesis disregardin g the laws of
mechanics, or that our choice between the two hypotheses is
determined by personal preference, aesthetic considerations,
or reasons of simplicity. In reality it is determined by the
greater degree of probability we assign to the laws of mechan
ics that govern, for example, the functioning of clocks. Simi
larly, the old belief in the "spontaneous generation" of life
from decaying flesh was disproved; and our decision to reject
the old belief and to recognize the validity of the l aws of the
diffraction of light, such as entered into the manufacture of
the microscope, is not arbitrary, but determined by the extent
to which the hypotheses or laws in question can be verified.
Needless to say, experimental control is never perfect, and so
scientific hypotheses are never absolutely infallible-this is why

scientists attempt to verify the least probable hypotheses as
well as the most probable ones. There are no absolute proofs,
but there are degrees of proof-and the conventionalists ig
nore them.
The same applies to cases where experiment leads us to
formulate new laws instead of modifying the old ones with
the aid of additional hypotheses. The conventionalists claim
this is done solely out of preference for simplicity, but this is
not so. There may be borderline cases, but in most the cru
cial factor is the degree of comparative probability as between
the rival formulations. "Simplicity" is a dubious basis for
judgment: wouldn't the simplest hypothesis of all be to reduce
all phenomena to a single cause, the will of God, for exam
ple? Of course, the conventionalists do not go this far, but
their concept of simplicity is vague. Scrutinized closely with
reference to actual choices made by scientists between one
hypothesis and another, the real basis for preference turns
out to have been the degree of empirical reliability. Pref
erence for one hypothesis rather than another, on the ground
that it accounts for more facts-whereas extensive modification
of the other would be required before it could do so-is not
j'ust preference for the more economical procedure, it is based
on a conviction that the hypothesis which accounts for the
more facts is the "better" of the two. It enables us to predict
a greater number of events. Here, too, we are not j ust ap
pealing to the principle of economy but to the degree of
verifiability.
The same observations apply to the question whether we
are guided merely by considerations of elegance or economy
when we decide whether a curve describing a given func
tional dependency is continuous, regular, etc. Although no
finite number of experiments could transform our graph into
one continuous line, yet it is possible to verify whether this
can be done around each point of the line. The real question
is : On whom lies the burden of proof-the man who wants
to p rove that the line is discontinuous or the man who insists
that it is continuous? It would seem that in this case, too,
degree of probability decides the issue, not economy of effort
or the elegant simplicity of the equation.
Duhem's observations on the difference between "practi
cal" and "theoretical " facts have not proved immune from
criticism, either. The recording shown by a measuring in
strument, if it is to be scientifically meaningful, must be kept
within the limits of error possible with this instrument, and
so it always falls within some greater or smaller range of
numerical values. Choice among the infinite possibilities
within this range is clearly not a matter of convention; as a
rule it is not made, and would be highly improper. If your
thermometer records temperature with a 1/1 00 ° margin of
error, you cannot add arbitrary figures after the second deci
mal point-such a procedure would be simply nonsensical,
scientifically.
Nor is the theory of the circular character of scientific
proof immune from objections. It justly asserts that no scien
tific law is reducible, at any given stage of knowledge, to ob
servations of particular facts, nor can it be based upon them
exclusively. But this assertion does not justify the conclusion
that science is merely a coherent system of interdependent
laws some of which must be accepted a priori, as it were,
so that others may be logically inferred from them. For there
c an be no doubt-the whole history of science and technology
demonstrates it-that more accurate instruments can be manu
factured with the help of less accurate ones. At a certain level
of technological development there is no way of constructing
complex instruments without using others equally complex ; it
does not follow that it is historically impossible to construct,
say, an atomic reactor starting from an unpolished stone and
a stick, since we know with certainty that this was actually
what happened. To be sure, this achievement took thousands
of years and involved the brains and muscles of millions of
people, and it is hard for us to imagine all that was entailed,
but there is no reason to suppose that certain instruments
must exist ready-made before other instruments can be built.
The conventionalists described a real aspect of the science
of their day, calling attention to the fictions implied in purely
methodological assumptions, according to which science is al

ways created by inferring alleged "inductive laws " from al
leged "facts. " They proved incontrovertibly that there is no
such thing as a "pure fact" in scientific experience, and drew
attention to the existence of logical or linguistic conventions
in theoretical knowledge. Their occasionally extreme formu
lations are not often heard today, but the irremediably relative
character of empirical knowledge has since been generally
recognized. In reaction to the prevailing optimism of nine
teenth-century methodologists and philosophers, the con
ventionalists undermined confidence in the "objective " and
unconditional validity of scientific results, did away with
epistemological absolutes in science, and with so-called "ba
sic" facts and "pure" or "purified" experience. Their broader
conclusions, according to which the empirical sciences are a
wholly artificial creation, seem unconvincing; not so others of
the arguments they put forward, on the basis of which we
think today that there is no scientific knowledge entirely free
of "assumptions," and that it is impossible ever to get to the
bottom of any verification. We, too, doubt that we shall ever
attain ultimate satisfaction in cognition, including scientific
cognition.
The epistemological conclusions the conventionalists drew
from their own reflection have a radically relativistic charac
ter. The propositions of physics, as Duhem puts it, are neither
true nor false, but convenient or inconvenient; a theoretical
system may contain incompatible hypotheses when this is con
venient. To compel physicists to observe strict logical co
herence would be intolerable tyranny. Le Roy maintains that
the sciences do not, in general, aspire to truth but to useful
ness, that they are linguistic intruments serving to schema
tize and systematize experimental facts. In science, "truth,"
if the term may be used at all, is not conformity with the
real, but at best conformity with experience. In other words,
that which effectively meets the standards of experience is
"true," not that which, irrespective of testing procedures, cor
responds to the transcendent world in some peculiar, unintel
ligible fashion. The pragmatic criteria for choosing among
CONVENTIONALISM 141
various logically possible interpretations of experience (use

fulness, convenience) are not merely criteria for determining
whether this or that is true, but instruments thanks to which
given propositions actually become true. Or: meeting stand
ards or criteria is part of the definition of truth (whereas in
the classical definition truth is a certain relation between
propositions and reality, namely, a relation in which we as
sume that something is actually the case regardless of whether
anyone has ascertained that it is the case, whether anyone
knows or does not know that it is. In this classical definition
truth is independent of any application of criteria; the latter
s erve merely to ascertain the truth, they do not constitute
it) .
One peculiarity of the conventionalists is their emphasis
on aesthetic criteria ( among others ) in the development of
science. By contrast with Le Roy, who characterizes science
by its technological applications, Poincare is of the opinion
that science is pursued for the sake of the beauty it can
create.
The epistemological conclusions reached by these two
writers, in conjunction with their criticism of scientific the
ories, are fairly vague. Sometimes they come close to empirio
criticism, sometimes they go beyond it in the direction of
so-called epistemological idealism. Poincare says that objects
external to us are merely groups of impressions that recur a
sufficient number of times, and hence things are fairly con

stant combinations of sensory impressions; the harmony of
the world revealed by scientific theories does not exist apart
from the human mind, and the term "objective, " if it is to
be meaningful at all, stands for "intersubjective." The asser
tion that anything exists apart from thought is meaningless.
Le Roy, in particular, says that matter is "the mind's inability
to change the rhythm of its own duration beyond a certain
limit," i.e., a component of experience that offers resistance
to our will; at the same time, any characterization of matter
that does not refer to human experience, if only negatively,
is out of the question.
4. Conventionalist ideologies. Certain general ideas ad-
vanced by the conventionalists are connected, both logically

and in their own authors' minds, with their critique of scien
tific methodology. Duhem, in particular, says explicitly that
his interpretation of science forestalls all objections to the
Catholic faith and Church. For since natural science makes
no statements about the real world (as his criticism of the
laws of physics shows ) it cannot come into conflict with re
ligious dogmas that are statements about real existents-the
soul ( that it is immortal ) , man (that his will is free ) , the Pope
(that he is infallible ) . For instance, unbelievers say that man's
freedom is incompatible with the principle of conservation
of energy. There is no such incompatibility, Duhem replies :
the principle of conservation of energy is an artificial schema
tization of experiences and permits no inference as to real
objects, and hence by definition cannot conflict with the con
tent of the dogma in question. Consequently, spiritualist
metaphysics retains its cognitive status and its claim to pro
vide reliable information about the world, since scientific laws
have lost that status. In his Physics of a Believer Duhem
discloses the conscious intention behind his analyses of scien
tific method : they are an attempt to neutralize scientific
knowledge in relation to metaphysical and religious contro
versies, to deprive naturalists and materialists of the advan
tages they derive from equating scientific assertions and meta
physical beliefs, and to defend Catholic dogmas.
Le Roy's philosophy reveals one possible way of combin
ing conventionalism with Bergson's metaphysics . His starting
point is the interpretation of science as symbolic description,
exclusively concerned with utility and technological consid
erations, but without cognitive value. The content of science
implies no necessity, and its results are determined at least in
p art by our desire and need for manipulative simplicity ; it
does not disclose to us the truth about the world, though it
m ay prepare us to accept it. This interpretation is completely
consistent with Bergsonianism. If authentic cognition-knowl
edge of "the thing itself" -is possible, it lies in direct con
templation; it cannot be expressed in words , but penetrates
the "inner" core of its object and is related to mystical ex-
peri e nce Whereas Le Roy s purely utilitarian interpretation

. '
of science was in keeping with the spirit of positivism in his

o wn day, this further theme, which bids us look for other than
scientific ways of communicating with the world, clearly goes
beyond any positivist program, although the two are not con
tradictory (unless we assume that scientific experience is the
only valid experience) . Thus Le Roy, without abandoning
his m etho dological views, was an active popularizer of Berg
son's vision of the world.
We observe the same consistency when we survey Le Roy's
activity as a champion of Catholic modernism. In the light
of his critique, the Catholic view of the world can be de
fended, but not the Thomist interpretation of it, not Catholi
cism in terms of any realist metaphysics. According to Le
Roy, no rational arguments can strengthen religious faith, for
it is irrational by definition. Moreover faith needs no such
stre ngthening, for it belongs to a domain of life entirely dif
fer en t from intellectual activity. The practi cally useful but
cognitively barren schematization of the world that science
produces is contrasted with the religious li fe as th e domain
of non-discursive experience, in which the authentic being of
God is revealed to believers in mystical contemplation, al
legories, and figures of speech. Le Roy's mystical, symbolic,
and allegorical faith, which he shared with the m aj ority of
modernist Catholics in his day, was, as is well known, severely
condemned by the Church under Pius X. To the modernists
the irr ationality of their faith was to serve as a means of re
storing harmony between secular and rel igio u s knowledge,
between the State and the Church , between life here below
and eschatological hopes. This harm o ny was to be based on
a cl ear cut distinction between the two spheres : they appear
-
to conflict only because we do not realize how very different

their situations in cognition and in life really are. The mod
ernists were not just defendin g their faith against rationalistic
criticism, but also trying to reform the Ch urch by invalidating
its claim to control over the secular sphere-an autonomous
science, the secular state, and secular education. Their doc
trine was intended to secularize public life while preserving
all the Christian values-these last relegated, however, to the

sphere of personal experience. It was, not without reason that
the term "modernism" was applied to an important ideologi
cal movement and literary current in the same period, which
was not specifically Catholic.
A special variety of conventionalism is represented by Hugo
Dingler's philosophy. Adducing the same or similar arguments
concerning the meaning of physical propositions, he attempted
to formulate a systematic picture of the world based on volun
taristic assumptions. Because the totality of o'ur knowledge is
valid only in relation to freely accepted conventions, and be
cause these conventions are essentially utilitarian, i.e., ad
justed to aims mankind freely sets for itself, our view of the
world ought to be recognized as a creation of the human will.
Furthermore, the original, basic facts of human experience
involve the will. The free will sets itself freely chosen aims,
and our picture of the world consists of assertions regarded
as helpful for achieving those aims. This is a possible though
certainly not a logically compelling interpretation of the con
sequences of conventionalism. Concerned with the place sci
entific thinking occupies in human life, it does not propose
additional, allegedly richer sources of knowledge.
5. Consequences. Conventionalism represents an extension
of positivist philosophy, but in one sense it is also a refutation
of it, the expression of a self-destructive tendency inherent
in it. What is essential from our point of view here is not
any question about the verifiability of scientific hypotheses,
but the meaning of conventionalist criticisms in philosophical
controversy.
Two circumstances deserve to be mentioned when we try
to determine the special part conventionalism has played in
the history of positivism.
First, traditional positivist philosophy assumed that science
is a classification of facts, which adds nothing to their con
tents. In other words, so-called generalization and explana
tory interpretation have no independent cognitive functions,
but serve as symbolic shorthand records of experiments ac
tually carried out. This is, by and large, a nominalist as-
sumption. The unobservable components in our description

of the world belong to the domain of language. We describe
"the given" with the aid of linguistic means pointing to some
thing that is not "given" but is supposed to refer to an un
disclosed nonspatial "internal" strtlcture of the phenomena.
This does not imply, however, that we assert anything about
the non-observable world, that we ascribe it any definite fea
tures : we merely produce for ourselves a more convenient
method of description, which enables us to schematize ex
perience more effectively than if it consisted only of detailed
descriptions of the experiences themselves. The given or that
which is "positive" constitutes the only objective content of
science-the rest is an instrument for communicating and
memorizing it; no difference between "the given" and "the
essence" is discoverable in science.
Now, what conventionalism set out to criticize was this
notion of "the given. " The writers representing this current
saw that to assume that the movement of thought from
primordial fact to scientific schematization is a purely one
way movement is untenable : there is no such thing as an
original or primordial fact, and scientific assertions, laws, and
theories are not reducible to "fact, " hence do not contain
that "pure" elementary content that merely needs to be
dressed up in words so as to be recorded more easily. Hence
-in keeping with the spirit of positivism-the conventionalist
depreciation of scientific values in favor of 'utilitarian or aes
thetic ones. This variety of positivism to some extent weak
ened its assumptions, for it undermined the belief in a simple
relationship between perception and theory (perception
interpretation-verification ) by laying bare the abstract char
acter of the "original" perceptions. This gave rise to the ques
tion : Is the empirical position traditionally associated with
positivist philosophy still tenable in the light of this criticism?
The second point to be considered is this. Ever since Hume,
by reducing metaphysical doctrines and concepts to unpro
ductive, purely verbal creations, positivism has been directed
against both spiritualism and materialism. The methodological
doctrine under discussion seems to be directed exclusively
against scientists or naturalists opposed to spiritualism and

religious faith. We are dealing here with an explicitly stated
intention : to reconstruct the epistemological status of scien
tific activities in such a way as to avoid their possible conflict
with religion and so to preserve the latter's cognitive validity
-the validity of religious faith contrasted with a science whose
values are primarily utilitarian. In marked departure from
the eminently positivist tradition (which includes the empirio
criticists ) , the conventionalists neutralize only science-elimi
nate it as a possible competitor to spiritualist metaphysics. In
theory, conventionalism would be compatible with the oppo
site intention, namely, to neutralize religion as a possible
competitor to science. However, no one seems to have at
tempted this.
Thus the conventionalist methodology is also a develop
ment from positivism in the sense that it culminates in the
defeat of its purpose; for instead of radically cleansing human
cognition of metaphysical incrustations, it merely discourages
the cognitive aspirations of theoretical thinking to the profit of
spiritualistic beliefs.
Needless to say, " additions" to positivist critique that take
the form of religious ideas cannot be held to be organically
connected with the fundamental rules of positivist thought :
on the contrary, they are rather exceptional in the history of
positivism. For all that, they show how positivist criticism may
turn up in unexpected contexts. It turns out that positivism
itself can rehabilitate metaphysics-even an extremely spir
itualistic or mystical metaphysics-without in the least altering
its assumptions, merely supplementing them with further
premises. Bergson's philosophy is regarded as the most radical
attempt to defeat nineteenth-century positivism at the tum of
the century. But Le Roy showed that Bergson's metaphysics
is compatible with a positivist interpretation of science. This
result may be regarded as destructive of positivism, for it
discloses that its anti-metaphysical tendency can be overcome
without violating its rules, and even suggests that, in accord
ance with the same rules , once science has been reduced to
a utilitarian pursuit, we should look elsewhere for the satis-
faction of purely cognitive needs. At the same time, this situ

ation may be interpreted as a victory of positivist thought:
it shows that even its adversaries regard its results as irreversi
ble, i.e., have resigned themselves to the fact that scientific
knowledge cannot have metaphysical pretensions , and that
metaphysic al aspirations must consequently find just ifi cations
other than those scientific knowledge can provide . If so , Berg
son's philosophy is after all the fruit of positivist conquests :
it accepts science in the form given it by positivist c riticism ;
it agrees to doom it to etern al mechanism, i.e., reco gn izes
that its pl ace in human life is purely practical or technological
and seeks to s atis fy its thirst for knowledge by turning to
oth er sou rces .
Whether we decide to recognize the alliance between pos i
tivism and vitalism as a victory or a defeat for positivism,
depends on whether we classify the spiritualist or Ca tholic
positivists under the history of positivis m or under the history
of spiritualist metaphysics. In the former c as e they will figure
on the debit side in the l e d ger of positivism, in the latter
they will rather tend to enhance its credit. The matter is not
enti rely unimportant : its timeliness is readily to be discerned
in contemporary rel ig ious thought-namely, in the works of
those theologians who took cogn izan ce of the positivist cri
tique of metaphysics, and, having accepted the neutrality of
scientific knowledge , try to cha racterize the meaning o f re
lig iou s faith witho ut appe alin g to ra tion al arguments drawn
from s ci en ce. We will attempt below to suggest an interpreta
tion of this state of affairs, in the light of whic h the question
we have just raised-victory or defeat?-will turn out to have
been falsely formulated.
CHAPTBR S l! V B N
Pragmatism and Positivism
What is usually called "pragmatism" is not as a rule regarded

as falling within the history of positivist philosophy, but is
treated rather in relation to the so-called "philosophy of life."
The latter designation, taken in a broad sense, refers not only
to a specific German "school, " but also to other philosophical
schools that treat human culture in biological terms and claim
that it is impossible to evaluate intellectual life and its produc
tions from any other point of view. Pragmatic philosophy, at
least that version of it most readily associated with the name,
can certainly be so characterized, but it is easy to see that it
also has affinities with at least one variety of positivism,
namely the one we dealt with above in discussing Mach and
Ave n ariu s (the affinities are especially close with the latter) •
Here we are solely concerned with this one aspect of prag

matism, and we will not go into the various complications and
ramifications of the doctrine as a whole. Our aim is to lay
b are the peculiar connection that exists between positivist
thought and the so-called philosophy of life, and to show how
ce rtai n positivist postul ates tilt over into their opposites once
they are interpreted in a p articular way. For it is well known
that radical positivists look upon the philosophy of life as
diam etric ally opposed to their rules of thinking and have often
condemned it in the name of scientific philosophy.
P ragmatis m is held to be, no doubt justly, the most origin al
American contribution to the history of philosophy . After a
period marked by the dominance of transcendental idealism
and British versions of Hegelianism, the United States pro
duced a philosophical style that long enjoyed the rep ut ation
of being "typically American , " especially well suited to the

manners, customs, and popular ideals of that part of the world
at a time when its outlook was most optimistic and its spirit
of enterprise most energetic. In its fully developed form,
pragmatism was a reaction against the absolutism of closed
metaphysical systems, but also against scienticist and mate
rialist metaphysics. As a philosophy, its most characteristic
claim was that it is a :flexible instrument in everyday life.
1. Peirce's positivism. The origin of this philosophy, how
ever, hardly foreshadowed its eventual development. The term
"pragmatism" was coined by Charles Sanders Peirce ( 1 83 9-
1 9 1 4 ) , who used it to characterize a scientific method for
distinguishing properly formulated questions from fi ctitious
ones, valuable answers from unrewarding ones, real matters
of controversy from purely verbal ones. In connection with
this program Peirce formulated rules closely allied to the best
traditions of positivism.
Widespread interest in Peirce's philosophic and scientific
contributions is of relatively recent d ate. In his l ifetime Peirce
was not so much unknown as misunderstood, for William
James p resented him to the public as the originator of a doc
trine that was in fact originated by William James himself. In
the end Peirce preferred not to be called a "pragmatist, " on
the grounds that the far more famous but frivolous James
had totally misrepresented his doctrine.
P eirce had an encyclopedic mind and was active in almost
every field of natural science. He stressed the need for rigor
ous method in experiment and was anxious to cure philosophy
of its inveterate vices-verbalism and idle speculation. His
writings are somewhat pedantic and highly impatient of hu
man stupidity; they faithfully reflect his personality, wh ich
app ears to have been a diffic ult one. He had no academic
career, and none of his books was published in his l ifetime;
as for such disciples as he made, he hastened to dissociate
himself from them. From around 1 870 on, he published arti
cles in which he pointed out errors in scientific and lay think
ing alike ; one of these articles, entitled "How to M ake Our
PRAGMATISM AND POSITIVISM 151
Ideas Clear" ( 1 878 ) , has become a classic o f nineteenth

