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data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-notebook_science-0.md

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+title: "Open-notebook science"
+chunk: 1/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-notebook_science"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:16:31.268183+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Open-notebook science is the practice of making the entire primary record of a research project publicly available online as it is recorded. This involves placing the personal, or laboratory, notebook of the researcher online along with all raw and processed data, and any associated material, as this material is generated. The approach may be summed up by the slogan 'no insider information'. It is the logical extreme of transparent approaches to research and explicitly includes the making available of failed, less significant, and otherwise unpublished experiments; so called 'dark data'. The practice of open notebook science, although not the norm in the academic community, has gained significant recent attention in the research and general media as part of a general trend towards more open approaches in research practice and publishing. Open notebook science can therefore be described as part of a wider open science movement that includes the advocacy and adoption of open access publication, open data, crowdsourcing data, and citizen science. It is inspired in part by the success of open-source software and draws on many of its ideas.
+
+== History ==
+The term "open-notebook science" was first used in 2006 in a blog post by Jean-Claude Bradley, an associate professor of chemistry at Drexel University at the time. Bradley described open-notebook science as follows:
+
+... there is a URL to a laboratory notebook that is freely available and indexed on common search engines. It does not necessarily have to look like a paper notebook but it is essential that all of the information available to the researchers to make their conclusions is equally available to the rest of the world
+
+== Practitioners ==
+
+=== Active ===
+
+==== Experimental (alphabetical by last name) ====
+Aled Edwards & colleagues, University of Toronto.
+Rachel Harding, post-doctoral fellow with University of Toronto's (SGC) Structural Genomics Consortium.
+blog at http://labscribbles.com/
+Twitter @labscribbles
+Zenodo https://zenodo.org/search?f=author&p=Rachel%20Harding&ln=en
+"A team of groundbreaking scientists at SGC are now sharing their lab notebooks online".
+
+Nickolas J. LaSorte, Postdoctoral Fellow at the FDA in the area of Wireless Coexistence.
+Tamara Maiuri
+blog at https://raytruantlab.wordpress.com/
+Twitter @tam_maiuri
+Zenodo https://zenodo.org/search?page=1&size=20&q=maiuri
+Peter Murray-Rust, Cambridge, UK.
+Anthony Salvagno, Ph.D., Director of Education of #SciFund Challenge.
+Matthew H. Todd, Open Source Malaria, University College London (Todd Group).
+Open Notebook Science Challenge
+The Digital Botanical Gardens Initiative (DBGI) observable at http://www.dbgi.org/dendron-dbgi/
+
+==== Theoretical ====
+Tobias J. Osborne
+Carl Boettiger, Theory and computational modeling in ecology and evolution.
+Dror Bar-Natan
+Andrés G. Saravia, physics Ph.D. student at Cinvestav-Mérida.
+Daniel Himmelstein, who led Project Rephetio — a drug repurposing study that used GitHub and Thinklab for realtime open notebook science and collaboration.
+
+=== Archived (alphabetical by last name) ===
+Brigette Black), physics Ph.D. student in Koch lab at the University of New Mexico.
+Jean-Claude Bradley
+Jeremiah Faith
+Nadiezda Fernandez-Oropeza, Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. student in Koch lab at the University of New Mexico.
+Mike Lawrence
+Linh Le, undergraduate physics major and alumnus of Koch lab at the University of New Mexico.
+Andy Maloney, postdoctoral researcher in Smyth lab at University of Texas. Ph.D. in Koch lab at the University of New Mexico (2011)
+Cameron Neylon
+Alejandro Tamayo
+Influenza Origins and Evolution
+
+=== Recurrent (educational) ===
+Junior Physics Lab (307L) at University of New Mexico
+
+=== Partially open/pseudo-open notebooks ===
+These are initiatives more open than traditional laboratory notebooks but lacking a key component for full Open Notebook Science. Usually either the notebook is only partially shared or shared with significant delay.
+
+The Open Notebook Science Network  is a WordPress blog network designed to be used to create and maintain individual/lab notebooks. As of January 2018, there are currently 126 active members of this group.
+Protocolpedia allows sharing and storage of lab protocols.
+Sci-Mate allows users to define access permissions, but can be used as an open notebook tool.
+Vinod Scaria
+OpenWetWare (hosts many laboratories and allows for selective sharing of information related to each research group)
+Caleb Morse
+Gus Rosania
+Antony Garrett Lisi
+Rosie Redfield, microbiologist at the University of British Columbia; all results discussed but raw experimental notebook is not exposed.
+Martin Johnson, marine chemist at the University of East Anglia.
+Greg Lang, post doc in David Botstein's lab at Princeton University. - shared on approximately a weekly basis
+
+== Benefits ==
+A public laboratory notebook makes it convenient to cite the exact instances of experiments used to support arguments in articles.  For example, in a paper on the optimization of a Ugi reaction, three different batches of product are used in the characterization and each spectrum references the specific experiment where each batch was used: EXP099, EXP203 and EXP206. This work was subsequently published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments, demonstrating that the integrity data provenance can be maintained from lab notebook to final publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
+Without further qualifications, Open Notebook Science implies that the research is being reported on an ongoing basis without unreasonable delay or filter.  This enables others to understand exactly how research actually happens within a field or a specific research group. Such information could be of value to collaborators, prospective students or future employers.  Providing access to selective notebook pages or inserting an embargo period would be inconsistent with the meaning of the term "Open" in this context.  Unless error corrections, failed experiments and ambiguous results are reported, it will not be possible for an outside observer to understand exactly how science is being done.  Terms such as Pseudo  or Partial  have been used as qualifiers for the sharing of laboratory notebook information in a selective way or with a significant delay.