cen tury philosophy.
Peirce's earliest observations, a t least, are simple an d lucid .
He maintained that we m us t not rely on the feeling of self
evidence in cognition, for it is often misleading. O n ce we have
sufficiently familiarized ourselves with any idea, it comes to
seem perfectly clear. There is no idea so obscure that someone
cou l d not come to regard it as self-evident. Furthermore,
authentic knowledge is a sum total of d is curs ive components
expressed in s ymbols a ccessible to all. To believe that the
world or any of the thin gs that make it up is in principle in
expressible in langu age is anti-scientific. The rules of thinking
are fun damentally the same in every sphere of human in qui ry.
The sciences have a certain number of meth odol o gical rules
common to the m all : namely, rules of clarity, criticism, veri
fi abili ty , and objectivity. Philosophy c an achieve s cientific
status and develop empirical methods if only it will r i d itself
of meaningless terms and falsely formulated problems.
What, then, is to be done? The only fun ction of thinking is
to lead us to certain convictions . A c onvicti o n or belief-the
product of thinking-performs two functions. It appeases
doubt and determines a spe cific rule of behavior. Every judg
ment strengthens a p ractical rule, which can be expressed as a
c o n ditio n al sentence, the main clause of which is in the im
p e r ative mood. In oth er words, th e meaning of any statement
we accept lies in how, and whether, we actually carry it out.
To find whether a statement means anything, we must ask how
and wh ether it affects our ac ti on s and expectations; to find out
wh at it means exactly, we need o nly consider what practical
consequences it involv es . Peirce explicitly goes so far as to say
th a t the meaning of a judgment is entirely exh aus te d in its
p r a cti ca l consequences-according t o him, this is what defines
pragmatism.
The main purpose of this theory is to eiiminate p seudo
convictions and pseudo-ideas from intell ectual life, to arrive

at a cri t erion that will enable us to deal with answerable
questions, and only with answerable questions. According to
Peirce, the matter is of the utmost importance : a gre at m a ny
people waste their time on matters unworthy of inquiry or

even-something that smacks of intellectual debauchery-like
to amuse themselves with questions they know to be insoluble.
It is easy to detect deep mystery where verbal confusion alone
creates the problem. How, then, are we to formulate a cri
terion for distinguishing real problems from fictitious ones?
Practical applicability affo rds the best test. If two statements
produce the same practical effect, there is no doubt but that
their meanings are identical; an assertion that changes noth
ing in our expectations of the empirical world means nothing
at all . Discourse that serves only to produce certain emotions
in us, for instance, has nothing to do with thinking, any more
than fresh thinking is involved when we repeat a statement
in a second language. It will readily be seen that the majority
of theological and metaphysical controversies turn out to be
meaningless in the light of this criterion. Most of the asser
tions involved may not deserve to be called false in the posi
tivist sense, but they will turn out to be concatenations of
sound devoid of semantic value. Catholics and Protestants
fancy themselves in disagreement about the meaning of tran
substantiation; but if they will consider the practical conse
quences involved in the assertion that wine is literally blood
and by the assertion that it is blood only figuratively, they
will see at once that neither of these assertions entails any
expectations concerning the occurrence of empirically know
able events. Hence we may safely conclude not that the con
troversy cannot be settled or refer to some profound mystery
of existence, but simply that there is no matter for contro
versy, that the controversy is more apparent than real. The
idea of "force" was and still is taken to stand for a mysterious
reality of which we grasp the effects but not the "essence."
Once we apply our pragmatic criterion of meaning, however,
the mystery turns out to be a verbal fiction. For there is no
difference discernible to physics b etween the statement that
force "is" acceleration and the statement that force " produces"
acceleration. The world has no unobservable properties "hid
den" behind the observable ones, and it is only philosophers'
fondness for systems that makes them less concerned with
how things are in re al ity than with discovering which asser

tions are or are not co mp atib le with the con stru cti ons they in
vent. Thinking worthy of the name consists in asking que stions
th at admi t of possibl e answers, answers such as eventually
compel general agreement. A ques tion is real, i.e., is a que stion
properl y speaking, only when an an swer to it can be found
cven though it may t ake a great deal of trouble, and even
though we are not sure that mankind will last long enough to
find it.
Every word denoting a thing or a quality must be subjected
to th e p ragmatic test before it can be legitimately employed .
To know wh at it means we must state the prac tical step s by
which we can verify whether a given o bje ct corresponds to
the word in question . "To s ay that a body is heavy means
simply t hat, in the abs ence of opp osing force, it will fall"
( "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" ) . It does not mean that it
has s o m e property of "heaviness" th at merely "manifests it
self" when it falls. We can ve rify that a diamond is h a rder
than iron s ince we c a n scratch iron with a diamond, but no
such test can be made fo r the assertion that the seraphim are
hig h er in rank than the cherubim ( the latter example is not
Peirce's but i s in keep ing with his intentions) .
Most commentators agree that there is an essenti al differ
ence between Peirce's early writings ( best known today ) and
those d ating from after 1 8 90 i n which he c rit i c ized philo
soph ical de te rminism , came out in favor of freedom, asserted
th at new creations are possible, made use of anthropomorphic
e x pres sio n in describing nature, and abandoned his earlier
nomin alist in terpretati on of scientific l aws.
How ever , the earlier writings are what made his n ame im
portant in the history of pos itivi sm . Peirce was aware that his
leading ideas were in the tradition of Hume. But he thought
th at a clear formulation of the criter ion of me an i n g, appe alin g
to practice as the only possible touchstone, would s u ppl eme nt
the o ld empiricism or s t at e its most important re c o mme n d a
tions wi th greater accuracy. Pra gmat ism as he saw it-and this
circumstance is basic for gra sp i n g the difference between h im
and l ater pragmatists-sought to formulate criteria of m eani n g,
1 54 THE ALIBNATION OF REASON
but d id not renounce the traditional idea of truth. In other

words : Peirce asked that practical effectiveness be treated as
a criterion of truth, and practical testability as the rule by
means of which meaningful statements are to be distinguished
from meaningless ones. He did not assert that to apply this
criterion creates, so to speak, a situation of truth-he did not
define truth as practical effectiveness. Truth was to him a
relation of correspondence between judgments and actual
states of affairs, just as it was to Aristotle : empirical criteria
merely help us discover it. Nor did Peirce think that practical
usefulness determines the meaningfulness or rationality of
cognitive procedures. On the contrary, he emphasized the
purely cognitive functions of science, in the conviction that
its technological applications, though resulting from effective
knowledge, do not set limits to scientific interest and cannot
lead to any prohibitions concerning the objects of thought.
On this score Peirce is an example of the "purely" scientific
mind, concerned with perfecting knowledge, not with its pos
sible imme diate benefits. His writings reflect, along with a
pedantic kind of dryness, the typically positivist tendency to
do away with fictitious differences between the world as we
observe it and its alleged hidden qualities. Reality is not the
" manifestation" of any other, "deeper, " more enigmatic and
so more authentic reality. The world contains no mystery,
merely problems to be solved. Differences between phenome
non and essence, between empirical qualities and the nature
of things are purely verbal. The criterion of practice serves
only to unmask the cognitive futility, the fictitious character
of such differences that, when taken for granted, are destruc
tive of human thinking, of life itself, of the whole universe of
values. In this sense Peirce may also be regarded as a cham
pion of scientism, that is, the doctrine according to which any
question that cannot be settled by the methods of the natural
and deductive sciences is an improper question, and every
statement containing an answer to an improper question is
itself improper or, more precisely, meaningless.
2. The pragmatic rehabilitation of metaphysics. Like Peirce,
William James ( 1 842- 1 9 1 0 ) studied natural science before be
PRAGMATISM AND POSITIVISM 1 55
to ok u p philos ophy. But his i ntellectu al orientation was very

different from Peirce's-something James seems scarcely to
have noticed. To Peirce, natural science was above all a scho o l
of exp erimental rigorousn ess in pursuit o f s ci entifi c truths
inde p endent of ourselv es . To James, it served primarily to
j ustify a biol o gical inte rp ret ation of man; man, acco rding to
him, not only in his phys ic al existence but also in his intel
lectual behavior, in his s cientifi c and lo gical works, is in the
grip of bi olo gical neces sity. His medical background may have
con tri buted to the devel op m ent of this outlook, but its essen
tial element is the spiri t of uti litarian i sm carried to radical
con sequ ences : extended not only to the world of values but
also to the purely cognitive functions .
The opp osition b etwe en i mp arti al explanatory knowl e d ge
and useful knowled g e was c ertainly nothing new. We can
trace the beginnings of this idea in writin gs by fourteenth
century nominalists, who in effect app e al e d to the criterion
of usefulness when they questioned the value of the Aris
totel ian c atego ries for un der st andi n g the wo rld , and when
they ascribed a purely pr actic al rather than a des c riptive
meaning to scientific knowl ed ge ( p articul arl y astronomy ) . La
ter, this was how Osiander i n terpr eted the Cope rni can theory
when he defended it on the gro und s of its usefulness rather
than its truth in th e traditional sense of the term. Purely
utilitarian interpr etation s of various religious and m e taphys i
cal truths are often to be met with in the hi story of mo dern
phil osophy-in Hobbes, in ce rt ai n of the Encycl op edi sts , and
in Kant. However, though such ideas were i n s p ired by dif
ferent m otives , the par tis ans of a " p r agm ati c inte rpretation
"
of ce rta in domains of k no wle d ge were as a rule co nvince d

that there also exists a domain of truth accessible to man,
wh ere we behave not j ust as though the world looks this way
o r that, but also entertain the idea that it truly is this way or
that .
James's doctrine is most cl e arly d istingui she d by th e un
lim ite d applications he makes of the utilitarian co nce pt io n of
knowledge. Our theori e s are instruments for reactin g effi
ciently to the world, me ans of m anipul ating th in gs or co m ing
1 56 THE ALffiNATION OF REASON
to practical grips with them. There is no reason to ascribe any

other meaning or value to them. The meaning of every state
ment is wholly contained in the practical consequences it en
tails; when two different statements result in the same behavior
their meanings are identical ; a statement that involves no
practical consequences means nothing.
Interpreted in a certain way, these rules bring to mind
Peirce's formulations. But what James tries to do is very dif
ferent : he does not aim at merely formulating criteria for
distinguishing meaningful statements from meaningless ones,
and methods for determining the meaning of a statement;
what he asserts is that the meaning of a statement is identical
with its practical consequences, that these consequences are
the meaning, not merely a means of arriving at it. Hence the
distinction between the true and the false according to utili
tarian criteria, which is fundamental to James, is not to be
met with at all in Peirce. There is no such thing as truth
viewed as abstract conformity independent of human inter
vention between a given statement and that to which the state
ment refers. Truth is nothing but the usefulness the statement
has for our actions. As against Peirce, to whom true state
ments disclose their truth by the effectiveness of actions based
on the assumption that they are true, to James, only that is
true whose recognition benefits us in some way : any other
conception of truth is meaningless. Thus tr'uth is not corre
spondence between our statements and the way things are,
but between our statements and the possible gratifications we
may experience by accepting these statements. This is a purely
biological interpretation of cognition : just as the knee-jerk
reflex is neither "true" nor "false" but, at most, biologically
normal or pathological, and just as the secretion of insulin
can be "good" or "bad" according to whether it is useful or
harmful to the organism, so the "secretion" of thought is to
be judged by the same criteria. Man's cognitive behavior is a
specific type of reaction to his environment : it is true when

this reaction is biologically useful, "false" in the opposite
case. Truths, scientific theories, and beliefs are not correlatives
of situations independent of us, but practical means for deal
ing with the environment.
Radical relativism is the natural consequence of this posi
tion. One and the same judgment may be true or false de
pending on the situation in which it is made. It is impossible
to speak of the truth of a judgment without specifying for
whom and in what situation it is true. To know the truth, one
might say, is to be efficient, sound in practical affairs. Prag
matism is a means for evaluating cognitive contents of every
kind by judging how effective they are when applied to what
ever is vitally important. Truth characterizes judgments in
respect to human situations. Generally speaking, to James
cognition is evaluation conceived of as a technique of suc
cess. More especially, pragmatism renounces all prohibitions
referring to the assertion of any conviction, so long as these
prohibitions are motivated by logical considerations, by purely
intellectual requirements, or by metaphysical doctrines. We
are entitled to believe anything at all if believing it is advan
tageous to us or helps us in life. The "only reality" is success
in life broadly ( also subjectively ) understood. "Usefulness"
can in turn be characterized by instinctual requirements. Rea
son is an extension of instinctual life, consciousness an in
strument of the latter. We have various instincts, which re
veal their presence in various periods of life : the instinct of
fear, competitive :fighting, acquisitive instincts ( according to
James, the acquisitive instinct manifests itself in man before
the age of two) . Thus we must infer that we are free to recog
nize anything and everything whose recognition satisfies in
stinctual needs and hence leads to increase in our possessions,
success in competition and stmggle. The intellect has purely
guiding functions : it makes no sense to ask, How are things
constituted really? but only, What do I get if I believe this
or that? And since a given belief may be useful to one man
and harmful to another-which is obvious, and of which
James is perfectly aware-there is no reason to shrink from
the inference that something may be false for me that is true
for someone else, or even that something may be false for me
to d ay that was true yesterday. Science is not a collection of
truths in any current, traditional, metaphysical, or transcen

dental sense, but a collection of practical directives that make
sense when they can be carried out, and that are true when
they further life, multiply energy, provide gratification. O r : a
cognitive act is an emotionally stimulated act of the will. That
assent to a belief is not the automatic result of the compelling
pressure of the world on the mind, but an act of volition or
resolve, is a Cartesian idea; however, according to Descartes,
this circumstance serves only to account for the presence of
error in our beliefs ( the will is free to accept or reject a judg
ment in regard to which reason operating in accordance with
the correct rules would have to suspend judgment or to judge
differently) . According to James, reason has no rules other
than those that incline the will to assent; consequently the
cognitive act is not subject to evaluation by comparing this
act, independently of human assent, with an equally inde
pendent real state of affairs ; rather, the cognitive act is this
very assent, which is motivated by the hope of attaining grati
fication thereby. To recognize something is to make a practi
c al commitment thanks to which a fragment of the world
promises gratification, provided it is treated in a certain way.
There is no difference between the conviction that this frag
ment of the world has "in itself" these or other qualities and
the vital impulse that accepts this conviction in the hope of
success. In this sense it may be said that from the pragm atist
point of view truth is continually being made and remade:
our cognitive bond with the world is the continual making of
the world.
Needless to say, it is easy to point out paradoxical conse
quences of this view ( and this has often been done ) , p articu
larly if we consider the extremer formulations scattered
throughout James's writings . If the ground of assent to any
j ud gment is identical with the psychological motive for assent
ing to it in the hope of gaining some advantage thereby, we
may ask : On what grounds do I assent to the judgment that
Socrates died in 399 B . c.? If asserting this judgment affords
me no advantage, it is meaningless. Suppose I am a student
taking an examination on the history of ancient philosophy :
the knowledge contained in this judgment will then be useful,

for it will help me to pass the test, but once I have passed it,
the knowledge becomes useless and by the same token the
statement about Socrates becomes nonsensic al . Or : what is
the meaning (to me) of the statement that Rome is situated
on the river Tiber? Actually it means nothing at all for it can
not affect my behavior in any way. This would not be so, how
ever, for an inhab it ant of Rome who crosses bridges every
day, and should I one day be a soldier in an army setting
out to conquer Rome, this piece of geographical informa
tion will take on meaning for me, too, and the statement
will "become" true.
As a matter of fact James occasionally tempered the ex
tremism of his formulations, referring to the existence of a
surplus of truths that have no present function but deserve to
be remembered since they m ay come in h andy at some fu
ture time. Thus it would be somewhat unfair ( although one
can take him up on his extremer formulations ) to ascribe to
him the conviction that "truth" is solely that which can be use
ful at a given moment, hie et nunc. Nevertheless, he upheld
the fundamental conception of knowledge qualified only from
the point of view of biological usefulness, and hence relative
and devoid of all transcendental connotations. Just how large
or small the "surplus" of only potentially useful knowledge
may be is nowhere defined clearly, and the pragmatist re
mains free to set his own boundaries.
Another paradoxical consequence of this view, and one
that deserves particular attention, is that the scope of truths
we are entitled to accept is altogether unlimited, so long as
they are useful to us in any respect whatsoever. This leaves
room for any article of religious faith or metaphysical doc
trine from which we expect to benefit in some w ay. There
would be no reason to give up religious convictions, consid
ering that they may raise our spirits, protect us from dis
couragement, fill us with optimism. James does not shrink
from drawing this inference, and accounts for this attitude
by his aversion to " dogmatism " ; his refusal to take a negative
stand in religious matters follows from this. If the existence of
God gives us certainty as to the moral order of the world, if

belief in freedom of the will entails the promise of reward
or stimulates our creative energies, we may believe the one
and the other with the same certainty as the most reliable
evidence of the senses.
Thus pragmatist philosophy amounts to a kind of episte
mological Jesuitism, a basic readiness to accept anything and
everything, and boundless flexibility where moral rules enter
into cognitive functions. Any other view is exposed to the
objection of being rigidly dogmatic, of sacrificing the real
values of life to abstract metaphysical fictions. This is indeed
the case once it is granted that reality has no inherent qualities
that can be interpreted as such, but is merely a collection of
opportunities for individual success, and this exhausts its pos
sible meaning. Pragmatism starts from assumptions similar to
those of empiriocriticism, but differs from the latter by its
striking formulations, loose aphorisms, and analytical un
scrupulousness. Like empiriocriticism, it attempts to ground
our thinking about the world on a concept of "experience,"
which supersedes all "substantialized" entities such as matter
or spirit, and treats them as secondary distinctions made
within the area of experience itself; it also seeks to do away
with unanswerable questions. But whereas, according to the
empiriocriticists, the possibility of applying a judgment effec
tively consisted in the fact that the judgment entitles us to
certain expectations in the world of experience, and that it
can be tested by the success or failure of our predictions-ac
cording to the pragmatists it is sUfficient that we be able to
" do" something with a given judgment, to be entitled to re
gard it as meaningful. Here we see how metaphysics driven
out the front door comes back again through the back door
-only now not as a "truth" that discloses the secrets of being,
but as a means to an end, were it only a spiritual balm or
the injection of a stimulating drug. However, the pragmatic
interpretation revealed consequences of the biologization of
knowledge, which the empiriocriticists had not noticed. After
all, they knew that both metaphysical doctrines and religious
faith can be interpreted as instruments serving to ensure the
biological survival o f the species, and a t the same time were

convinced that scientific theories have the same character; thus
they had no good reason to deny the former the same validity
they granted the latter. On this score the pragmatic rehabili
tation of metaphysics seems more consistent with the assump
tions of radical biologism. James's philosophy, because it
entitles us to believe anything at all provided our belief
"pays," rules out all possibility of attaining the goal Peirce
held to be paramount-the distinction between nonsense and
science. The question, What is truth? can in fact be inter
preted as implying a certain metaphysical theory; this is why
James replaces it with the question, What is worth believing?
but he formulates no limitations to prevent us from embracing
the very metaphysical doctrine the former question implies,
to avoid which the original question was rephrased. It would
appear that James uses the term "metaphysics" in a pejorative
sense to designate specific theories ( e.g., realist epistemologies,
determinism, any type of monism ) , but spares from this
stigmatization doctrines that negate these theories or supply
different answers for the same questions. Indeed, James him
self championed an image of . the world that can be readily
classified as "metaphysical," and that is closely related to the
pragmatic method by its tolerance and openness. It is a plural
ist image of the world, admitting of contradictions, emphasiz
ing the variety of experience, its perpetual fluidity and novelty.
We have no reason to favor determinism ; only a fragment
of the world is known to us, and nothing obliges us to suppose
that an immutable universal order governs everything. De
spite the rationalist constructions of a Hegel or a Spencer the
world is always open and full of possibilities, and only our
belief that this is so makes life worth living. If an immutable
order predetermines all that happens, if there are no sur
prises, no unpredictable events, life is not worth living. There
is no need to force every observed irregularity into new regu
larities, we are free to accept every fact individually, we need
not worry about coherence or regret that we possess no uni
versal key to explain away all contradictions. Only the incor
rigible metaphysician assumes in advance that the world is
governed by a single principle and that the variety of ex

perience is merely its manifestation. What is real is the ever
changing flux of experience, within which we stake out points
of concentration for practical purposes, to make the world
more manageable; consciousness is composed of the same
data as things, and the distinction between "inner" and
"outer" is artificial and secondary. The data of experience
to which we have direct access, not just through ideas or
representations-are signs enabling us to make predictions,
and with our practical interests in mind we organize these
signs into such groups as, for instance, "physical objects" or
"minds. " But experience itself contains no elementary parti
cles that go to form richer structures, as associational psy
chology claims. On the contrary, psychic life is one continu
ous flux; it is only by a process of abstraction that we break
up the latter into parts and identify certain objects as "per
manent. " This whole system of differentiations is not gov
erned by any intellectual rule, but is subject to will and feel
ings, which pick out things from the flux of experience, choose
truths from among possible judgments, and determine values
and beliefs.
The extraordinary popularity of James's ideas in the United
States undoubtedly reflects the adaptability of the pragmatic
conception of the world to currently recognized values. The
pragmatic theory of truth is essentially a philosophy of in
dividual success : its radical empiricism and opposition to bar
ren metaphysics perfectly express the attitude of a man for
whom "nothing counts" save what can help him get ahead in
life. But it would be unjust to account for the popularity of
pragmatism merely by the manners, customs, and social con
ditions of the country where it was born. Pragmatism devel
oped a conception of the world that is interesting philosophi
cally and deserves attention because, among other reasons, it
showed that the catchwords of empiricism could be given an
unexpected twist, that it was possible to rehabilitate meta
physics and religion without dropping any basic empiricist
assumptions. Pragmatism disclosed a hitherto unforeseen con-
nection between the positivist approach to knowledge and the

so-called philosophy of life.
One consequence of pragmatism was to get rid of the dual
ism b etween val ue ju d gments and descriptive statements. From
the p ragmatist point of view exactly the same standards
namely, the stan dards of utility-are applied in the case of
theore tical assertions, value j udgments, and the assessment of
social institutions. Thus there is no reason to break down our
statements into descriptive and valuational or, in the case of
the latter, to look for different, non-empirical epistemological
foundations. The traditional question concerning the differ
ence between "the true" and "th e good" -and whether some
thing is good " in itself" or becomes good only in virtue of our
decision-this question is eliminated once it has been estab
lished that truth is no more than one species of the genus
" good," and "good" is defined in the utilitarian sense. This
is one of the possible ways to avoid the dichotomy that has
proved so troublesome in the history of materialism and posi
tivism, and that has been revived more recently by the ana
lytical school.
3. Other versions of the pragmatic method. Its over-all
meaning. The last-mentioned consequence of the pragmatic
attitude is strikin gly expressed in the p hilos ophy of John
Dewey ( 1 859-1952) . Convinced, like James, that practical
applic ab ility is a standard of value and criterio n of truth,
Dewey thought that this practical or instrumental approach
is equally valid in reference to our ideas about the world, the
values we assert, and our s oc i al and poli ti c al institutions-in
other words, that ques tions we put before accepting or reject
ing a statement are of the sa me type as que stio ns we ask about
the desir abil ity of some social activity. Consequently, judg
ments are divided into "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory"
from the poin t of view of the goal we wish to achieve; that is,
they favor or obstruct actions l eadi ng to this end. This is the
meaning of truth and falsity in the instrumental sense. Dewey,
however, was not so much interested in the conditions of
individual success as in the improvement of publi c life and the
prospects of political democracy, and for this reason his episte-
mology departs from James's pragmatism in one essential re

spect : he asserts the existence and supremacy of values that
are not connected with individual success, but bind all men
equally-in other words, the existence of a primary collective
utility that can provide us with criteria for socially important
choices. This is why the relativity of truth as he conceives of
it does not entail the paradoxical consequences mentioned
above. The task the philosopher sets for himself is to analyze
the social effects resulting from the acceptance of given doc
trines, ideas, or ideals-just as we analyze the effects of given
political institutions. Thus there is no difference between cog
nition and valuation, for knowledge as a whole is valuation,
an attempt to describe the reality of the "good" from the
point of view of our practical behavior. But since questions
about usefulness refer primarily to social usefulness, "truth,"
too, ceases to be a means to an individual end at a certain
moment in man's life, and becomes an instrument of social
action; it remains relative as before, but relative to a broadly
understood "collective interest" and hence preserving a per
manence and intersubjective character that James's doctrine,
if consistently applied, could not ascribe to it. Philosophy
plays a part in social conflicts and is not exempt from aware
ness of the part it plays; it can be conservative or it can favor
social progress, and should recognize this. In contrast to
James, Dewey was convinced that religious ideas cannot func
tion as socially important values, that they block human ini
tiative, people's ability to control their own lives and develop
their intelligence, inventiveness, and creativity. In this sense,
such ideas are "false"-we have no other criteria for evaluat
ing them. All in all, Dewey was perhaps closer to Peirce than
to James for, although he preserved to the last an aversion
and contempt for metaphysical controversy, with which he had
become familiar in his youth as a pupil of American Hegelians,
he believed in the possibility of permanently valid and inter
subjective criteria of knowledge, and hence in the existence
of criteria that cannot be invalidated by an individual's mo
mentary caprice or need. Moral values like cognitive values
preserve this socially constant character; although there are
PRAGMATISM AND POSITMSM 1 65
no transcendent or transcendental values irrevocably "given"

to man, it is false to conclude that the world of values is gov
erned by the princip le of de gustibus . . . , as most positivists
imagine. Values are not defined by their ability to provide
immediate gratification to individual men, but by their lasting
social usefulness, and only that should be asserted as a value
whose effects on collective life can be publicly tested and
recognized as useful. In his attempts to construct the concept
of a social subject, in his instrumentalist interpretation of the
philosopher's life, in his hope for the practical realization of
philosophy, Dewey was closer to the Marxist tradition than
James, although he departed from this tradition by his politi
cal liberalism and personalist orientation.
At the turn of the century pragmatism enjoyed great pop
ularity and was developed along a number of lines in Euro
pean philosophy as well. In England it was used by F. C. S.
Schiller ( 1 864-1 937) to criticize transcendentalist doctrines;
he reached even more radical conclusions than James by re
ducing all cognitive functions to acts of personal expression
and declared that questions concerning truth in the mimetic
sense are meaningless. He also projected a vol'untaristic logic
dealing solely with the expressive relation between judgments
and the intentions of the person who asserts them. The prag
matist movement showed considerable strength in Italy where
it was for a time championed by Giovanni Papini; one of
Papini's pupils was Mussolini, who associated this philosophy
with Fascist doctrines of irrationalism, voluntarism, and ac
tivism. It would, however, be absurd to take this extension of
pragmatism seriously in a survey of the latter. One of the few
champions of pragmatism in Poland was E. M. Kozlowski.
Generally speaking, in Europe this philosophy was one im
portant strand within the modernist style of thinking, one
among several varieties of a "philosophy of life" that strove
for immediate knowledge and "contact with the thing itself,"
a contact no metaphysical schemata were expected to pro
vide. On this score als<> its empirical alertness, pedantic nomi
nalism, and its ostracism of metaphysical dogma-in short, all
that relates pragmatism to the positivist tradition-falls within
the modernist current. The founders of pragmatism them

selves pointed out their affinities with the main positivist tra
dition, and this claim has a real foundation. At the same
time, this branch of positivism has its paradoxical side be
cause it enables empiricism to accept metaphysics and re
ligious faith, as well as to apply the same criteria to value
judgments as are applied to scientific judgments. This paradox
is one of countless arguments a historian of philosophy may
adduce to illustrate the fact that philosophical assumptions ad
mit of the most various interpretations, that there is no limit
to the combinations of possible ideas in this field.
The late nineteenth-century or modernist variety of posi
tivism was characterized by the deliberate linking of genetic
and methodological questions in studying human cognition.
Quaestio iuris and quaestio facti in respect of the value of
knowledge became almost indistinguishable. If cognition is a
specifically human instrument of biological adaptation, it may
well seem that meaningful questions concerning the validity
of cognitive procedures refer only to whether they are useful
to us, not to whether they enable us to know the world "in
itself" (for such a purpose is not present in the animal world
to which we belong, and from which we differ in respect to
forms of communication, not because we have any ties with
a transcendental truth) . If this is so, pragmatism would be an
attempt to draw the ultimate epistemological consequences
from naturalism, and it would indeed be impossible to sepa
rate the quaestio iuris from the question of the origin of
knowledge. But by the same token it becomes impossible to
uphold the scientistic position, i.e., the illjunction to refrain
from statements 'unless they meet the requirements of natural
science; in other words, the prohibition on ascribing meaning
to such statements is no longer justified.
One may thus be tempted to see a certain logic in the
emergence of the next phase of positivist thought, whose dis
tinctive feature is that it draws a clear line separating ques
tions about the origin of knowledge from questions about its
validity, and attempts to deal with the latter questions while
neglecting the former-in other words, a return to the scien-
PRAGMATISM AND POSITMSM 1 67
tistic p osition . So-called logical empiricism ( occasionally

known as "neo-positivism" ) might in this view be regarded
as a return to positivist restraint after the disintegration of
positivism in the "modernist" period ; it would then be the
philosophical expression of the end of a period of extreme
epistemological license. Many representatives of this doctrine
hoped that the limitations it imposed on thought would coun
teract the threat of ideological fanaticism; theirs is the attitude
of independent intellectuals anxious to contribute to social
health. Scientism was one important component in this pro
gram.
CHAPTER EI GHT
Logical Empiricism : A Scientistic

Defense of Thre atened Civilization
1 . The sources of logical empiricism. How it defines itself.

In respect to content, lo gical empiricism or logical positivism
falls within the over-all development usually designated ana
lytical philosophy. The last-mentioned term denotes not only
the Oxford and Cambridge movement, initiated above all by
G. E. Moore, but a worldwide movement convinced that the
proper task of philosophy is analysis of language, both every
day and scientific, and the elucidation of concepts, assertions,
and controverted points. By this approach, it was hoped, many
traditional questions would at last be settled or dismissed as
meaningles s.
Initially, the objectives of the analytical school did not im

ply any specific approach to epistemological or metaphysical
problems, nor did this school prejudge what philosophical
questions are meaningful. What distinguished it from other
schools was the stress it laid on the idea that philosophy must
start with exact logical analys is of the language in which sci
entific questions are formulated. Dislike for grandiose, all
embracing metaphysical systems is a natural concomitant of
this attitude, yet at the same time this school admitted the
most varied positions on traditional philos ophic al issues. Thus,
Moore and his numerous disciples analyzed the meaning of
terms in every field of knowl e dge and everyday life, without
asking whether their analyses were c ompatible or incomp atible
with existing philos ophical theories. What mattered to them
was prim arily to lay bare the vague intuitions concealed in
our speech, the verbal hybrids or murky associations involved

in our statements about the world, and to formulate all sci
entific and philosophical questions so they may be under
standable and acceptable to all.
Because Moore's ideas were firmly rooted in the tradition of
English empiricism and included positivist elements, they con
siderably influenced the development of analytical philosophy.
The latter cannot, however, be included as a whole in a history
of positivism, for many of its more prominent representatives
advocated ideas decidedly not positivist in the sense consid
ered here. Moore himself, in defiance of the positivist tradi
tion, defended the objectivity of valuational predicates ( such
as " good" and "bad" ) in ethics, and held that they are irre
ducible to empirical qualities. Bertrand Russell, one of the
founders of the analytical school, who helped forge the logical
tools that were to have such wide use in this century, cannot
be regarded as a positivist, if only for his emphatic rejection
of nominalism. Alfred North Whitehead, co-author with Rus
sell of Principia Mathematica ( 1 9 1 0-1 9 1 3 ) , who began as a
mathematician and went on to create a metaphysics and a
distinctly religious cosmology, was not a positivist by any
standard. Nor was one Jan Lukasiewicz, the discoverer of
multivalent logics, who also rejected nominalism and whose
philosophical essays are in part colored by religious convic
tions.
Thus, although analytical philosophy and logical positivism
as practiced by the younger generation have become well
nigh indistinguishable, we will not discuss analytical philoso
p hy as a whole, but concentrate on the positivist tendencies
manifested within it in the period between the two world
wars. The positivist current within analytical philosophy ex
hibits with particular clarity a feature Bertrand Russell re
garded as the very essence of the latter : namely, it combines
empiricism with an extensive application of mathematical
methods. While the same combination has characterized natu
ral science since Galileo, logical empiricism claims credit for
having first realized its importance in elucidating traditional
philosophical questions.
L OGICAL EMPIRICISM 171
Until the advent of logical empirici sm, w e are to l d , there

had b e en two riv al methods of cognition in philosophy-the
mathematical method of demonstration and the experimen
tal m ethod of investigation. D ep endi ng on the importance
asc r ibe d to the one or the other, they led to antithetical con
ceptions of knowledge : ra tio n a l ism and empiricism. The logi
cal emp iricists set out to do away with this split. They hold that
experience is the only way of learning anything about the
real world. M athematics , they say, cannot describe the world,
but it pr ov ides an i n disp e ns able technique of reasoning. For
mal logic has devel op e d into a p owerful instrument that ex
tends the scope of em p i r i c al science by el imina tin g many
pseudo-problems and by r e c ognizi ng its inability to solve on
tolo gic a l p ro blem s . Neither logic nor mathematics can dis
co ver the structure of the extralinguistic world, but both in
crease the effectiveness of li n gu istic signs an d the correctness
of our deductive reasoning. Some propositions of logic and
mathematics are valid independently of observation or experi
m e nt , not because they dis cl os e any immanent necessity, but
because they are analytic prop os iti ons . Devoid of content, they
owe their validity to linguistic con venti ons associated with the
mean i n gs ascribed to the terms involved in them. There are no
such things as synthetic a prio ri judgments, i.e., j udgments
that can be vali d ated i n depende ntly of exp erie nc e and at the
same time describe the real world in any respect whatever.
This is one of the main a ss ump tions of logical empiricism.
Phi lo s ophy, if it is to exist as an i n d ep en den t discipline
alongside the other branches of k nowl e dge , cannot take th e
p l ace of science in any qu es ti on concerning the structure of
the worl d ; all it can do comes down to lo gi c al analysis of the
syn ta c t ic and semantic pro p er t ie s of langu ag e , esp eci ally the
language of scienc e . Philosophy in this sense becomes a dis
cipline dealing with methods of sci entific pro ce d u re , such as
the testability of hypotheses, the l e gitim acy of i n fe re n ces , and
the meaning of terms used in s ci ence . This di s c ip l ine , some
t i m es called "met asc i ence , " was esp e ci ally spurre d on by sci
entific developments earlier i n this century, above all those
connected with the s tud y of an ti nomi es in the the or y of classes
and with the theory of relativity. These developments showed

up the need for revision of certain modes of thinking and
speaking, the detailed linguistic analysis of expressions, for
example, which are taken for granted yet entail material con
sequences. We cannot here enter into discussion of these
questions. In any case, extremely . rapid advance in symbolic
logic seemed to justify the hope that within a short time it
would be possible either to solve all the old philosophical
problems or to dismiss them as incorrectly formulated. Some
even imagined that the new logic would be the characteristica
universalis Leibniz had dreamed of, and that it would supply
an infallible means for solving all meaningful philosophical
problems.
For all the transformations, controversies, and volte-faces
that have marked the history of logical empiricism, the doc
trine discloses certain permanent features. First, it regards
rationalism as the opposite of irrationalism, and hence main
tains that only those statements about the world whose con
tent can be controlled by means accessible to all are entitled to
the name of knowledge (or have cognitive value ) ; also that
there are legitimate ways of attaining knowledge of the world
other than those used by natural science and mathematics.
Second, it upholds nominalism both in its theory of knowledge
and, more particularly, in its theory of meaning, theory of
mathematical objects, and theory of values. Third, it main
tains an anti-metaphysical attitude, stemming from the convic
tion that so-called metaphysical statements do not meet the
requirements of experimental control because they do not deal
with specific phenomena falling under specific classes (rather,
with the world "as a whole" ) , and hence cannot be disproved
by any conceivable method. Fourth, it professes scientism, that
is, it asserts the essential unity of the scientific method, ac
counting for differences between the sciences on this score
especially between the social and the physical sciences-by
the immaturity of the former, though it is believed they will
eventually be modeled on the latter.
All these feat'ures of logical empiricism are positivistic. How
ever, in its early phase, the vitality of the doctrine was not due
LOGICAL EMPIRICISM 173
solely to the circumstance that its adherents concerned them

selves with imp ortant scientific problems posed by symbolic
logic, t he theory of relativity, and the quantum theory. Ac
cording to them, this phi losophy was to perform important
social functions : to provide a scientific approach to personal
convictions, notably, and th ereby help eradicate irrational
prejudice, ideological fanaticism, and the use of brute force
in public affairs. It was not to be just a science, but also to
perform an educational task in the struggl e against irrational
beliefs that poison collective life and give rise to attempts to
impose them by force. The discredit into which nationalist
ideologies fell after the First World War certainly contributed
to this attitude and attracted many intellectuals to this school
of thought; what esp e cial ly appealed was the idea that
ideological claims should be tested by scientific methods. The
positivists of that day liked to rep eat Locke's saying that we
may hold any belief only to the extent it is justified. This
slog a n, which briefly sums up the fundamental rule of prac
tical rationalism, was directed against all ideological pressures
and fo s tered a sp irit of tolerance in collective life. The posi
tivists, then, championed a scientific attitude to the world in
defen se of democracy, tolerance, and c ooperation. They pro
fessed a kind of utop iani sm , based onthe ass u mption that the
attitude of the intellectual whose convictions are more or less
determined by strict scientific thinking could become the so
cia ll y dominant way of thinking, and that this attitude could

serve as a model for society as a whole, o n c e education had
been imbued with this spirit.
Although it makes much more use of logical instruments
and syntactic an alys i s , logical positivism h as a certain com
munity of aims with M ach's d o ctrin e . A real continuity of
persons and institutions further justifies regarding this move
ment as an outgrowth of e m p irio critici sm From the outset,
.
logical empiricism was very aware of itself as an original