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+---
+title: "Open-notebook science"
+chunk: 2/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-notebook_science"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:16:31.268183+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Drawbacks ==
+The arguments against adopting open notebook science fall mainly into three categories which have differing importance in different fields of science. The primary concern, expressed particularly by biological and medical scientists is that of 'data theft' or 'being scooped'. While the degree to which research groups steal or adapt the results of others remains a subject of debate it is certainly the case that the fear of not being first to publish drives much behavior, particularly in some fields. This is related to the focus in these fields on the published peer-reviewed paper as being the main metric of career success.
+The second argument advanced against open notebook science is that it constitutes prior publication, thus making it impossible to patent and difficult to publish the results in the traditional peer reviewed literature. With respect to patents, publication on the web is clearly classified as disclosure. Therefore, while there may be arguments over the value of patents, and approaches that get around this problem, it is clear that open notebook science is not appropriate for research for which patent protection is an expected and desired outcome. With respect to publication in the peer-reviewed literature the case is less clear cut. Most publishers of scientific journals accept material that has previously been presented at a conference or in the form of a preprint. Those publishers that accept material that has been previously published in these forms have generally indicated informally that web publication of data, including open notebook science, falls into this category. Open notebook projects have been successfully published in high impact factor peer-reviewed journals but this has not been tested with a wide range of publishers. It is to be expected that those publishers that explicitly exclude these forms of pre-publication will not accept material previously disclosed in an open notebook.
+A third argument advanced against open notebook science is that it vitiates independence of competing research and hence may result in lack of all important independent verification of results. This is not the same as data-scooping, but the much more subtle possibility of allowing data that is co-evolving to influence each other. In traditional science large experimental collaborations often establish fire-wall rules preventing communication between members of competing collaborations to prevent not just data leakage but also influencing the methodology by which data is analyzed.
+The final argument relates to the problem of the 'data deluge'. If the current volume of the peer-reviewed literature is too large for any one person to manage, then how can anyone be expected to cope with the huge quantity of non–peer-reviewed material that could potentially be available, especially when some, perhaps most, would be of poor quality? A related argument is that 'my notebook is too specific' for it to be of interest to anyone else. The question of how to discover high quality and relevant material is a related issue. The issue of curation and validating data and methodological quality is a serious issue and one that arguably has relevance beyond open notebook science but is a particular challenge here.
+
+== Funding and sponsorship ==
+The Open Notebook Science Challenge, now directed towards reporting solubility measurements in non-aqueous solvent, has received sponsorship from Submeta, Nature and Sigma-Aldrich.  The first of ten winners of the contest for December 2008 was Jenny Hale.
+
+== Logos ==
+Logos can be used on notebooks to indicate the conditions of sharing.  Fully open notebooks are marked as "all content" and "immediate" access. Partially open notebooks can be marked as either "selected content" and/or "delayed".
+
+== See also ==
+Open access (publishing)
+Open data
+Open research
+Open content
+Open science
+Open source
+
+== References ==