"school . " Its adherents shared a certain number of basic as
sumptions and were prompt to attack opp os ing points of
view. Its language was brutally aggre ssive, its style rath er
apodictic in a sectarian way, and its convi c tion that it was
revolutionizing the history of thought beyond question. Noth

ing could shake the early logical empiricists' faith in the great
ness of their cultural mission.
The most active early center was Vienna in the 1920s, espe
cially the group of philosophizing scientists and mathemati
cians who came together in a seminar conducted by Moritz
Schlick ( 1 882- 1 93 6 ) . The most prominent members of this
group, known as the Vienna Circle, were Rudolf Carnap (b.
1 89 1 , now in the U.S. ) , and Karl Popper (b. 1 9 02 , now in
England) . Some philosophers of a related tendency were active
in Berlin : Hans Reichenbach, Richard von Mises, M. Dubislav.
In Denmark, Sweden, and England other groups and individ
uals appeared, some independent of the Vienna Circle, some
not. Poland was a very active center of logical empiricism,
where a group of K. Twardowski's pupils, though rather un
like in philosophical disposition, analyzed many questions in
a spirit akin to that of the Vienna Circle.
2. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Enormously important in the philo
sophical articulation of logical empiricism was Ludwig Witt
genstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus, published in German
and English in 1 922. Wittgenstein ( 1 889-1 951 ) , who had
been born into a Jewish family in Austria, was first an engineer,
became a mathematician, then worked on the foundations of
mathematics and logic, and finally devoted himself to phi
losophy. In the years preceding the First World War he studied
under Bertrand Russell at Cambridge, and his first book (the
only one published in his lifetime) was largely inspired by
Frege and Russell. His posthumous Philosophical Investiga
tions ( 1 953 ) has a very different character, and it is obvious
that the author of the Tractatus had abandoned many of his
former ideas. These two works have had very great influence
-the former primarily on the development of logical empiri
cism, the latter on linguistic philosophy. This fact, however,
does not justify situating Wittgenstein's thought in either of
these two currents, the less so because he rejected the logical
empiricist interpretation of bis own philosophy. We shall, then,
omit any full account of his complex and controversial phi
losophy, which, as a whole, falls altogether outside the bounda-
LOGICAL EMPIRICISM 1 75
ries of positivism, and call attention merely to a few points

that the founders of logical empiricism regarded as related to
their own ideas.
To Wittgenstein in the period of the Tractatus, the reality
of sense perception consists of individual facts, and the mean
ing of any knowledge is reducible to descriptions of such facts,
these descriptions b eing structural correspondents ( "images" )
of them. The me anin g or truth of every proposition is wholly
determined by the individual statements that make it up, the
sum total of which is equivalent to its meaning. There is no
such thing as a priori kno wledge whether of facts or things ,
,
and hence logic-which is a s cience independent of empirical

verification-consists of tautologies devoid of co ntent Logical
.
positivism took over this division of all possible knowledge into

two classes (tautologies and statements of fact) , a division
that rules out the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments.
Language and thought refer only to elementary, "atomic"
facts. We understand only what we can express, hence there
is no thought that cannot be expressed, and there are no ques
tions that cannot be solved, for it would not be possible to
formulate meaningfully any such question. In this sense, ac
cording to the famous aphorism in the Tractatus, the limits
of my language are the limits of my world. And since the
atomic facts are always contingent, i.e., the descriptions they
consist of contain no features compelling us to assert them by
virtue of a logical rule, our knowledge of the world involves
no necessity. The consequences of these restrictions in refer
ence to metaphysical questions are obvious. We can ask
whether a given fact bel on gs to our world of experience , but
we can not ask meanin gful questions concerning the character
istics of the world as a whole. Thus, it is meaningless to ask
whether reality has a material nature, because it could be
answered only on the basis of a specific experience of "ma
teriality" as distinct from one of "non-materiality." As such an
experience is inconceivable, the problem of re alism cannot be
rationally formulated. Radical denial of the meaningfulness of
questions concerning the world "as a whole" led Wittgenstein
to the conviction that even statements of the type "the world
contains at least three objects" are meaningless. On the basis

of the dat a that exp erience supplies, the difference between
realism and s olipsism not only cannot be defined, it c annot
be formulated in words. In cidentally Wittgen stein believes-in
this he is very nearly alone-that what solipsism asserts is
right, b ut that it cannot be expressed. To express it, a category
such as the "I" would have to be invoked, and there is no such
thing among the atomic facts : on close scrutiny the "I" shrinks
to the size of a dot. The so-called "subject" is ungraspable,
not just as an alleged "inside" of things different from them,
but even as an " inne r-world " object . Within the boundaries
of experience I can speak about "myself" in reference to indi
vidual facts, but when I try to go beyond their contents to ask
about some indivisible "core" or permanent substratum of
subjectivity unifying those data in an identical self, my ques
tions become as meaningless as any other met aphysical
question.
Langu age , moreover, which reproduces the structure of ex
periential facts in its statements, discloses (but does not ex
press ) something that basically admits of no description.
"What we cannot speak of we must be silent about, " says the
last aphorism in the Tractatus. Lan gu age is helpful since it
can articulate knowledge of its own limits-on this score,
linguistic tools have roughly the status of "reason" in P ascal's
intellectualist view of the world-but this self-knowledge, so
to speak, is an automatic contact with the ineffable, with that
which will never become an object of knowledge (however
important it may be in life ) . If it is to be a serious activity,
philosophy cannot hope to play the part of theory; it is a v ariety
of human behavior aiming at the clarification of scientific
statements. (The latter observation was taken over by Schlick,
acc ordin g to whom philosophy ' s task is to cl arify meanings,
but the ultimate meanings of words c an only be pointed to,
not expressed in words-the contents are inexpressible-and
hence philosophy is not a sum of a ssertion s , still less a "sys
tem," but a type of behavior that results in clarity of state
ment. )
In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittge nstein cons ider-
ably reduces the requirements that meaningful statements have

to meet, and in effect recognizes that all expressions contain
ing words whose use is subj ected to specific rules are mean
ingful; as for unequivocal d efinitions, he treats them as a basi
cally utopian ideal. Because of the looseness of the rules of
meaningfulness expounded in this work, it has been invoked
by writers more concerned with how l angua ge functions than
with specifying its comp on ents for scientific purposes, and
they have denied the usefulness of assigning unequivocal
me an ings to current words. Also, certain theologians find the
new approach to meaningfulness helpful in validating ques
tions within their sphere. This later phase o f Wittgenstein's
thought is even less closely related to positivism than the
earlier one.
On the other hand, the Tractatus was an important con
tribution to the new positivist program i n radical respects.
First, it reduced all me an ingful non-analytic statements to
descriptions of elementary facts. Second-a consequence of
the preceding-it proposed a nominalist interpretatio n of
scientific knowledge : every scientific theory is a function of
individual statements describing the facts on which it is based.
Third - another consequence of the first assumption-it dis
missed metaphysics as me an ingle ss , not only in respect to its
assertions, but also in respect to its questi ons ; at the sam e time ,
it neutralized the concept of experience in the same sense as
Ave n arius. Fourth, it l i m ited philosophy to the logical analysis
of scientific language.
3. Scientific statements and metaphysics. L o gical empiricism
proper was not always so radical on the score o f meaningful
ness, especially not in c o n n ectio n with language. Carn ap , bas
ing himself on the theory of types, distinguished between dif
ferent l inguis tic levels and, treating philosophy as a language
that speaks about l an gu age , defined its task as that of investi
gating the conditions under which s c ien tific langu age is
syntactically correct as well as m eaningful . Many logical em
piricists at first identified meaningfulness with verifi ab ility, i . e. ,
they held that the conditi on s of meaningful ness are met only
by those p ropo sitions in referenc e to which it is possible to
state by what intersubjective methods they can be verified,

This is concisely expressed in the well-known formula, "The
meaning of a statement is the method of its verification," a
formula directed not just against metaphysical systems, but
against virtually all traditional philosophy. On closer examina
tion, however, this rule involves difficulties . Obvi ously , it
cannot refer to actual verification, i.e. , does not assert that a
statement is meaningful only when we have carried o ut tests
establishing its logical validity, fo r in this case the same ex
pression could tum from nonsense to meaningful statement
overnight, with improvements in experimental technique. So
the rule was restated : what it refers to is not actual verification,
but "basic" or "theoretical," rather than "technical" verifiabil
ity. Yet here, too, closer scrutiny reveals difficulties. Firs t, at
what point may the process of verification be regarded as
completed, what kind of cognitive acts require no further jus
tification-can be taken as definitive? Next, the neo-positivists
began to look for an absolute epistemological starting point,
'undertaking to solve in their own way a problem with which
philosophy had struggled for centuries. So arose the problem
of "first statements, " absolutely initial cognitive acts at the
level of linguistic articulation. These were supposed to be
"basic" or "protocol" sentences, i.e., descriptive of actual
sense perceptions "with nothing added. " The proper me aning
of such sentences, questions o f their value and possibility,
gave rise to a long debate into which we cannot go here. At
one point, certain participants in this debate (N eurath,
Carnap ) could not avoid the conclusion that "basic" sentences
are direct descriptions of the observer's own experience and
hence introspective. Strictly speaking, then, they cannot be
ascribed objective meaning : if meaningfulness is to be defined
by the (more or less loosely conceived) logical reductibility of
sentences to observational notations, a purely psychological in
terpretation of knowledge appears unavoidable. Other partici
pants in the debate tried to show that "basic" sentences could
be treated as accounts of physical observations, referring to
the directly observable behavior of physical object s (without
prejudging the tatters' ontological status ) . Karl Popper went so
far a s t o defend th e thesis that basic sentences are scientific

conventions, that is, arbitrary assumptions necessary to avoid
infinite regress in scientific demonstration. Others pointed out
that absolutely basic sentences do not figure in scientific
theories, and, like the conventionalists, spoke in favor of the
thesis of the circular verifiability of theories. This doctrine
amounted in effect to abandoning the empiricist position, for
it presupposes that science never deals with elementary facts,
so contains no absolutely basic sentences, and that the ultimate
criterion for validating a hypothesis or accepting a given theory
is the logical coherence of the existing system of sentences.
Another point at issue was the character of the logical re
lation that must obtain between actual scientific propositions
and the "basic" sentences, if the former are to be regarded as
properly verifiable, i. e., as meaningful statements. What, then,
is verifiability? The r'ule identifying a statement's verifiability
with the possibility of logically inferring from it a finite col
lection of "protocol" sentences was soon abandoned, for it
became clear that in this sense the majority of scientific propo
sitions would be unverifiable, hence meaningless. Next, the
rule was reformulated as follows : those statements are verifi
able that can serve as premises o f "protocol " sentences, i.e.,
those from which we can infer predictions as to the observable
behavior of physical objects. Then it turns out that the same
"protocol" sentences can be inferred from several scientific
propositions, and also, for instance, from a logical conjunction
in which, next to a scientific proposition, we have a meta
physical proposition, even one that flagrantly violates the rules
of meaningfulness. Consequently, this definition of verifiability
would permit us to ascribe verifiability to arbitrary statements,
and would not serve our purpose. This difficulty gave rise to
various attempts to limit the definition and to formulate a
concept of partial verifiability, such as might avoid these
undesirable consequences.
In the course of these discussions Popper advanced an idea
that, though not novel in the history of modern science, was
now formulated in all its generality with great clarity. This
idea was that the criterion of the empirical character of state-
ments ( and hence of their meaningfulness) should be their

"defeasibility," that is, the possibility of disproving them : only
those statements are to be regarded as empirically founded
that let us infer by what empirical methods they might be
disproved. In other words, if we cannot say how our present
world differs empirically from a world in which the given
statement would be false, the statement is meaningless. If
every conceivable fact confirms a theory, the theory is obvi
ously non-empirical. We readily see that such a view dismisses
all metaphysical doctrines and religious beliefs as meaning
less. When we ask how we can refute the assertion that God is
merciful, we discover at once that there is no conceivable
way of doing so : every fact can easily be reconciled with
God's mercifulness, and no fact conclusively contradicts it.
According to Popper, this rule is of primary importance in
scientific thinking and alters, as it were, the entire conditions
of the pursuit of knowledge. It encourages the scientist to
reflect on possible ways of disproving his own hypothesis, not
just to look for facts that confirm it. It also urges him to eschew
theories that every conceivable fact confirms. According to
the positivists, there is no lack of such theories in contem
porary science. Some have criticized Freud's doctrine on this
ground : it can assimilate every new fact, and so is utterly
insensitive to facts contradicting it-in other words, it is non
empirical in the sense disctissed here. But it was soon pointed
out that Popper's principle raises another difficulty : existential
propositions, i.e., those that assert the existence of an object
are obviously "undefeasible" in his sense, hence non-empiri
cal. (We cannot adduce an observational sentence to refute
the statement "There is the sun" or "Elves and fairies exist,"
although such statements are excluded by other logical rules. )
A number o f further attempts were made to state the rules of
verifiability with greater precision, and discussion of these mat
ters has by no means ended. Reichenbach has pointed out
that it is necessary to refer to degrees of probability in defining
the rules of verifiability. According to him, Hume long ago
showed that a radical empiricist cannot make use of induction
without inconsistency, for we have no way of validating in-
duction. To validate i t inductively i s t o beg the question, and
if the principle of induction is a synthetic judgment a priori,
radical empiricism becomes untenable. Moreover, if induction
is ruled out, all knowledge turns out to be impossible. There
fore we must recognize that we are entitled to predict events
that never occurred on the basis of past events, but that asser
tions concerning the future do not have the same degree of
certainty as statements concerning the past. However, this
view creates new difficulties, and, as we said above, the whole
problem is still under discussion.
Apart from these various solutions to the problem of verifi
ability, and apart from the continuing discussion, logical em
piricism has been searching for ways to eradicate metaphysical
judgments from human thought. In the light of empiricist
criticism, statements such as "God is Three Persons in One,"
"The world is material," "The ground of existence is will,"
or "The universal is contained in the particular," are not
necessarily false, but simply are not statements, have no mean
ing that permits inquiry into their truth or falsity. Following
Wittgenstein, the logical empiricists have held this thesis as
one of the fundamental assumptions of their doctrine. All
statements asserting something about the world "as a whole,"
all epistemological and ontological theories (whether realist,
materialist, or subjectivist) , all doctrines containing general
statements about, say, universal determinism or the fundamen
tal subject-object relation-all are meaningless, no one of them
one whit "truer" than its negation.
The philosophical-or perhaps anti-philosophical-revolution
that the logical empiricists claim to have brought about has
consisted above all in this eliminating of pseudo-questions,
thoughts about nothing at all. This is allegedly the most im
portant accomplishment of their critique, which bas shown
( among much else ) that very nearly the whole of earlier
philosophy is made up of meaningless solutions to pseudo
problems. Carnap made a detailed analysis of Heidegger's
statement, "Nothing nihilates," in order to show that it is
purely verbal, devoid of empirical meaning. ( Incidentally, this
is the only sentence from existentialist philosophy the majority
1 82 THB ALIBNATION OF REASON
of contemporary positivists appear familiar with . ) Indeed,

most representatives of this school are much stronger on logi
cal studies than on historical studies; they have a low opinion
of the results of previous philosophical thinking and are per
suaded that the only valuable elements in philosophy are those
that can be built up in the same way as the results of natural
science. Since all knowledge comes down to empirical state
ments and tautologies, philosophy has no tasks of its own
apart from the logical analysis of language. Logic is not a
collection of the laws of thought in any psychological sense,
but of rules of linguistic usage that are true ( or binding,
rather) by virtue of linguistic convention. In themselves, they
are devoid of content : they tell us how to make use of sym
bols, have no object in view of their own. The logical em
piricists have directed their criticism both against the Platoniz
ing interpretation of mathematics and against psychological
or associational theories; the majority have preferred formalist
conceptions of mathematics. Those who (like Reichenbach)
ascribe an objective character to some parts of mathematics
do so only in the sense earlier accepted by M ach : geometry,
as a part of mathematics, consists of analytic judgments, but
there is also a geometry that may be regarded as part of
physics. The latter consists of judgments that have to be vali
dated with the help of observation and measurement. Neither
the latter nor the former, however, contains synthetic a priori
judgments.
According to the neo-positivists, all earlier contributions to
philosophy break down into problems that are purely verbal,
hence meaningless, and problems solvable through meticulous
analysis of the lingilistic means used in formulating them.
Hence all the investigations into the syntax, later into the
semantic aspects of philosophical language. Logical empiricists
were prominent among those who welcomed semantics en
thusiastically as a panacea for the ills, not just of intellectual
culture, but of human life in general. The promise semantics
held out of doing away with doctrinal quarrels and antagonisms
appealed to them, for they shared the conviction that these
arise out of faulty use of language and that immense quan-
tities o f human energy ar e squandered i n this way. Some phi

losophers of this school have held that metaphysical statements,
though devoid of meaning, can perform expressive func
tions, may serve as outlet for certain emotions. They are to be
tolerated so long as they claim no more ambitious status, so
long as those who make such statements do not imagine they
are saying something about the world, or that their particular
point of view can meaningfully be defended against other
points of view.
4. The "physicizing" of science. The rule that defines the
meaningfulness of sentences by the possibility of reducing
them to contents referring to the physical behavior of bodies
implies that all scientific propositions must-if they are to be
valid-be translatable into the language of physics. This view,
sometimes referred to as the "physicizing" part of the program,
was very popular with the founders of logical positivism. The
language of physics was held to be Universal, and only state
ments formulated in this language, or statements that can be
translated into it, were regarded as meaningful. However, in
actual scientific practice this rule proved very difficult to ob
serve consistently. In psychology it led to behaviorism, which
in the opinion of this school is the only scientific psychology.
The older introspective psychology is dismissed as a tissue of
irresponsible fantasies concerning the "soul" and "spiritual"
faculties. Behaviorism denies that psychological statements
have any sense more or less than other statements about ob
servable modes of human behavior; in particular, statements
about "inner" experiences are devoid of scientific meaning if
they refer to something other than behavior ( or an expression
of feelin g ) . In keeping with the most persistent phenomenalist
tradition, positivism recognized a natural ally in behaviorist
psychology, for it dispenses with the unobservable, mysterious
category of "consciousness" or "subjectivity." It is currently
believed, for instance, that intelligence is a certain "property"
of individuals, "expressed" in or knowable by means of tests.
From the point of view of logical empiricism ( also behaviorist
psychol ogy ) , intelligence is not an " occult" quality that
"manifests " itself in test procedures : intelligence is precisely
that which is studied by me ans of these procedures. The other

definition tacitly assumes a non-scientific distinction between
essence and appearance which is supp osedly a manifestation
of the essence. Science cannot operate meaningfully with
statements that refer to som e reality other than the qualities
accessible to observation.
Critics of the behaviorist interpretation have pointed out
that it fails to carry out the "physicizing" program : it trans
lates p sychological statements into everyday language, not into
the lan guage of physics. The fact that positivists approve of be
havioris m suggests that for all their claims that their purpose
is to free psychol ogy of metaphysical prejudices and give it a
scientific foundation, they actually rely on the deceptive in
tell ig i bil ity of everyday language.
5. The humanities and the world of values. The " physiciz
in g" program, despite its a pp arent simplicity, was soon found
to involve great difficulties, especially in the fields of the social
and historical sciences. When we try to translate the simplest
terms used in the latter into the language of physics, their
meanings turn out, more often than not, to be remote from
current usage. According to the positivists, this shows that their
previous usage had been faulty, bound up with "smuggled-in"
metaphysical fictions. Acc o rding to critics, however, nothing
proves the humanistic meanings to be less "intelligible" than
the physicizing translations. Terms such as "property," "au
thority," "binding law," etc. c annot be physi c ized without
changing their meaning. The fact is, when they have been
practiced in accordance with the p o sitivist rules, the humane
sciences have not managed to get beyond gen eral iti es .
Neurath attempted to draw up rule s for an empiric al so
cio l o gy, to meet the re qu i re me nts formulated by lo gical po si
tivism. His project was based on the assumption that there
are no differences in c ogn it ive methods between the natural
and the social sciences, esp eci ally no differences of the type
claimed by the Dilthey school. Ac cording to Neurath, the
social sciences do not deal with human intentions, experiences,
asp ira ti o ns , or "personalities," but solel y with th e behavior of
human organisms . These sciences can and should discard such
concepts as " cons ci ousne ss" and its various deriv atives , stu dy
observable regularities of human b e h avio r, and ascertain meas
urable rel ati o n ships within the various dimens ions of th is be
havior. If we woul d once learn how to r ecord invariable pat
terns of b eh avior and to discover the c onditio ns go vernin g
their emergence, spread, and decline, we should be able to
predict s o ci al p henomen a no l e ss effectively than n atural
pheno m e n a . Humanists, however, brand the program a pipe
dream, pointing to the fact that the social sciences ofte n deal
with wholes, the behavior of which cannot possibly be deduced
from p h ys ical laws. A great many sociological t echniqu e s have
been developed for ascertaining rel atio nship s between human
behavior patterns and the conditio ns of their occurrence, and
p o sitivi st-m in ded sociolo gists have m a de considerable contribu
tions along this line, but such techniques have still to s uppl ant
theoretical reflection on social life. Although p os itivi sts con
demn such theoretical reflectio n as no n-s cientific, without it
no verifiable s ocial problems could so much as be fo rmul ated .
At any rate, social phenomena are p redi ct ab le only within
very narro w limits, a fact that scarcely holds out very encour
aging prospects for subj ecting s o c i o lo gy to the p osit iv i st rules
of knowledge.
Another t arget of positivist criticism has b een the h is to ri
o s op h ic systems. Karl P opper's two books, The Open Society
and Its Enemies ( 1 945 ) and The Poverty of Historicism
( 1957 ) , co nstitute an all-out attack on "historicism," which
in Popper's usage denotes an app r o ach to s ocial phenomen a
that defines the main task of the relevant sciences as historical
pre di ction based on the discovery of historical laws, structure,
rhythms , etc. According to him, historical p re d ictio n is impos
si bl e , at least inso far as the cou r se of history depends on the
pro g res s of knowl edge (for if sci entifi c discoveries were pre di c
table, their contents would have to be known at the moment
th ey were predicted) . In particular, P opp er criticizes "hol
i s tic " interpretations of s ocial phenomena as "manifestations"
of gl ob al structures irreducible to their constituent parts . S u ch
int erp ret ati ons , characteristic of Hegel and Marx, are asso
ciated with techniques of social action inten de d to bring ab out
global revolutionary uph eaval s (holistic or utopian tech

niques ) rather than real advances achievable by gradual, step
by-step reforms. An authe n tic holistic technique is impossible,
for a "totality"-a sum of social features and relations-cannot
be studied scientifically ; science has to be selective, cannot
pro duce a " holistic " historiography. According to Popper, his
toriosophic systems are both co gnitively unprodu ctive (because
they deal with objects that cannot be studied scientifically ) and
socially harmful ( because they serve to justify totalitarian
utopias ) .
As can be seen, the attitude of logical empiricism toward
the social and historical sciences underwent one essential
change between Neurath's Empirical Sociology and Popper's
Poverty of Historicism. Hopes for an efficient technique of
predicting social phenomena gave way to pessimistic fear of
the consequences of alleged predictions , while real prediction
came to be regarded as imp o ssible . On the whole the empirical
approach to so ci al pheno m ena still remains in force, but fully
positivist social science has not got beyond the programmatic
stage-apart from numerous studies of the language of the so
cial sciences. Some of these are valuable becaus e they cast
l ight on methods used in those sciences, but none rep resents
an actual carrying out of the p ositivist program for the social
sciences.
The consequences of empiricism in axiology, more p articu
larly i n ethics, are obvious and have often been asserted by
champions of this doctrine. Experience does n ot disclose the
existence of a world of values or val'uational qualities that
could serve as an empirical foundation for value judgments.
Consequently, the l atte r , being neither emp irical nor tautologi
cal, are m eaningless . Moore's thesis that moral predicates
qualifying human behavior , t h o ugh differing from de scriptive
predicates, are apprehen ded intuitively and are no less self
evident than sense perc eption was rejected by the neo
positivists . This s choo l r e c o gni zed Moore's distinction but
denied the exis tence of a c o gnitive faculty spe cific al ly related
to valu e s . Valuations are n e ith er true nor false, may at most
be regarded as expressions of certain psychological states, may
tum out to be meaningless exclamations. Despite the Socratic

tradition, the so-called knowledge of values is not knowl e dg e
in any sense, and hence cannot be the object of controversy
nor supply matter for rationally formulated question s . It is
possible in ethics to argue rationally about whether given con
clusions follow from given premises. Nothing prevents us from
recognizing, for instance, that inferences can be drawn from
normative statements : the statement that one ought not to tell
lies implies that one ought not to praise a bad poem, even
though written by a friend. It is also possible to look for em
pirical premises in order to prove or disprove that a situation
descr ib e d in a normative statement actually
occurs in a given
case. ( For instance, we may ask whether corporal punish
ment in educational connections merely causes unnecessary
p ain or produces beneficial effects. ) But it is imposs ibl e to
argue ratio nally about whether something is a value or not-a
non-instrumental, autonomous value, that is, something more
than a means to an end. Ultimate valuational assumptions
c an only be arb itrary . Needless to say, a scientific sociology of
manners and cu s toms, a history of ethical theories, and a
psychology of morals are all perfectl y possible, but not a
scientific norm ative ethics. No science can tell us how we
ought to behave, only what means will achieve a give n end,
and no science can define those ends, sanction anything as
" good," condemn anyth ing as "evil . " Science is neutral in
rel ation to the world of values, and this neutrality is basic, has
nothing to do with the given stage of scientific development.
Like metaphysical questions, questio n s referring to values are
pseudo-questions.
6. Logical empiricism in Poland. We m entioned above that
logical empiricism pl ayed an im p o rta nt part in P ol is h philos o
phy in the p e rio d between th e two world wars. Polish l o gic al
positivism or, as Kazimierz Aj dukiewicz called it , "lo gistic
anti-rationalism, " developed to a great extent independently of
the Vienna Circle, though it had many contacts with it. The
Polish positivist tradition goes back to some late eighteenth
century anti-Kantians. It gave rise to an i m p orta nt intellectual
movement in the last decades of the nineteenth century, but
this movement played no essential part in the development of

the Polish version of logical empiricism. The first generation
of modern logicians mostly included pupils of Kazimierz
Twardowski ( 1 866-1 93 8 ) who, though not a positivist him
self, trained and encouraged them in detailed analysis of
philosophical language. Jan Lukasiewicz's work, in tum,
helped to arouse interest in symbolic logic. At an early date
Poland became one of the most active centers of modern logical
inquiry and has held this position to this day.
Among the pupils of Twardowski and founders of the so
called Lwow-Warsaw school, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz was per
haps the most closely related to Vienna Circle tendencies.
His purpose was to formulate a semantic version of various
epistemological problems, such that these could be analyzed
by logical means. His own view, which he defined as radical
conventionalism, was based on the conviction that sentences
that express our image of the world are determined by the
conceptual apparatus used in formulating them. A conceptual
app aratus is a language that in addition to a vocabulary and
syntactic rules is defined by deductive, axiomatic, and empiri
cal semantic rules. Such a language is " closed, " that is, cannot
be enriched without changing the meaning of all existing ex
pressions ; it is also cohesive, has no isolated parts, and all its
expressions can be linked together in meaningful wholes. Two
closed, cohesive languages contain reciprocally translatable ex
pressions only if they are accurate copies of each other in
every respect. If even one single expression in one language
has no equivalent in the other, the two languages are totally
untranslatable. Now, since our choice of conceptual apparatus
is arbitrary, all statements ( including empirical ones ) that
we are obliged to assert on the basis of one given apparatus
can be rejected-recognized as meaningless on the basis of a
different apparatus. In other words, no " facts" have a cogni
tively binding character in the sense of forcing us to assert or
deny any statement, since our image of the worl d is always
determined by the language in which it is formulated. When
we operate with one language, we have no way of asserting or
denying statements expressed in another language. Later
Ajdukiewicz abandoned this interpretation, having realized

that the conditions imposed on closed, cohesive languages can
not actually be met even by the artificial languages of the
deductive sciences. He retained, however, the view character
istic of logical empiricism that the proper way to solve philo
sophical problems is to give them the form of semantic ques
tions, which enables us to determine what is meaningful in
their content.
Tadeusz Kotarbinski (b. 1 88 6 ) can be regarded as really
belonging to this school only with reservations. Like the logical
empiricists, he is a radical nominalist in all domains of thought
and believes that the social and historical sciences, too, can be
pursued without "hypostases, " i.e. , in such a way that all th eir
statements are reducible to statements about things-the only
entities to which the term "existence" can be properly applied.
Kotarbinski is also related to the positivists by his conviction
of the value of modern logical instruments in settling episte
mological questions, and by his over-all empiricist orienta
tion. B ut his "reism, " i.e., the view according to which every
meaningful statement is a statement about physical bodies,
seems to go beyond the ontological neutrality characteristic of
the positivists.
The Lwow-Warsaw school played an important part in the
history of modern positivism thanks to Jan Lukasiewicz, crea
tor of multivalent logics, and Alfred Tarski (b. 1901 ) , who in
a way validated the semantic conception of truth and went
b eyond the purely syntactic approach to language. The m aj or
ity of the philosophers belonging to this group are character
ized by a considerably less extreme formulation of the positivist
standpoint than that of the Vienna Circle. The second genera
tion of this school was as a rule less concerned with formulat
ing over-all programs and pursued detailed investi gations in
the fields of logic and the methodology of science ; they are
only partly dependent on the positivist view, but broadly re
lated by their spirit of restraint, distrust of metaphysical solu
tions, and conviction as to the importance of linguistic analysis.
7. Operational methodology. In the United States, where
some of the founders of the Vienna Circle emigrated in the
Hitler period, the influence of this philosophical s tyle com

bined with the pragmatist tradition, now shorn o f its more
paradoxical implications. Still earlier the influenc e of b oth
currents can be discerned in the so-called "op er ation al "
methodology of science. W. Bridgman,
P. autho r of The
Logic of Modern Physics ( 1 927 ) , attempted to develo p an d
apply to the methodology of the physical sciences the neo
positivist formula : the meaning of a sentence is the meth od by
which it is verified. According to him, the meaning of a word
is determined by the set of operations intended to ascertain
whether the word in question refers to the given thing; the
meaning of a sentence is red ucible to the totality of the verify
ing operations. (This does not apply to "formal" propositions,
i.e., to the tautologies of the deductive sciences, which are
signs arranged according to syntactic rules. ) This view im
plies, in the spirit of pragmatism , that truth is not in d ependent
of the operations by which it is ascertained. No statement c an
be asc r ibed the "characteristic " of tr'Uth without referen ce to
the verifying operations. Physical magnitude is defined by
the set of measuring operations, physical number by the op era
tion of counting. But since the verifying operations may p ro
duce different results, varying with the given state of kn owl
edge, the same statement may be true or false, depe n di n g on
the cognitive situation and the nature of the ver i fyin g opera
tions. Operationalism was criticized on a number o f s cores,
including the inconvenience of its consequences. For i n stance,
one and the same magnitude or characteristic studied by dif
ferent methods of inspection and measurement cann o t be re
garded as identical ( since it is defined solely by thes e opera
tions ) , and hence, for example, we are not entitled to say that
we are d ealing with the same characteristic when we test in
telligence by two different methods, nor that we are dealing
with the same magnitude when we use two different methods
of measurement to compute astronomical distances. Moreover
this view implies that scientific assertions refer, strictly spea k
ing, to our experimental operations, not to the things su pp os ed
to be the objects of the experiment. However, operationali sm
raised one important methodological problem which ha s p roved
im po rtant t o s eve r al sciences : What conditions have t o b e ful

filled in order to make sure that applying different methods
do es not alter the obj ect investigated? Or, on what basi s do we
assert that we are dealing with the same object, when we use
different methods to inve stigate it? In all the historical sci
en c e s , and also in exp e riment al ps ychol ogy, this question turns
up and it cannot always be easily an sw ere d . Oper ationali s m
also tackled othe r que stio n s connected with the extent to
which an object of emp iri c al study is d epe n dent on the instru
ments used. On thi s score, the p a rtis a ns of this view benefited
from o l der conventionalist anal y s e s, which had shown that
science contains no " el e m en t ary " sentences, and that sc i e n tifi c
theories are not b as ed merely on collect io ns of facts, but that
the t ru th of scientific statem ents depends on the c oherence of
the s ys t e m to wh ic h they b e l on g and, more i m po rta n tly, that
a given set of facts may be accounted for by two in co mp atibl e
interpr et at ion s, between which it is impossible to choose on
th e basis of exp eri m e nt .
Another attempt i nspired by both logical e m p iri c i sm and
pragmatism is Charles W. Morris' s theory of signs. This theory
is ch ara c teri zed by an e m p iri cis t a ppro ach and the us e of
symbolic logic ; it draws ep i s temolo gical consequences from
the p ra cti c al , utilitarian fun ction of signs in interhuman com
mun ic ati o n . In addition to its s yntactic and semantic aspects,
the p ra g m a ti c aspect of I a nguage-i . e ., its e xp ress ive instru
mental functions-mu st be the obj ect of philosophical an al ys i s
within the domain of so-called me ta-scien ce . These investiga
tions d e al wi th specific extra-intellectual situations inv ol vin g
the u se of scientific symbols, and include in stituti on al situ a
ti ons im po rta nt in the s o ci al life of sci en ce . Logi c al an alys is
of the l e gitima c y of scientific pro cedures and e x istin g theoreti
cal structures d oe s not of it s el f a d e quately account for the
c og nit i ve situation in which scientific thi nk in g takes p l ac e .
Thus, Morris attempted to r e int rodu ce the g en e ti c approach
into epis t em olo gy, an approach that the positivist program had
ruled out.
8. Ideological aspects. Logical em pi ri ci s m has p layed a very
great role in the intell ectual culture of o u r day but has failed
to attain the aims that mattered most to it. While the positiv
ists were proclaiming the end "once and for all" of unveri
fiable metaphysical systems and speculative philosophy in gen
eral, new doctrines in flagrant contradiction to these ideals
have sprung up one after the other. Positivists see no more in
this development than evidence of human stupidity, not any
reflection on themselves. They are not seriously interested in
:finding out why the social results of their work are so insig
nificant, nor why people continue to ask questions that sci
ence cannot answer. At all events it is doubtful, in the light of
experience, that mankind is about to give universal recogni
tion to the kind of rationalism championed by the positivists.
For all that, the positivist critique of metaphysics has not
been entirely fruitless. Under its influence, most people have
come to believe that any and every effort to transform episte
mological or ontological assumptions into scientific asser
tions in the sense ascribed to statements of experimental or
deductive science is doomed to failure. Positivism has con
tributed a great deal to a change in philosophy's assessment
of its own cognitive status. Those who pursue investigations in
the fields of ontology, theoretical epistemology, historiography,
and anthropology tend to an ever increasing extent to believe
that their work is inseparable from interpretations reflecting
the pressure of valuational attitudes and opinions. In other
words, there is mounting awareness that philosophy is not in
the same epistemological situation as science, that it cannot
lay claim to scientific, technologically applicable, empirically
verifiable knowledge, but that it aims at a more meaningful
image of the world-in the humanistic, not the semantic sense
of "meaningful." This applies not only to ontological and epis
temological reflection, but to the historical or humanistic disci
plines, which the positivists lump together with metaphysics.
Today we are witnessing the gradual decline of logical em
piricism as a distinct philosophical school. Its adherents, in
conformity with their own program, most often direct their
interest to particular disciplines, mainly logic and methodol
ogy, and to questions that have been largely neutralized philo
sophically. The area of problems connected with the testability
LOGICAL EMPmICISM 193
of hyp o theses, the legitimacy o f i ndu ction, the empiric al

meaning of scientific terms, etc. , has clearly continued to
inspire reflection and controversy. However, these preoccu
pations do not con stitute a distinct philo s ophic al ( or a nti
philosophical ) " sch ool "-they have simply become a uni
versally recognized dis cipl in e that can to some extent be
practiced independently of one's philosophical preferences.
Symbolic logic has almo st entirely emancipated itself from
the n eo -p o sitiv ist cognitive program, and is practiced even by
men who profess metaphysical beliefs. Nor, for instance, does
the di sp u te between formal and psychological theories of
meaning involve do ctri nal co mm itment to l og ic al emp i ricism .
The influence of philosophical attitudes upon scientific work in
logic or s emanti cs is not essentially different from their in
fluence on other, older branches of knowledge. Use of rules
of verifiability in emp i rical sociology is no m ore linked with
p ositivism than is use of such rules in any other field of knowl
edge, though there als o ex ists a p ositiv is t a pproa ch to sociol
ogy, which is logic al ly independent of empiric al i nvest i gation
a n d progr a mm atical ly rules out any theory that cannot meet
the rigorous requ irements of experimental science.

It is not within our competence to answer the question
whether and to what extent lo gic al empiricists have influenced
the actual development of science. Be that as it may, their
reflections on methodology were never opposed until attempts
were made to procl aim logical em p iri ci s m the only kind of
philosop h y worth serious attention.
The as s ump tions of logi cal emp i ricism have been criticized
from the most various points of view. We shall confine our
selves to a few essential questio ns .
One target of c ri ti c ism has b e e n the criterion of "basic" as
d i s ti ngu i s hed from "technical" verifiability. This is a funda
mental point of the doctrine, because it prejudges the ques
tion whether it is at all poss i b le to formulate a usable criterion
of s c ie nt i fic mean i n gful ness . Cr i t i c s po i nt out that the positiv
ists define " basic" verifiability as conformity with certain rules
of logical syntax, b ut in formulating these rules they appeal to
the verifiability of expressions , thus begging the ques ti on .
However, the positivists have h ad an especially h ard time

defending the principle of verifiability itself as a criterion of
meaningfulness. What is the rule of verifiability, critics asked.
Since it is neither an empirical nor an analytic statement, it
must be a metaphysical one in the positivists' own "bad"
sense. In other words, the doctrine of logical empiricism has
a metaphysical thesis at its very foundation, and hence cannot
l ay claim to being more scientific than any other doctrine.
Positivists reply that the principle in question is not a thesis
but a definition, and hence need not meet the conditions to
which scientific assertions are subject.
However, this question-which deserves special attention
because it is central to the doctrine-is not elucidated by this
reply. The grounds are merely shifted . It is perfectly proper to
ask what reasons oblige us to accept such a definition of
meaningfulness. In the history of logical empiricism, veri
fiability has been defined in a great many, more or less rigor
ous ways ; depending on the formulation, the boundaries of
legitimate intellectual endeavor h ave been shifted now this
way, now that, and what was called "scientific" accordin g to
one definition did not deserve the name according to another.
What were the reasons behind so many shifting proclamations
as to what deserves the name of knowledge, what not? And
if such declarations are purely arbitrary, then what pra c tical
considerations justify them?
There is an answer to these objections, too. For it is possible
to formulate a rule tacitly observed in such analyses, accord
ing to which only those assertions will be regarded as cog
n itive or scientific that are or may become helpful to man
kind's practical activity-not in the sense of any sort of
influence on this activity ( for even the most fanciful meta
physics may influence human behavior) , but in the sense that
such assertions imply the actual effectiveness of certain modes
of behavior. This rule turns out to involve great difficulties
when we try to formulate it in a way that enables us to de
cide in every particular case whether we are dealing with an
"operational " statement or one o f no consequence. But even
if we succeeded in formulating it in the desired way, the
question of whether the ultimate decision has an arbitrary
valuational character would not be got rid of. For it is easy
to see that to define the efficiency or technical "operativeness"
of st atem ents as the measure of their meaningfulness, ad
missibility, or cognitive value is to m ake a valuational deci
sion within a specific cultural context. The latter may be domi
nant at the time the decision is m ade, but it cannot pretend
to possess absolute and transcendental value over all other
cultural contexts. We may recognize that "value" is that which
increases the store of energy available to mankind for its use,
but we cannot maintain th a t such a rule does not involve a
decision within the hierarchy of values. Thus, this whole anti
metaphysical doctrine with its theory of meaningful state
ments turns out to rest upon a given system of valuation, as
relative and as closely bound up with a specific cultural back
ground as any other.
It is obvious, for instance, that the accounts of mystical
states reported by an indivi dual convinced he has had personal
contact with the godhead are not "scientific" in the current
sense of the term. But we cannot decide whether they are
meaningful or have cognitive "value" before defining what
we call meaningful. If the area of meaningfulness is defined
by the more or less freely formulated rules applied in natural
science, or by th e rule of operativeness, or by technological
applicability, it is clear that the record of those mystical ex
periences will be meaningless. However, such a rul e is m erel y
one of a number of possible expressions of the trad itional
positivist attitude, which recognizes only those human efforts
measurable by utilitarian success and ascribes the dignity of
knowledge only to that with which "you can do som eth in g . "
In the li ght of such an attitude all m et aphy si c al statements
are o bvio us ly inconsequential , for from statements such as
"God is Three P ersons in One " or " Matter is the foundation
of Being," no inference can be drawn that would increase
any kind of technical effic ie ncy . It is permissible to take such
an attitude, but it is illegitim ate to assert that it is anything
more than an attitude, that is, a c erta in valuational perspec
tive w ith in which we place o ur environment. More p articu-
larly, we are . not entitled to assert-it would, moreover, be

contrary to other fundamental positivist assumptions-that
this attitude represents non-relative values, something of value
independent of human history, human needs, psychological
dispositions, logically arbitrary decisions. That which we decide
to recognize as cognitively valuable or that to which we agree
to apply the term "knowledge" is logically arbitrary and his
torically determined by the culture within which such deci
sions are made.
Logical empiricism, then, is the product of a specific cul
ture, one in which technological efficiency is regarded as the
highest value, the culture we usually call "technocratic." It is
a technocratic ideology in the mystifying guise of an anti
ideological, scientific view of the world, purged of value judg
ments. The fact that contemporary positivism is unable to
grasp its own relativity and dependence on specific cultural
values is perhaps of no special importance : after all, the same
is true of all ideologies, which assume that their own values
are absolute in contradistinction to all others, and by the same
token represent themselves as free of ideological elements,
solely concerned with efficient intellectual operation. There is
still another reason why this cannot be an objection. A cer
tain degree of blindness as to the absoluteness of one's own
values may be indispensable to extract the valuable qualities
from the world, the qualities whose value is believed to be the
highest. It is possible that in order to realize one's values one
m'ust have faith in their exclusive character. Radical historical
skepticism discourages practical action. Indeed, contemporary
positivism is an attempt to overcome historicism once and
for all : it separates all epistemological questions from genetic
questions and attempts to formulate rules governing the use
of words independently of the conditions under which they
came into being. This is why the elimination of genetic ques
tions from the theory of knowledge, and exclusive concen
tration on the logical validity of thinking-the features that
distinguish logical empiricism from empiriocriticism-are fun
damental points of this program. Most positivists believe that
science and human thinking generally can be completely neu-
tralized from a philosophic point of view, and that within the