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operationalization-0.md

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+title: "Operationalization"
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+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operationalization"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:16:32.465120+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+In research design, especially in psychology, social sciences, life sciences and physics, operationalization (or operationalisation) is a process of defining the measurement of a phenomenon which is not directly measurable, though its existence is inferred from other phenomena. Operationalization thus defines a fuzzy concept so as to make it clearly distinguishable, measurable, and understandable by empirical observation. In a broader sense, it defines the extension of a concept—describing what is and is not an instance of that concept. For example, in medicine, the phenomenon of health might be operationalized by one or more indicators like body mass index or tobacco smoking. As another example, in visual processing the presence of a certain object in the environment could be inferred by measuring specific features of the light it reflects. In these examples, the phenomena are difficult to directly observe and measure because they are general/abstract (as in the example of health) or they are latent (as in the example of the object). Operationalization helps infer the existence, and some elements of the extension, of the phenomena of interest by means of some observable and measurable effects they have.
+Sometimes multiple or competing alternative operationalizations for the same phenomenon are available. Repeating the analysis with one operationalization after the other can determine whether the results are affected by different operationalizations. This is called checking robustness. If the results are (substantially) unchanged, the results are said to be robust against certain alternative operationalizations of the checked variables.
+The concept of operationalization was first presented by the British physicist Norman Robert Campbell in his Physics: The Elements (Cambridge, 1920). This concept spread to humanities and social sciences. It remains in use in physics.
+
+== Theory ==
+
+=== History ===
+Operationalization is the scientific practice of operational definition, where even the most basic concepts are defined through the operations by which we measure them. The practice originated in the field of physics with the philosophy of science book The Logic of Modern Physics (1927), by Percy Williams Bridgman, whose methodological position is called "operationalism".
+Bridgman wrote that in the theory of relativity a concept like "duration" can split into multiple different concepts. In refining a physical theory, it may be discovered that what was thought to be one concept is actually two or more distinct concepts. Bridgman proposed that if only operationally defined concepts are used, this will never happen.
+Bridgman's theory was criticized because "length" is measured in various ways (e.g. it is impossible to use a measuring rod to measure the distance to the Moon), so "length" logically is not one concept but many, with some concepts requiring knowledge of geometry. Each concept is to be defined by the measuring operation used. So the criticism is that there are potentially infinite concepts, each defined by the methods that measured it, such as angle of sighting, day of the solar year, angular subtense of the moon, etc. which were gathered together, some astronomical observations taken over a period of thousands of years.
+In the 1930s, Harvard experimental psychologist Edwin Boring and students Stanley Smith Stevens and Douglas McGregor, struggling with the methodological and epistemological problems of defining measurement of psychological phenomena, found a solution in reformulating psychological concepts operationally, as it had been proposed in the field of physics by Bridgman, their Harvard colleague. This resulted in a series of articles that were published by Stevens and McGregor from 1935, that were widely discussed in the field of psychology and led to the Symposium on operationism in 1945, to which  Bridgman also contributed.
+
+=== Operationalization ===
+The practical 'operational definition' is generally understood as relating to the theoretical definitions that describe reality through the use of theory.
+The importance of careful operationalization can perhaps be more clearly seen in the development of general relativity. Einstein discovered that there were two operational definitions of "mass" being used by scientists: inertial, defined by applying a force and observing the acceleration, from Newton's second law of motion; and gravitational, defined by putting the object on a scale or balance. Previously, no one had paid any attention to the different operations used because they always produced the same results, but the key insight of Einstein was to posit the principle of equivalence that the two operations would always produce the same result because they were equivalent at a deep level, and work out the implications of that assumption, which is the general theory of relativity. Thus, a breakthrough in science was achieved by disregarding different operational definitions of scientific measurements and realizing that they both described a single theoretical concept. Einstein's disagreement with the operationalist approach was criticized by Bridgman as follows: "Einstein did not carry over into his general relativity theory the lessons and insights he himself has taught us in his special theory." (p. 335).
+
+== In the social sciences ==
+
+Operationalization is often used in the social sciences as part of the scientific method and psychometrics. Particular concerns about operationalization arise in cases that deal with complex concepts and complex stimuli (e.g., business research, software engineering) where unique threats to validity of operationalization are believed to exist. The steps in operationalization include identifying variables, defining measurement techniques, and developing operational definitions. Ensuring the validity and reliability of these measurements is crucial for accurate and reproducible research results.