area of experience so neutralized, to which no existential de
terminations are ascribed, "the scientific view" fulfills the
same conditions as Husserl's transcendental ego, i.e., makes
the criteria of the correctness of knowledge completely inde
pendent of the cultural, historical, psychological, and biologi
cal conditions under which this knowledge is achieved. Once
ontology has been neutralized, we have at our disposal an
absolute observational standpoint. As a result, logical empiri
cism is an optimistic philosophy, for it rejects by definition
the possibility of insoluble problems and rules out the agnos
tic attitude ( anything of which we might say ignorabimus
cannot be formulated as a question ) . It is an act of emanci
p ation from troublesome philosophical questions, which it de
nounces in advance as fictitious ; it also frees us of the need
to study history, which-since any philosophy worthy of the
name must be cumulative in character-must appear to those
professing this doctrine as a succession of barren, futile ef
forts, b asically unintelligible as to results, only very occa
sionally illuminated by a ray of common sense. The judg
ments passed by positivists on the philosophical systems of
the past as well as on contemporary metaphysical speculation
usually have the character of summary condemnations; they
are not based on study of the condemned doctrines, but on
ridiculing statements torn out of context. This will be clear
to anyone who has read works by Chwistek, Reichenbach,
Carnap, Ayer, and others.
In one respect, however, the positivists do give voice to the
ideological intentions that inspire their program, although
they do not relate their philosophical standpoint to them. All
of them have been convinced that their program is eminently
educational : it is a call to tolerance, moderation, restraint, and
responsibility for one's own words. Politically, the majority of
logical empiricists have been close to the Social Democrat posi
tion and favor parliamentary democracy; they have been
resolutely hostile to fascist and racist doctrines, and for the
most part also dislike communism. They have not, however,
been liberals in the traditional historical sense of the term,
i.e., they have not professed social Darwinism or Spencer's

social philosophy. They represent a humanitarian protest
against a world entangled in bloody conflicts, and are con
vinced that spreading the so-called scientific attitude is an ef
fective antidote to the madness of the ideologists. "The con
cept of 'truth' as something dependent upon facts largely
outside human control has been one of the ways in which
philosophy has inculcated the necessary element of humility.
When the check upon pride is removed, a further step is taken
on the road towards a certain madness-the intoxication of
power-which invaded philosophy with Fichte, and to which
modem men, whether philosophers or not, are prone. I am
persuaded that this intoxication is the greatest threat of our
time, and that any philosophy which, however unintention
ally, contributes to it, is increasing the danger of vast social
disaster." (Bertrand Russell)
This declaration is not exceptional. At least to some extent
the positivists are aware of the extra-cognitive functions
their philosophy performs and they approve of these. In line
with Russell's words, these functions must above all consist in
accustoming the human mind to accept the constraints of
publicly controllable circumstances where any and all con
victions are concerned. If such an attitude spread, the bene
ficial effects of scientism would be manifest at once : con
troversies to which scientific meaning cannot be ascribed
would disappear, and with them would go all conflicts, perse
cutions, and acts of intolerance stemming from such contro
versies. However, faith in the therapeutic power of the posi
tivi s t ideology implies certain assumptions. It is possible to
assume that submissiveness to ideological pressures and fa
naticisms is merely a kind of error or ignorance, th at it de
rives from rashly ascribing meaning to sentences that in fact
are similar to real questions only in grammatical structure,
and admit of no real answers. Such an assumption , which
tacitly constructs a model of a perfectly rational "human
nature" c ap able of evil solely because of defective th inki ng,
is of course too naive to figure in the positivist program,
were it only by implication. We may imagine another, less
extreme assumption that might suffice to justify the positivist

hop es , namely that the pressure of rationalism in the sense
stated above (rationalism as a rule recommending that we
regard the degree to which a statement is justified as the
measure of the force of conviction with which it is asserted
-in accordance with Locke's saying) may be strong enough
to increase the probability at least of doing away with fanatic
and intolerant attitudes, and this thanks to gradually increas
ing awareness that all human convictions have a coefficient
of uncertainty. Such a view does not necessarily imply the
belief that human behavior is completely determined by the
given state of knowl e dge, but only the belief that human
nature includes features favorable to development in the di
rection of increasing rationality. This latter assumption is not
as flagrantly naive as the previous one, but it would seem
hard to build upon it hopes for the success of the positivist
program until one has formed an opinion as to the real
sources of violent ideological conflict and the "right" to in
tolerance a given model of truth carries with it. If, as we have
good reason to think, ideological conflicts are the intellectual
forms assumed by conflicts of interest not in themselves purely
ideological, then hope for the effectiveness of scientistic ther
apies has no secure foundation. We should rather suppose
that ideologies must be fo u ght by ideological means, not by
appeals to restraint in the matter of conviction or to s il ence
in the face of questions that do not meet the conditions of
meaningfulness elaborated by the l ogi cal syntax of language.
In one respect, however, the positivist program has a value
th at can hardly be questi o ned . Although the expectation that
it can serve as an effective antidote to social dangers stemming
from the most various ideological conflicts seems utopian, we
are tod ay in a better position than ever before, thanks to more
exact definitions of the scientific attitude and the scientific
admissibility of assertions, to counteract the i deologi c al misuse
of science. In o ther words, a b il ity t o g ive a relatively good
definition of the boundaries o f scientific validity-an ability
developed largely thanks to the positivists-is of great impor
tance when we must criticize the claims o f doctrinaires who
invoke the authority of science in support of their slogans.

The most glaring example is the attempts that have been made
to justify racism on the basis of anthropology. The possibility
of demonstrating the hopelessness of such undertakings is not
without importance, although it is clear that it cannot deci
sively influence the outcome of social conflicts. The sheer
rigor of the positivist rules has awakened intellectuals to their
own responsibilities, and in my opinion have been of practical
aid in counteracting attempts to blur the boundaries between
the position of the scientist and the obligations of the be liev er.
Precisely because they add up to a kind of scientific ethics,
these rules have never lost their timeliness.
Conclusion
The purpose of this book has been to present a few doctrines

important in the history of positivism and to show that each of
them is an aspect of the cultural background out of which it
arose. Each phase of p ositiv ist thought is a specific variation
of the dominant intellectual style. At the same time, ho wev er,
a diachronic continuity is clearly disclosed when we compare
successive versions of positivism; thanks to this continuity the
idea of treating the history of positivism as a distinct whole is
meaningful. In the first chapter we tried to characterize
( though this inevitably involved a certain de gree of arbitrari
ness) the thematic features of this whole. This leads to the
question whether positivism also discloses cultural features
justifying its treatment as a distinctive whole, or whether we
are dealing with a number of traditional philosophical themes
that were in each case adapted to the needs of a given period.
I hesitate to give a clear-cut answer to this question, for it
involves certain difficult historiosophic decisions. The ques
tion is all the more vexatious because the meaning the posi
tivists themselves ascribe to their anti-metaphysical bias has
been interpreted, as we have seen, in various ways. This is
best illustrated by comparing the rules given by Wittgenstein
with those given by Carnap. It is one thing to s ay "What we
cannot speak of we must be silent about," something else again
to say that metaphysics should be treated like poetry. After
all , poetry is not silence, for all that i t cannot be called "true"
or "false" in the semantic sense. Wittgenstein's rule urges 'us
to banish whatever cannot be expressed as a logical sentence
from our image of the world, more generally from all intel-
lectual concern. Carnap's merely warns us to distinguish be

tween meaningful and unverifiable statements, to treat the
latter as purely expressive or lyrical utterances; he urges us
not to confuse something that merely expresses with some
thing that also has meaning, and hence to refrain from repre
senting the emotional gestures involved in metaphysical, re
ligious, or valuational verbalizations as authentic convictions
whose rightness or wrongness it is possible to dispute. When
the anti-metaphysical prohibition goes no farther than a defi
nition of knowledge that automatically gives extra-scientific
status to philosophical assertions, the practice of metaphysics
becomes, so to speak, legal according to positivism, so long as
we do not ascribe so-called cognitive value to such reflections.
In this case, positivism cannot, strictly speaking, fulfill the
ideological tasks mentioned at the end of the preceding chap
ter; that is, it cannot, if it is to be consistent, have a destruc
tive effect on ideological attitudes, it can only deny them
scientific justification, truth or falsity in the scientific sense.
The majority of positivists are strongly inclined to follow
Wittgenstein's more radical rule : they do not simply reject the
cognitive claims of metaphysics, they refuse it any recognition
whatever. The second, more moderate version is also repre
sented, however, and according to it a metaphysics that makes
no scientific claims is legitimate. Philosophers who, like Jas
pers, do not look upon philosophy as a type of knowledge but
only as an attempt to elucidate Existenz, or even as an appeal
to others to make such an attempt, do not transgress the
positivist code. The latter attitude is nearly universal in
present-day existentialist phenomenology. Awareness of fun
damental differences between "investigation" and "reflection,"
between scientific "accuracy" and philosophic "precision,"
between "problems" and "questioning" or "mystery" is ex
pressed by all existentialist philosophers, Heidegger as well as
Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel.
More than that, the newest theological tendencies, particu
larly the Protestant ones, take cognizance of the positivist
critique, and their interpretations of the world meet its re
quirements, at least those of its more moderate formulation.
CONCLUSION 203
They do not try to prove th at the t heol ogi c al conception of

the world is a description of facts, a l egiti m ate deduction, or
a construction of hypotheses ; they ( P aul Tillich, John Hick)
recognize that it has interpret ative functions thanks to which
the facts take on sp eci al me ani n g as constituents of a pur
poseful order organ ize d by Providen ce . According to them,
this kind of non-emp irical meaningfulness is like other
common-sense interpretations that are independent of theol
ogy, such as the realist view of the physic al world.
Other writers make use of the more relaxed rules of mean
ingfulness in Wittgenstein's later works, and argue that the
rules governing the use of theological terms are sufficiently
defined to meet the conditions of m eaningfuln e ss no less com
pletely than emp iric al terms. The last-mentioned kind of apol
ogetics goes back to views that assign equal co gnitiv e status
to science and metaphysics, and thus violate even the mod
erate pos itivist injunctions. The former kind, however, may
b e regarded as markin g an essential change in attitude, and
i mpl ies parti al agreement with p o s i tivist criticisms. This atti
tude brings to mind Pascal, who defended the Chri sti an re
ligion while su bscribing to the rational criti qu e of Scholasti
cism and recognizing its results as irreversible; therefore he
resorted to practical arguments trying to pe rs uade others that
they must accept beliefs that he himself agreed c anno t be
proved on rational grounds.
If the positivist slogans advanced over and over agai n for a
few centuries could be reduced to this temp ered version of the
anti-metaphysical program , positivism would merely express
s cien ce' s continually renewed attempt to constitute itself, dif
feren tiating itself in tum from th eol o gy , religio n , p olitic s , and
art; it would be a natural secretion of sci ence , its growing
awareness of its own irreducible pos ition in social life. The
radical version has an entirely different cultural meaning. It
is an attempt to consolidate s ci e nc e as a self-sufficient activity,
which exhausts all the po ss ib l e ways of appropriating the
wo rld intellectually. In this radic al po sit ivis t view, the re alities
of the world-which can, of course, be interpreted by natural
sc ience, but which are in addition an object of m an's "existen-
tial curiosity," a source of fear or disquiet, an occasion for

commitment or rejection-if they are to be encompassed by
reflection and expressed in words, can be reduced to their
empirical properties. Suffering, death, ideological conflict, so
cial clashes, antithetical values of any kind-all are declared
out of bounds, matters we can only be silent about, in obe
dience to the principle of verifiability. Positivism so under
stood is an act of escape from commitments, an escape masked
as a definition of knowledge, invalidating all such matters as
mere figments of the imagination stemming from intellectual
laziness. Positivism in this sense is the escapist's design for
living, a life voluntarily cut off from participation in anything
that cannot be correctly formulated. The language it impose s
exempts us from the duty of speaking up in life's most im
portant conflicts, encases us in a kind of armor of indifference
to the inefjabilia mundi, the indescribable qualitative data of
experience.
What I am particularly concerned with, however, is to bring
out a certain interpretative ambiguity or, perhaps, a certain
hard-to-trace boundary line separating two possible interpre
tations of the positivist assumptions. I mentioned earlier the
scientistic ideology that would prescribe a kind of intellectual
discipline as a preventative of arbitrary thinking. In the words
of Bertrand Russell quoted earlier, such a discipline imposes
humility on the human mind and subjects it to facts. And yet,
whether this ideological formula can be vindicated depends on
whether we can free the positivist code of dangers involved in
the pragmatic interpretation of truth-in other words, on
whether we can renounce metaphysics irrevocably, without
leaving room for its justification, not on the ground of its
"truth" but of its "utility."
Let me give a simple illustration. Stanislaw Brzozowski,
commenting on Avenarius's philosophy in Ideas, pictured it
as an ideology of despair, a dramatic confession by the phi
losopher that the true, the good, and the beautiful are not
"elements" of experience but "characters." Unlinked to ex
perience in any one-to-one correspondence, they are rooted
in socially conditioned modifications of experience, and in
CONCLUSION 205
every case are "someone's" truth, good, or beauty; what is

regarded as true or false, good or evil, is determined by vari
ous circumstances connected with the ecological situation of
the organism ; truth is an attitude just like recognition of a
given experiential complex as pleasant or 'unpleasant.
According to Brzozowski, this epistemology conceals a
tragic renunciation of human pride, which Avenarius does
not state explicitly because to do so would be incompatible
with his ascetic style. Irr ational external circumstances deter
mine what we are supposed to regard as the true or the good;
cognitive values have been reduced to the level of ephemeral,
changeable experiences of pleasure or pain, which cannot be
the object of argumentation. Reduced to a biological reaction,
the world of moral values collapses along with the alleged
eternity, "objectivity," or autonomy of aesthetic values. On
this score the note of resignation in Avenarius's philosophy
coincides with Nietzsche's nihilism ; with this difference, how
ever, that in the face of the destruction of all traditional
values, Avenarius does not attempt to create his own scale of
values, but is content to lay bare the critical point human
self-knowledge has reached.
It might be s aid that this is not an interpretation of positiv
ism but rather of naturalism or pragmatism, more generally of
any doctrine that programmatically reduces the account of
cognitive functions to an account of biological behavior, and
thus makes pointless any question concerning "truth" in
the usual sense. This was exactly how Husserl interpreted
nineteenth-century positivism, however. He, too, saw it as
symptomatic of cultural crisis, as a theory that reduces human
life to animal forms of appropriating the world, and that rules
out all possibility of ever encountering truth. This was why he
set out in search of certain knowledge; the purpose of his
transcendental reduction is to rediscover the irreducibly primi
tive domain lost sight of by positivists and evolutionists, where
doubt is impossible when the content of experience no longer
depends on specific biological or historical situations. Thus
Husserl interpreted evolutionist and biology-oriented positiv
ism in the same sense as Brzozowski, although Husserl, less
sensitive to the non-philosophical causes of the crisis, believed

it could be overcome by philosophical means, and devoted bis
lifelong labors to this task.
The question arises : Is the whole evolutionist current of
positivism, the reduction of knowledge to a biological instru
ment of adaptation, touched off by the Darwinian revolution
but already rooted in Hume's critique, merely one variant of
positivist thought-a modification, an aberration, a deviation,
perhaps an accident? Or could it be that the constitutive, the
essential core of positivism contains something that leads in
evitably to such biological relativization, for all that one and
another variety of positivism fail to draw this dangerous con
sequence?
It is well known, of course, that some versions of positivism,
especially logical empiricism, are not concerned with the ge
netic conditions of knowledge and concentrate their efforts on
analyzing the procedures and results of science. This version
of positivism never asks what are the origin and the use of
metaphysical beliefs, but defines valid cognition in such a
way as to rule out metaphysical investigation. It also defines
the conditions of legitimate experience, rejecting or ruling out
questions concerning its ontological status. Tarski's legaliza
tion of the semantic notion of truth, though important in the
history of logical empiricism, does not change this situation,
for it refers to the relation obtaining between linguistic signs
and elements of experience and does not prejudge or even
raise the question concerning the metaphysical meaning of
experience itself.
At the same time such philosophical neutralizing of experi
ence does not make the question concerning its origin mean
ingless. What follows from it is merely that assertions that
imply a causal relation between cognitive contents and a
"thing in itself" or a "spiritual substance" are meaningless.
Therefore, if the question is nonetheless put, the only possible
positivist answer to it is the naturalistic one : knowledge is
biological beh avior. Such an answer implies the denial of
truth in any transcendental sense and paralyzes all possible
faith in experience or reason conceived of as capable of dis-
CONCLUSION 207
closing to us something of "the world's qualities." All con

temporary positivists are convinced that valuational predicates
have no experiential counterparts ; as for predicates character
izing logical values ( "true," "false " ) , they are supposed to
refer not to things but only to sentences, and hence their
situation ap pears different from the others, for here these
predicates are inapplicable ( one cannot ask : are things truly
true?) .
This, however, is merely a verbal distinction : the traditional
philosophic question concerning the authenticity or the limits
of authenti city of knowledge is not nullified by the limited
applicab ility of the adjective "true. " From the positivist stand
point, this question requires certain distinguos. There are ways
-not perfect, but fairly effective ways-of distinguishing be
twe en kno wledge and error within the limits of compelling
experience, but any question referring to the totality of ex
perience is m eaningless. In other words : the epistemological
problem in the strict sense cannot be solved, and hence (or
because of this) it is not a problem. Since it refers to the ob
j ect of knowledge as a whole, i . e . , refers to "all," it is a meta
physical p roblem in the positivist sense of the term.
This is why, according to the c anons of this philosophy,
genetic questions concerning knowledge can be formulated
only as psychological questions ; in contradistinction to the
illusions of "correct" perception, we always reduce "correct
nes s " to agreement among many human subjects as to their
perception s, and we cannot go beyond this ontologically neu
tral area . Every answer to the question concerning the reasons
for such intersubjective agreement ( "Why do we agree on a
great num ber of perceptions?" ) must in the end refer to
c hara cteristics common to all members of the human species.
The mo ment genetic questions make their appearance, positiv
ist natural ism is transformed into a biological interpretation
of k n owledge and cannot avoid such rel ativization. This makes
it possible to preserve the strict rul es governing the use of the
terms "true" and " false," but they must now refer to the
human species; a considerable degree of invariability is as
cribed to truth but its transcendental meaning is denied.
Many contemporary positiv ists reject this consequence and

make use of logical values as though they had a transcenden
tal meaning, but the pragmatist interpretation lies in wait for
those who are less restrained in their questioning. In this case
restraint does not reflect positivist radicalism, but a halfhearted
positivist attitude. The least restrained positivist-Avenarius
is the most radical. His neutralizing of experience is at the
same time liquidation of the :fictitious "inner essence" within
which the "outside" world supposedly manifests, discloses, or
subj ectivizes itself. By the same token the subject-object rela
tion becomes the relation " nervous system-environment," and
the whole epistemological problem becomes biologic al , while
the value "truth" is only a particular biological instance of
how the human species interprets its experiences.
The idea I should like to formulate as a result of these re
flections is as follows. Positivism, when it is r adical , renounces
the transcendental meaning of truth and reduces logical val
ues to features of biolo gical behavior. The rejection of the
possibility of synthetic judgments a priori-the fundamental
act constituting positivism as a doctrine-can be identified with
the reduction of all knowledge to biological resp onses ; induc
tion is merely one form of the conditioned reflex, and to ask,
Under what conditions is induction legitimate? is to ask, Un der
what conditions is the ac q u isiti on of a given reflex biologically
advantageous? All so - ca l led generalizing functions and the for
mulating of scientific hypotheses serve merely to increase or
imp r o ve o'ur store of condi tioned reflexes, and there are no
such things as necessary truths, i.e., truths that, accord ing to
the old metaphysicians, could tell us what the wo rld "must
be, " rather than what it in fact is. (Needless to say, the very
question concerning " necessary" features of the world is
meaningless from the p os itivist v iewp o in t . ) Accordin g to
Mach's theory, science is a n extension of animal experience
and has no other meaning than the totality of experiences on
which it is based ; but in contrast to anim al em piric ism it
operates with a system of shorthand notations thanks to which
connections between the p h e n omen a we discover can be
handed down to posterity. This is a distinctive characteristic
CONCLUSION 209
of the human species, which enables it to benefit from past

intellectual and technological achievements.
Now a question arises that positivists rarely ask themselves
and that cannot really concern them : How can we account
for the peculiar fact that over many centuries human thought
has ascribed to "Reason" the ability to discover "necessary"
features in the world, and for so long a time failed to see that
these features are figments of the imagination? Whence comes
this desire for a "metaphysical certainty" that can be gratified
only fictitiously, by an illusory, purely sentimental feeling of
certainty?
Positivists confronted with questions of this kind are satis
fied to give a purely epistemological answer : like all allegedly
metaphysical riddles, the whole problem of necessary truths
results from the abuse of words, from grammatical inertia
(hypostatizing abstract terms, substantializing verbs and ad
jectives, etc.-Hobbes said the last word on this subject) . In
short, according to the positivists, we are dealing with an er
ror. We shall not inquire here whether it really is an error.
We shall confine ourselves, in conclusion, to the following
observations :
If non-analytic knowledge is only the sum total of the in
dividual experiences on which it is based and man's cognitive
functions are distinguished only by his ability to record ex
periences, store them, and hand them down to posterity, then
his stubborn aspiration to "necessary" knowledge must obvi
ously be dismissed as a futile longing for a non-existent epis
temological paradise. The enormous efforts made in the
history of culture to discover this paradise were wholly chimeri
cal. Nonetheless the vast amounts of energy squandered in
these explorations and the extraordinary tenacity with which
they were carried on are worth pondering, all the more be
cause the explorers were perfectly aware of the technological
inconsequence of their efforts. After all, what seventeenth
century writers called "moral certainty"-i.e., conditions un
der which we may recognize the truth of a given judgment
although our reasons for doing so have no absolute character
-is entirely sufficient in scientific thought. From the point of
view of applied knowledge, the desire for an epistemological

absolute, i.e., "metaphysical certainty, " is fruitless, and those
in quest of this certainty were perfectly aware of the fact.
And yet, we repeat, philosophy has never given up its attempt
to constitute an autonomous "Reason, " independent of tech
nological applications and irreducible to purely recording
functions.
Even if this attempt could be accounted for by the mere
misuse of words ( which seems highly unlikely ) , the very fact
that it has been made again and again would be evidence of
some sort of intellectual degeneracy in the human species. For
how else can we interpret these persistent yet fruitless efforts?
What gave rise to this orgy or intellectual debauch, which has
been practiced for so many centuries and is still being prac
ticed? Ought we not to suspect that the "Reason" that aspired
to m ake itself independent of empirical data and to discover
its own domain is some sort of cancerous tissue that has lost
interest in its proper, its biologically useful, instrumental mis
sion, and has kept on growing at the expense of genuine vital
needs? What else can be the meaning of the assertion that we
are dealing with an error, a mistake, an abuse or misuse of
words?
If it is true that the quest for "metaphysical certainty" is by
defin ition cognitively fru itless ( an d it is certainly biologically
fruitless, at least in the sense that it does not increase the
technological effectiveness of the species ) , we are comp elled
to conclude that man's intellectual life is evidence of his bio
logical decadence-a conclusion that accords with the extremer
versions of the so-called philosophy of life.
Obviously, another hypothesis is possible. We may imagine
that man's specifically "rational" life-i.e., his efforts to estab
lish the auto nomy of " reason"-is evidence of man's participa
tion in another existential order than the one in which his
body and animal needs p a rticipate. Then everything that is
scientifically fruitful, and hence technologically useful, every
thing that c an in one way or another be reduced to articulated
conditioned reflexes, would belong among the biological func
tions, modified only by inherited elements-in accordance with
CONCLUSION 21 1
Hume and Mach. On the other hand, everything that stems

from other efforts and interests, all aspirations to "transcen
dental" knowledge, we would be obliged to regard as the re
sult of our p articip ation in s om e non-animal world, in chro n ic
oppo s ition to the other. In acco rdance with Bergs on' s doc
trine, scientific and an aly tic i ntelligenc e would be a functional
extension of organic efficiency, wh ile autonomous "Rea son "
( as the facul ty of non-discursive intuition or of discove rin g
m et ap hy sical truth) wo uld not b e an extension or surface
layer or i ns trument of this o r gan ic efficiency , but an antago
nistic power . In o the r words, we would b e compel l ed to as
su me that our biolo gi cal life and our m et aph y s ical explora
tio n s spri ng from two incom p ati ble and ev en hostile existential
sources, or, to put it concisely, that the phy sical world is a
kind of m aliciou s joke, a trick pl ayed on 'us by some god or
demon, while we, the victims of this j oke , suffer all th e con
sequences of simult an e ous ly and inevitably b el ongi n g to hos
tile worlds, the conse qu ences of dual citizenship in two coun
tries at odds with e a ch other in a state of protracted warfare.
This is roughly the Manichaean do ctri n e , which can per
fectly well be formul a ted without recourse to rel ig io us ideas.
Such an alternative is not enc ouraging It is bard to choose
.
between an image of m an as th e result of evolutionary deca

den ce and the other image, in whi ch he must be looked upon
as made up of two ha lves that do not really fit and cannot
p oss ibl y be h armonized Such a ch oic e of course, is not dic
. ,
tated to us by any scientific considerations ; for the time b e ing

it remains at the level of purely ph il os op h ic reflection, and
he nce from the positivis t viewpoint, can be set aside like any
,
other m etaphys ic a l dilem m a. But from the observational

st andpoin t to which pos it ivism a s sign s an ideolo gi cal function
in our pre se nt historical situation, the quest ion takes on real
ity. From this st andpoi n t p o si tivi st criticism is a r eje cti on of
,
"Reason" so understood, and hence is inev it abl y an animaliza

tion of the cognitive effort. But this criticism is u n able to
accou nt satisfactorily for the ex is tenc e of its o p p os ite, which
it tre at s as mere "error," and henc e demands no furth e r
interpretation.
Now, several centuries of positivist thought-particularly

its critiques of synthetic judgments a priori, of the validity of
induction, of "essentialist" metaphysics, and of value judg
ments-have given non-positivists an awareness of the prob
lems such as can no longer be reversed or concealed. We are
not compelled to accept this critique in the sense that it re
duces every metaphysical investigation and quest for certainty
to mere "error" ; but we must take cognizance of one of its
results, namely, that this technologically useless intellectual
effort to attain to Being must once and for all renounce claims
to "scientific" status. This result, as I have said before, may
be regarded as almost universally accepted. Finally, we must
under this assumption recognize that when we try to justify
our metaphysical investigations or at least to account for them,
we are confronted with the alternative outlined above : either
"Reason" is a cancerous tissue in a sick species, or, within
the physical world and the imperatives of our bodily nature,
is an alien body originating in another world. The philosophi
cal work of our day has found itself caught-to a great extent
under the influence of positivist criticism-between the phi
losophy of life and the lurid Manichaean vision.
Index
Abstract concepts, 6-7 critique of "introjection," 106-10;

Activism, 165 Critique of Pure Experience, 104-
Adaptation, 118 6; disciples, 102; Ideas, 204; ''vital
Agnosticism, 99 series," 104
Ajdukiewiez, Kazimierz, 1 30, 1 37,
1 87, 1 8 8-89 Bacon, Francis, 12, 78
Alchemy, 19, 54 B acon, Roger, 1 2-13
America, 1 74; contribution to phi- Beccaria, Cesare, 81
losophy, 149-50 Behaviorism, 1 83-85
Analytical judgments, 15 Beliefs, irrational, 173
Analytical philosophy, 169-70 Bentl1am, Jeremy, 79-80, 81
Animal world, 52 Bergson, Henri, 75, 76, 1 22, 1 27, 1 2 8 ,
Anthropology, 192, 200 2 1 1 ; conventionalism, 1 42 ; Le Roy,
Anthropomorphic notions, 1 13 130; positivism, 1 5 6-57
Anti-individualism, 68 Berkeley, George, 27-28, 29, 31, 34,
Aristotelian ( s ) , 17, 20; categories, 1 1 8, 1 24, 1 26
1 3 ; metaphysics, 15; physics, 1 6 Bernard, Claude, 71-76; Comte, 71-
Aristotle, 154; categories for under- 72, 74
standing the world, 155; nature, 12 Biological sciences, 56, 71; positiv-
Artistic creation, 64 ism, 71-72, 87
Astrology, 1 9, 54 Biology, 56
Astronomy, 47, 52, 54, 55 , 9 1 ; nomi "Blanquism," 123-24
nalists, 1 5 5 ; positive stage, 56; pre Bogdanov, A. A., 123
dictions, 58-59 Bolsheviks, 123
Astrophysics, 5 1 Boyle-Mariotte's law, 58
Atheism, 22, 28, 65 Brazil, 47
Atomists, II Bridgman, P. W., 190
"Attraction," 28 Brzozowski, Stanislaw, 204, 205
Augustine, Saint, doctrine of grace, B uridan, Jean, 16
17
Auguslinianism, 16 Calculation, 5 4
Austria, 174. See also Vienna Cambridge University, 174
Authority : Comte, 49 ; secular-spir- Capital, 71
itual, 6 1 , 62 Carnap, Rudolf, 174, 1 77, 178, 1 8 1 ,
Autrecourt, Nicolas d ', 14-15 1 97, 201-2
Avenarius, Richard, 1 02, 103-10, 1 1 1 , Cartesianism, 26, 27, 56, 158
1 14-16, 122, 124, 149, 1 77, 208; Castes, 60
Catholicism : Comte, 62, 63 ; conven D 'Alembert, 42-43

tionalism, 141; Le Roy, 142-4 3 ; Darwin, Charles, 71, 87, 1 1 8-19, 198,
modernist French movement, 130 206
Causality, 15, 25, 1 17, 120, 125; Deductive reasoning, 54, 171
Comte, 67 ; Hume, 36-3 8 ; occa Denmark, 174
sionalists, 26 ; understanding, 35 Descartes, Rene, 22-25, 158
Cause : concept of, 36; -effect rela- Desp otis m, Enlightenment a nd , 44
tionship, 13, 3 3-34 Determinism, 74, 16 1
Chemistry, 54, 56, 9 1-92; positive Dewey, John, 163, 164
s t age , 5 6-5 7 Differentiation, 90
Christianity, 2 1 , 203 Di l t h ey s chool, 1 84
Church. See Catholicism and Reli· Dingler, Hugo, 130, 134, 144
g io n Disso l ution, 89
Church-State separation, 14 Divine Will, 14
Chwi stek, Leon, 197 Dogmatism, 159
Cicero, 62 Dualism, 1 06, 108, 109, 1 63
Classes, theory of, 171 Dubislav, M., 174
Classification, principle, 75. See also Du Bois-Reymond, Emil, 120
Comte Duhem, Pierre, 1 1 4,
1 30, 1 3 1 , 1 3 3 ,
Co-existence, 50, 96 1 3 9 , 1 40, 1 42; Physics of a Be
Cognition, 3, 1 16, 124, 125, 166; bio liever, 142
logical interpretation, 156; James,
157, 158; methods, 171; principle Economy, principle of, 1 1 0-14
of economy, 1 2 1 ; scientific, 1 1 8 Ein st ein , Albert: theory of rel at iv-
Communism, 197 ity, 1 30
Comte, Auguste, 1 , 43, 45-46, 102; Empirical d ata, 9
biography, 46-48; classifications, Empirical k nowle d ge, 22, 23, 24-25
59�0 ; critics, 64, 96; disciples, 45, Empiri cal reality, 6
46, 47; doctrine, 68; history, 64; Empiricism, 167, 171; English, 1 70;
influ ence, 68; Law of the Th ree Enlightenment, 30; logical, 166
States, 5 1-52; marriage, 47; ma (see also Logic al empiricism) ;
terialism, 64; mental illness, 45, 47; Mill, 78, 79; Renaissance, 17
popularizers, 65; rel i g ion of h u Empiriocriticism, 101-3, 1 1 0, 1 2 1 -27 ;
manity, 45, 6 1 �4; Saint-Simon, 46; conventionalism, 129, 140-42; fe a
s cience reform, 5 1-59; social re tnres, 1 2 6 ; logical empiricism, 172-
form, 48-5 0 ; sociology reform, 59- 74, 196; pragmati sm, 160; s ubj ec
61; thought, results of, 6�9; t i v is m, 1 23
works, 47 Ency clop ed i sts, 1 55
Concepts, 120-2 1 , 124; validity, 114
Energy, conservation of, 7 1
Contiguity, time-space, 32
Engels, Friedrich, 124, 1 26
Co ntingency, 25
England, 47, 49, 86, 174; empiricism,
Contradiction, principle of, 14
170; philosophers, 75; political
C onv entio nalism (ists) , 1 7 9 ; Cathol-
thought, 79; pragmatism, 1 65
icism, 141 ; characteristics, 129;
Enlightenment, 49, 76, 79; beliefs,
consequences, 144-47; criticisms,
1 36-41 ; in France, 1 30-3 1 ; funda
43, 8 1 ; characteristics, 42 ; enemies,
mental idea, 129-30; hypotheses, 44 ; Hume, 38; positivism, 28-30,

1 3 1-36; ideologies, 141-44; l ead in g 43 ; totalitarian utopias, 6 8
idea, 1 29-3 1 ; simplicity, 1 37-3 8 Environment, 107 ff., 1 1 6 ; truths, 1 5 6
Copernicus, 16, 5 6 ; theory, 1 3 5 , 155 Epistemology, 101, 103, 106, 1 10,
Counter-Reformation, 17 141 ; genetic approach, 1 9 1 ; infer
Cuvier, Georges, 54, 59 ences, 1 1 1 ; theoretical, 192
INDEX 215
Essence, 3 , 25 Genetic problems , 1 01-2

Ethics, 81, 96; empiricism, 186-87; Geometry, 25, 28, 43 , 79, 1 17, 135-
scientific , 106, 199; transcendental, 36, 182; Euclidean system, 136
83 Germany, 130, 149 ; lo gical empiri
Euclid, Elements, 23 cism, 174; philosophy, 120, 149;
Europe, 5, 18-19, 121 ; pragm atism, tradition , 102; writers, 76
1 65 Gobine au, Joseph, 97
Events, predicting, 58-59 God, 17, 21, 25, 92, 160; existence,
Evolution, 8 8-89; theory of, 51, 59, 35; proof, 24; occasionalists, 26
71, 87, 89 Godwin, William, 81
"Existential curiosity," 203-4 Graz, 1 14
Existentialism, 1 , 181, 197, 202; judg Greece, Ancient, 56
ments, 24; philosophers, 202
Experience, 1 1 , 108-9, 171 ; Critiqlle Haeckel, Ernst, 9 8
of Pllre Experience, 104-6; data Happiness, 8 1 , 84; defined, 82
of, 1 1 , 162; flux of, 162; neutraliz Hegel, Georg, 67, 1 6 1 , 185
ing, 208; ordering, 6; positivism, Hegelianism, 149, 164
177-7 8 ; primacy of, 120-2 1 ; Heidegger, Martin, 76, 1 8 1 , 202
"p ure, " 1 0 1 , 103, 105 ; concept of, Heinz, 103
114 Heliocentrism, 16
Experiment, 54, 105 Helmholtz, Hermann, 9 8
Bxperimentalism-nominalism, 13 Helvetius, Claude, 8 1
Herbart, Johann, 1 12, 1 1 8
Fact : atomic, 175 ; concept of, 1 0 3 , Hick, John, 203
113, 131; conventionalists, 1 39 ; Historical prediction, 1 85
p r a c t i c a l - th eoretical distinction, Historicism, 1 85, 197
133; scientific, 132; laws, 145 Historiography, 192
Faith, 19, 92, 143 ; Comte, 64-65; Historiosophical systems, 43; posi
-knowledge, 20; nominalism, 15; tivism, 1 85-86
pragmatism, 160; -reason separa History : Comte, 64, 67; organic-
tion, 14, 36--37 critical epochs, 48-49
Family, 6 1 , 63 Hitler, Adolf, 190
Fanaticism, 173 Hobbes, Thomas, 155, 209
Fascism, 1 65, 197 Holistic techniques, 1 86
Fechner, G ustav, 1 1 8 "How to Make Our I d eas Clear,"
Fichte, J ohann, 198 150, 153
Fourier, Fran1;ois, 54 Human species, characteristics, 208,
France, 46, 48, 49, 129 ; Catholic 209
thought, 130; conventionalism, Hume, David, 30-37, 76, 81, 101,
1 30-3 1 ; Enlig h tenment (see En 1 1 8 , 120, 1 4 5 , 1 80, 2 0 6 , 21 1 ; char
lightenment) ; libertines, 20; Paris, acteristics, 41-42 ; Comte, 69; de
13, 14-15, 16; philosophers, 75 structive consequences of work,
Freedom, 153; Hume, 41; Mill, 85- 3 6--44 ; empiricism, 78; Mill, 78;
86; of t h e will , 160 Peirce, 153
Frege, Gottlob, 174 Husserl, Edmund, 76, 78, 1 14, 1 2 1 ,
French Revolution, 49, 68 1 2 7 , 205-6; transcendental ego, 197
Freud, Sigmund, 180 Huyghens, Christian, 56
Galileo, 6, 18-19, 22, 56, 59, 170 Idealism, 126; transcendental, 149
Gall, Franz, 59 Idealists, 126
Gassendi, Pierre, 20-22, 25 Ideas, 3 1 -32, 204
216 THE ALIBNATION O F REASON
Identity, principle of, 15 29-30; meaning of, 38; Mill theory,

Ideologies, 196 78; "necessary," 24; nominalists,
Immanence, 122, 123 14; Ockham concept, 13-14; origin,
Impressions, 31, 1 16, 124 129; p osi tivism, 17, 206-7 ; power,
Individuality, 68, 128; concept of, 12; p ra gmatism, 16, 40; prohibi
1 1 7 ; Mill, 86 tions, 9; relativism, 1 1 5 ; reliability,
Induction, 208; validating, 1 80-81 15-1 6; Scholastic theory, 14; sci
Inductive reasoning, 38, 39 enti stic position, 166; sensational
Inequ ality , 44 ist theory, 43 ; superstition, 52-53 ;
Infallible knowledge, 14-15 totality, 66; transcendental, 211;
Information, 3 (the) Unknowable, 91-93 ; value,
Instincts, 157 12, 5 8 ; (of) values, 186
Intellectual development. See Mind Kotarbinski, Tadeusz, 189
Intelli gence, 183 Kozlowski, E. M., 16!1
Introduction t o Experimental Med
icine, 7 1, 72, 75 Laissez-faire principle, 99
Introjection : critique, 1 06-10 ; prin Lamarck, Jean, 87
ciple, 1 07-10 Lange, Friedrich, 98
Intuition, 105 Language, 61, 1 12, 120, 176; analysis,
Italy, pragmatism, 165 169; cohesive, 1 8 8-89 ; conceptual
apparatus, 188; functions, 113;
James, William, 150, 1 54-62; Dewey, limits, 175; logical empmc1sm,
163, 164; Peirce, 154, 1 56-57; pop 1 74; positivism, 178; pragmatic
ularity of ideas, 162; utilitarian aspect, 1 9 1 ; scientific , 177
criteria, 156 Lavoisier, Antoine, 56
Jaspers, Karl, 202 Law of the Three States, 5 1-52, 65,
Jesuitism, 160 95
Judgments, 160; analytic, 27, 28, 1 8 1 ; Laws, 65-66, 80; controls, 1 17; sci
a priori, 175 ; Dewey, 1 6 3 ; existen entific, 59, 1 3 1-34, 1 3 6 ; universal,
tial, 23, 24, 27 ; logical empiricism, 54, 55
17 1 ; (of) m atters of fact, 3 1 ; nec Leibniz, G o ttfried, 22-23, 25, 172
essary, 27, 2 8 ; v alu e, 7, 162, 1 86- Leipzig, University of, 103
87, 195 Len in, Nikolai, 123-25, 126
Jupiter, 1 3 4 Le Roy, Edouard, 1 14, 130, 131, 1 32,
133, 141 ; B erg son , 142, 146; Ca
Kant, Immanuel, 83, 98, 102-3, 1 14, t ho lic is m, 142-44 ; critics, 1 37
1 1 8, 126, 135, 1 5 5 ; anti-Kantians, Libertine program, 22
187; Prolegomena, 115; thing-in Linguistic philosophy, 174
itself, 125 Literature, 103
Kantianism, 120 Littre, E m ile, 47, 65
Kepler, Johannes, 56 Lo c ke, John, 29, 173, 199
Knowledge: anti-metaphysical, 68; Logic, 77, 1 7 1 , 174, 192; defined, 182;
antithetical conce p t s , 17 1 ; applica multivalent, 1 89 ; symbolic, 1 73,
bility, 51; a pri ori, 175 ; classes, 188, 191, 192
175 ; controlled experiments, 12; Logical empiricism, 193-94, 206-7;
criteria, 23; definin g , 5; emplrio centers, 174; characteristics, 196-
criticism, 103 ; explanatory-useful 97; decline, 192-9 3 ; empiriocriti
op p osition, 155; infallible, 14-1 5 ; cism, 196; features (positivistic) ,
intellectual autonomy, 57, 58; in 1 72-73 ; humanities and world of
terpretations, 1 1, 16-17, 40; laws values, 1 84-89; ideological aspects,
of development, 50; limitations, 19 1-200; operational methodology,
INDEX 217
Logical empiricism (cont'd) Metaphysics, 3, 4, 7, 20, 26, 56, 118,

1 89-9 1 ; "physicizing" of science, 130, 160; Aristotelian, 1 5 ; Bergson,
183-84; Poland, 187-9 1 ; problem 142 (see also Bergson) ; Bernard,
solving, 189; program, 197; scien 72; "certainty," 209 , 210, 21 1 ;
tific statements and metaphysics, Dewey, 164; Enlightenment, 44 ;
177-83 ; social functions, 1 73 ; James, 161; logical empiricism,
sources, 169-74. See also Wittgen 172, 177-82; modern treatises, 1 1 ;
stein, Ludwig naturalistic, 2 2 ; Ockbam, 1 3 ; posi
Logical positivism, 175 tivism, 9, 10, 177, 192, 201; prag
Logic of Modern Physic•, The, 190 matism, 150, 1 54-63 ; psychology,
London, Jack, 96 79; restrictions, 175-76; Scholastic,
Louis Napoleon, 49 22; spiritual, 142, 145; stage, of
Lukasiewicz, Jan, 170, 188, 189 human mind, 5 3 ; systems, 39
Luther, Martin, 15 Meta-science, 171-72, 191
Lwow-Warsaw school, 188, 189 Methodology, 1 89-91, 1 92
Middle Ages, 53
Mach, Ernst, 102, 111, 1 14-21, 129, Mill, James, 81
130, 149, 182, 211; logical empiri Mill, John Stuart, 47, 71, 76-87, 97 ;
cism, 173-74; Russian followers, Comte, 76; contributions, 99; em
123-24; theory, 208 piricism, 7 8 ; happiness, 84
Malstre, Joseph de, 48 Mind, 112; -feelings, relationship,
Malebranche, Nicolas, 111 63; metaphysical stage, 53, 66;
Malthus, Thomas, 87 positive stage, 53-57; theological
Manichaean doctrine, 2 1 1 , 212 stage, 51-,3, 66
Manifestation-cause relationship, 3-4 Mirecourt, Jean de, 14
Mankind, 60, 67-68 Mises, Richard von, 120, 174
Marcel, Gabriel, 202 Moliere, 53
Marx, Karl, 71, 185 Monism, 98, 104, 106, 1 6 1 ; empirio-
Marxism, 1 , 123, 126, 165 criticism, 122
Materialism, 126; dichotomy, 163; Monotheism, 51, 52
positivism, 145 Moore, G. E., 169-70, 186
Materialism and Empiriocriticism, Moral ( s ) : psychology, 187; rules,
123 160; science, 5 5 ; values, 1 65
Materialists, 9-10, 91 "Moral certainty," 209
Mathematical sciences, 5,, 56 Moralit y : ascetic, 80-81 ; defined, 82;
Mathematicians, 174 science of, 62
Mathematics, 23, 32-33, 52, 1 17, Morris, Charles W., 191
1 7 0-7 1 ; positive stage, 56; Pythag Mussolini, Benito, 165
oras, 52 Mysteries, 1 7, 154
Matter, 4, 23 ; structure, 5 1 Mystics, 16
Maupertuis, Pierre, 1 1 1 Myths, 6 2
Meaning(fulness ) , 190; criterion,
1 5 1-53, 154; humanistic sense, 192; Napoleon, 46
positivism- relationship, 177, 178- Nation-state, creation, 14
79 Naturalism, 1 6 6
Mechanics, birth of, 18-19 Naturalists, 18
Medieval positivism, 1 1-18 Natural science, 1 54, 203; aim, 9;
"Melancholy of disbelief," 120 conventionalism, 129; nominalism,
Mersenne, Marin, 19 12
Messianic doctrines, 67 Natural selection, theory of, 87
Metaphysicians, 20, 39 Natural theology, 13 , 1 6
"Natural" view of world, 127, 128 Peripatetic tradition of knowledge,

Nature, 12, 17 14
Necessary judgments, 27, 28 Personality, 122
Necessity, 22, 23, 24, 32-33 Petzoldt, Joseph, 102
Neo-positivism (ists ) , 178, 1 86, 190. Phenomena, 54-55, 74, 106-7 ; pre
See also Logical empiricism dicting, 1 85-86
Neurath, Otto, 178, 184; Empirical Phenomenalism(ists ) , 16, 22, 23; En-
Sociology, 1 86 lightenment, 29 ; rules, 3, 5, 1 1
Newton, Isaac, 54, 56 Philosophers, 75, 164
Nicolas of Oresme, 1 6 Phi/osophes, 29
Philosophical determinism, 153
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 102, 205
Philosophical Investigations, 1 74-75,
Nihilism, 205
176
Nominalism (ists ) , 12, 1 5-1 6 , 144,
Philosophy: American contribution,
155; birth of, 12; experimentalism,
149-50; analytical, 169-70; existen
13; faith, 15; logical empiricism,
tialist, 181; goal, 104; laws, 88;
172; Ockham, 14; rule of, 5-7;
of life, 1 49, 163, 175; linguistic,
Russell, 170; scientific knowledge,
174; modem, 156; "party principle
177; tendency, 12
in," 126; positiv:ism, 178; prag
m at ic, 149 ff.; romantic, 67; -sci
Observation, 54
ence relationship, 75, 104; task, 88,
Occasionalism (ists ) , 26-27, 29 1 69, 176, 177; vices, 150
Occult entities, 3-4 Phrenology, 59
Occult powers, S3 Physics, 6, 9, 28, 5 5, 129 ; Aristote
Occult sciences, 19 lian, 16; Duhem on propositions,
Ockham, William of, 1 3-14 140; French conventionalists, 1 30;
"Ockbam's razor," 13, 14 Galileo, 1 8-19; language of, 1 82-
Ontology, 192, 197 83; phenomenalist, 19; positive
Open Society and Its Enemies, The, stage, 56; propositions, 130; theory
1 85 of, 132
Operational methodology, 1 89-91 Physics o f a Believer, 142
Order, 30, 3 1 Physiology, " transcen den t al, " 94
Ordering (classifying ) , 1 16 Pius X, Pope, 143
Origin of Species, The, 7 1 Planck, Max, 117
Osiander, Andreas, 1 5 5 Planetary system, 1 6 , 1 34, 1 3 5
Oxford and Cambridge movement, Plato (nism ) , 5, 18
1 69 Pleasure-pain, 8 2 , 8 4 , 8 5 , 105, 108
Oxford University, 12, 13 Plekhanov, Georgi, 123
Pluralism, 1 6 1
Pantheism, 17 Poi n care , Henri, 1 14, 129, 1 30, 1 34,
Papacy, 14 135, 1 36, 141
Papin, Denis, 56 Poland , 1 3 0 ; logical empiricism, 1 74,
Papini, Giovanni, 1 65 1 87-9 1 ; pragmatism, 165
Paris : nominalists, 14; University, Pope, the, 142
13, 16 Popper, Karl, 73, 1 74, 178, 179-80;
Pascal, Blaise, 5 6 , 176 , 203 works, 185
Peirce, Charles S., 1 50-5 1 ; Dewey, Positivism, 1-2, 1 1-44, 101-28; con
164; goal, 160; "How to Make Our temporary, 196-97, 207, 208; con
Ideas Clear," 1 50, 1 5 3 ; positivism, ventionalism, 1 30-3 1 , 143-47; de
150-54 fi ned , 2-3, 9; dicho to my, 163;
Perception, 105 Enlightenment, 28-30; essentials,
INDEX 219
Positivism (cont'd) Psychology, 56, 59, 108; associ

24; ethics, 76-77; evolutionary, 87- ational, 77, 1 62; behaviorist, 183;
97, 205 ; father of (see Hume ) ; experimental, 19 1 ; of morals, 187
logical, 1 69 (see also Logical em Psychophysical parallelism, 108
piricism ) ; main features, 96; Ptolemaic theory, 135
medieval, 12-1 8; modem, 20, 166-
67 ; nominalism, 5-7 ; over-all view, Quantum theory, 173
1-10 ; phenomenalism, 3-5; philos Questions, 187
ophy and historical development,
25; pragmatism, 12, 149-67; radical Races, theory of, 97
view, 203-4; rules, 3-9, 15; sci Racism, 197 ; anthropology, 200
ence, 8-9, 71-76; stages, 9, 54-55 ; Radical relativism, 157
targets o f criticism, 184-85; tenets, Rationalism, 171, 199; fundamental
14-15, 23; theory of knowle d ge, rule, 173 ; logical empiricism, 172
16; value j ud gments, 7-8; vitalism, Realism, 35, 1 62 , 175
1 47. See also Comte; Hume and Reality, 6, 1 8-19; without man, 124-
Peirce 25
Positivists : anti-metaphysical bias, Reason, 209-12; -faith controversy,
201-2; contemporary, 182; radical, 36-37; sufficient, principle of, 2S
1 49 ; rationalism, 192 Reasoning, 77, 78; infallible rules of,
Positivist Society, 47-48 15
Poverty of Historicism, The, 1 85, Reform : Saint-Simon, 46; of Soci
1 86 ety, 76
Power: intoxication of, 198 ; knowl Reformation, 17
edge, 12; Nature, 1 8 ; occult, 54 Reichenbach, Hans, 174, 1 80, 182,
Practice, criterion of, 125 197
Pragmatism, 12, 13, 197 ; American, "Reism," 1 89
149-50; consequences, 163; cri Relativism, of knowledge, 115
terion of meaning, 152-53, 154; Relativity, theory of, 1 7 2 , 1 7 3
empiriocriticism, 1 60; Europe, 165 ; Religion, 61; Dewey, 1 64; hostility
founders, 166; meaning, over-all, to, 99; of humanity (Comte) , 45,
163-67 ; metaphysics, 154-63; mod 61�2, 67, 72; Hume, 3S; idealists,
ernist style, 165�6; popularity, 126; James, 1 5 9 ; man, 92; meta
162; positivism, 149-67; Peirce, physics, 35; ''natural," 42; place,
1 5 0-54; philosophy of life, 1 62 ; 3 6 ; positivism, 6 1�, 65; rational,
rudimentary, 16-17 ; term, 150; 36; science, relationship, 21-22,
tr uth, 159 9 1-93 ; totemic, 52; truth, 13
Prague, 1 14 Renaissance, 17, 19; naturalism, 19
Preconceptions, 1 1 9 Revelation, 27
Pre dic t i on , h istorical, 1 85 Revolutions, 6 1 , 123
Prejudice, 61, 107, 173 Romantics, the, 99
Principia Mathematica, 170 Rules, 2-10, 151, 159
Principles of Morals and Legislation Russell, Bertrand, 170, 174, 198, 204
(Bentham) , 79 Russia, 123
Private property, 50, 61
Probability, 137-3 8 ; theory of, 5 1 Saint-Simon, Henri de, 46
Progress, 49, 5 0 ; concept of, 89-90; Saint-Simonians, 46, 48, 61, 64
science of, 61 Schiller, F. C. S., 1 65
Protestantism, 202 Schlick, Moritz, 1 36, 1 74, 176
"Psychic contents," 1 1 Scholasticism, 13, 15, 16, 17, 27, 203 ;
Psychologism, 77 theory of knowledge, 14
Science (s ) , 3; abstract, 6; classifica cal principles, 65; positive stage,

tion, 55; defined, 6, 1 15 ; Descartes, 56, 60; positivism, 1 84--85, 193;
22; determinism, 74; experimental "statics," 61; totality of knowledge,
control, 137; history of, 1 1 5 ff. 6 6 ; universal science, 5 8 ; the word,
(see also Law of the Three 59
States) ; Hume, 39; hypotheses, Socrates, 158, 1 87
verification, 1 37-3 8 ; idealization, Solar system, 5 1 , 6 1 , 89
19; ideological misuse, 199 ; inter Solipsism, 176
dependence, 57; laws, 33, 58-59, Soul, the, 4, 21, 23, 106-7
1 3 1-34, 136; Leibniz, 22; logical Space, 1 17 ; co ncept of, 1 3 5-36
order, 56-57; meta-, 196; natural Spencer, Herbert, 71, 87-97, 102,
order, 55, 57; order, 43 ; pedagogi 1 1 1, 161 ; Comte, 95-96; contribu
cal order, 56; -philosophy, dividing tions, 9 8 ; social philosophy, 198
line, 75; "physicizing," 1 8 3-84 ; Spinoza, Baruch, 98
positivism, 18, 22, 7 1-76 ; purpose, "Spirit," 4; of the age, 96, 98
6, 73, 75, 78, 1 1 1 ; reform (Comte ) , Spiritualism (ists ) , 9-1 0, 18, 9 1 ; po si-
5 1-59; religion, 21-22, 91-92; r� tivism, 146
search, 66; rules, 20, 1 5 1 ; seven, "Springtime of Nations," 71
62; of society, 48-49; specialized, Stalin, Josef, 126
7 1 ; "truth," 140; worship of, 29 " S ta ti cs ," 6 1
Scientific method, 8-9, 72, 73-74, 75- Stoics, 11
76 Subjectivism, 101
Scientism, 76, 1 54, 167, 172, 198 Substance, 29, 34-35; concept o f , 15,
''Self," 120 23, 35
Sense-impressions, 105� Sufficient reason, principle of, 25
Sense perception, 186 Superstition, 44, 52-53, 67, 77
Signs, theory of, 191 Sweden , 174
Simplicity, conv en tio n alists, 138 System ( Spencer) , 71
Skepticism, 1 96 Syst�me de Polltique Positive, 76
Skeptics, 1 1 , 41 System of Logic (Mill ) , 77
Social behavior, predicting, 5 8
"Social contr ac t , " 5 0 Tabula rasa ("blank slate" ) , 43
Social Darwinism, 1 9 8 T arsk i , Alfred, 1 89, 206
Social Democracy, 197 "Technocratic" culture, 196
Social instinct, 50 Theocracy, 5 1-52
Social life, 5 1 Theological state, of human mind,
"Social phy sics ," 57 5 1 -5 3
Social reform, Comte, 48-50, 68 Theology, 177, 203
Social sciences, 129, 1 89 ; logical em- Theses on Feuerbach, 1 23
piricism, 1 84-85, 1 86; -physical, "Things," 1 1 6-17
differences, 172-73 Tilli ch, P a u l, 203
Society : "biologizing," 97; Comte, Time, 1 17
48; evolution, 6 1 ; feudal, 49 ; his Totalitarianism, 49, 68, 86
toriosophic schema, 48-49; history, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, 174-
89-90; "organic" interpretation, 76, 177
6 8 ; origin, 5 1 ; "positive,'' 49; re Transcendentalism, 98, 165
ality of, 60; reform, 77; science of, Trotsky, Leon, 123
48-49; Spencer, 9 3 Truth, 124, 141 ; concept o f, 198; cri
Sociology, 48, 50, 56; Comte, 59�1, terio n , 1 5 3 ; James, 155-59; neces
68; "dynamics," 61 ; methodologi- sary, 208; P eirce, 153, 156; prag-
INDEX 221
Truth (cont'd) mantic, 99; science, 1 87 ; world of,
matism, 158, 162, 204-5; relativity, 16�5. 184-89
124-25, 1 64 ; religious, 14; renunci Vaux, Clotilde de, 47
ation, 121-22, 127; science, 141; Verifiability (verification) , 154;
utilitarian interpretations, 155 "basic" vs. "technical," 193-95;
Twardowski, Kazimierz, 174, 187, 188 defined, 179; meaningfulness, 178;
partial, 179; principle of, 204;
Universal affection, 47 rules, 1 80, 193 ; scientific principle,
Universality, 7 1 3 1 , 1 37-39
Universal laws, 54 Vienna, 1 14, 174; Circle, 174, 1 8 7,
Unknowable, the, 91-93 188, 1 89
Usefulness, criterion, 155 Vitalism, 102, 147
Utilitarianism, 79-80, 82-86, 96, 155;
criteria, 82; principles, 79-80 Whitehead, Alfred North, 170
Utilitarianism (Mill ) , 71, 79 Will, the, 158; Divine, 14; freedom
Utility : Mill, 81-83, 86-87; principle, of, 160
79-87; standards, 163 Wittgen stein, Ludwig, 174-77, 201-2,
Utopianism, 48, 49, 50, 64, 68, 71, 203
173 Women, 47; guardian angel concept,
62, 63
Valentinov, 123 World, the, 6, 1 30, 1 6 1
Valuation, 85, 86 World W a r I , 1 7 3 , 174
Value judgments, 7-8, 163, 186-87, Wundt, Wilhelm, 1 03
196
Values, 1 1 3, 163�4, 1 86, 205 ; logical Zola, Emile, 103
empiricism, 196; moral, 165; ro- Zurich, University of, 103

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The Alienation of Reason

LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI is an essayist and playwright as well as

The Alienation of Reason was published in hardcover by Double­

Anchor Books edition: 1969

Copyright © 1968 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.

This book is an account of the main stages of positivist

style of thinking, which as a rule is not dealt with by its

ONE An Over-all View of Positivism 1

TWO Positivism Down to David Hume 11

THREE Auguste Comte: Positivism in the Romantic

FOUR Positivism Triumphant 71

FIVE Positivism at the Turn of the Century 101

SIX Conventionalism-Destruction of the Concept of

SEVEN Pragmatism and Positivism 1 49

EIGHT Logical Empiricism: A Scientistic Defense of

An Over-all View of Positivism

The term "positive philosophy" was coined by Auguste

mate) indices, that certain themes, propositions, or assertions

regulating how we are to use such terms as "knowledge,"

terms of occult entities that are by definition inaccessible to

2. The rule of nominalism. Strictly speaking, this rule may

which are never achieved in the empirical world. Not only

experiences, and has no independent cognitive function in the

have the form of normative judgments. But we are not to

found in nature-those without which no others occur. This

assumptions serve no purpose in these sciences, whose aim is

Positivism Down to David Hume

The task we have set ourselves requires the following histori­

garded as giving expression to a positivist view of the validity

experience, as a means of direct communication with the

from the data of experience. Actually, Ockham regarded the

Church who sought to restore Augustinian teachings and to

interpretation of knowledge was no novelty in Christian cul­

tended to limit the validity of logic. The revival of Platonism

envisaged with the aid of geometric models. Galileo achieved

and that their common stand was defined by their acceptance

a knowledge sufficient for man's practical exploitation of that

Thanks to this sharp separation between metaphysical ques­

physical convictions. What he renounced was any and all

A similar type of seventeenth-century positivism is repre­

by definition cannot be answered with the aid of means ac­

nature of the universe, about the invisible world. As for mat­

use t o natural science. I t must be stressed once again that this

another church had no more importance than following one

the operation of inexplicable forces in the ordinary course of

of empirical knowledge-a belief rooted in his striving for

are by no means treated as objects of pure faith, but, on the

According to him, though metaphysical truths are undemon­

doctrine it follows, first, that human fate is entirely independent

consists of qualities, and that we have no reason to assert

of the French Enlightenment criticized Berkeley. Though it

Although the typical thinkers of the French Enlightenment

without referring to anything outside themselves, more espe­

sity characteristic of mathematical knowledge is associated with

to Hume, take the form of propositions stating necessary

warmth of a fire we cannot infer that it will consume us. Thus

The philosophical implications of this criticism are char­

tingent" in the sense that its existence requires the assumption

cepted only in part-most often, only th e critical part-or in all

which we truly know is utterly b arren and unproductive,

handed. His quest for an ab solutely reliable knowledge in the

Hume's failure, however, cannot be regarded as the tot al

however, there is no such thin g The destruction of kn owl e d ge

The Alienation of Reason was published in hardcover by Double

The task we have set ourselves requires the following histori

interpretation of knowledge was no novelty in Christian cul

Thanks to this sharp separation between metaphysical ques

A similar type of seventeenth-century positivism is repre

by definition cannot be answered with the aid of means ac

nature of the universe, about the invisible world. As for mat

According to him, though metaphysical truths are undemon

without referring to anything outside themselves, more espe

The philosophical implications of this criticism are char

mouth and for a time supported himself meagerly by tutor

meration o f the good, bad, and indifferent possibilities of hi.I

bound up with the development of a defensive military sys

l i ght . After physics comes chemistry, which de als with quali

too complex to be measurable; we should expect practical re

a s the disappearance o f qu alit ative distinctions among the tis

logical consequence of his doctrine. Comte is faithful to as

ments it unexpectedly discloses more in common with philo

has entered the positive stage, his historicism su ddenly be

During the ten years following Comte's death, Eu rope a n cul

an d the first volume of Capital by Karl Marx. In their differ

to enable us to manipul ate things, he does not seem to con

doctrine. Utilitarianism itself is a normative formula, accord

common to all men, i.e., those that refer to the undifferenti

zation makes it poss ibl e to deduce some pro p er ties of organ

in s ociety-the latter, incidentally, just a new and more de

A certain inconsistency became discernible, however, be