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+---
+title: "Operationalization"
+chunk: 2/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operationalization"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:16:32.465120+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== Anger example ===
+For example, a researcher may wish to measure the concept "anger." Its presence, and the depth of the emotion, cannot be directly measured by an outside observer because anger is intangible.  Rather, other measures are used by outside observers, such as facial expression, choice of vocabulary, loudness and tone of voice.
+If a researcher wants to measure the depth of "anger" in various persons, the most direct operation would be to ask them a question, such as "are you angry", or "how angry are you?".   This operation is problematic, however, because it depends upon the definition of the individual.  Some people might be subjected to a mild annoyance, and become slightly angry, but describe themselves as "extremely angry," whereas others might be subjected to a severe provocation, and become very angry, but describe themselves as "slightly angry."  In addition, in many circumstances it is impractical to ask subjects whether they are angry.
+Since one of the measures of anger is loudness, the researcher can operationalize the concept of anger by measuring how loudly subjects speak compared to their normal tones. However, this must assume that loudness is a uniform measure. Some might respond verbally while others might respond physically.
+
+=== Economics objections ===
+One of the main critics of operationalism in social science argues that "the original goal was to eliminate the subjective mentalistic concepts that had dominated earlier psychological theory and to replace them with a more operationally meaningful account of human behavior. But, as in economics, the supporters ultimately ended up "turning operationalism inside out". "Instead of replacing 'metaphysical' terms such as 'desire' and 'purpose'" they "used it to legitimize them by giving them operational definitions." Thus in psychology, as in economics, the initial, quite radical operationalist ideas eventually came to serve as little more than a "reassurance fetish" for mainstream methodological practice."
+
+== Tying to conceptual frameworks ==
+
+The above discussion links operationalization to measurement of concepts. Many scholars have worked to operationalize concepts like job satisfaction, prejudice, anger etc.  Scale and index construction are forms of operationalization. There is not one perfect way to operationalize. For example, in the United States the concept distance driven would be operationalized as miles, whereas kilometers would be used in Europe.
+Operationalization is part of the empirical research process. An example is the empirical research question of if job satisfaction influences job turnover.  Both job satisfaction and job turnover need to be measured. The concepts and their relationship are important — operationalization occurs within a larger framework of concepts.   When there is a large empirical research question or purpose the conceptual framework that organizes the response to the question must be operationalized before the data collection can begin.  If a scholar constructs a questionnaire based on a conceptual framework, they have operationalized the framework.  Most serious empirical research should involve operationalization that is transparent and linked to a conceptual framework.
+Another example, the hypothesis Job satisfaction reduces job turnover is one way to connect (or frame) two concepts – job satisfaction and job turnover. The process of moving from the idea job satisfaction to the set of questionnaire items that form a job satisfaction scale is operationalization. For example, it is possible to measure job satisfaction using only two simple questions: "All in all, I am satisfied with my job", and, "In general, I like my job."
+Operationalization uses a different logic when testing a formal (quantitative) hypothesis and testing working hypothesis (qualitative). For formal hypotheses the concepts are represented empirically (or operationalized) as numeric variables and tested using inferential statistics. Working hypotheses (particularly in the social and administrative sciences), however, are tested through evidence collection and the assessment of the evidence. The evidence is generally collected within the context of a case study. The researcher asks if the evidence is sufficient to "support" the working hypothesis. Formal operationalization would specify the kinds of evidence needed to support the hypothesis as well as evidence which would "fail" to support it. Robert Yin recommends developing a case study protocol as a way to specify the kinds of evidence needed during the data collection phases. He identifies six sources of evidence: documentation; archival records; interviews; direct observations; participant observation and physical or  cultural artifacts.
+In the field of public administration, Shields and Tajalli (2006) have identified five kinds of conceptual frameworks (working hypothesis, descriptive categories, practical ideal type, operations research, and formal hypothesis). They explain and illustrate how each of these conceptual frameworks can be operationalized. They also show how to make conceptualization and operationalization more concrete by demonstrating how to form conceptual framework tables that are tied to the literature and operationalization tables that lay out the specifics of how to operationalize the conceptual framework (measure the concepts).
+
+== See also ==
+Proxy (statistics)
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== Further reading ==
+A. Cornelius Benjamin (1955) Operationism via HathiTrust

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_scientific_method-0.md

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data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteur's_quadrant-0.md

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+---
+title: "Pasteur's quadrant"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteur's_quadrant"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:16:34.852871+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Pasteur's quadrant is a classification of scientific research projects that seek fundamental understanding of scientific problems, while also having immediate use for society. Louis Pasteur's research is thought to exemplify this type of method, which bridges the gap between "basic" and "applied" research. The term was introduced by Donald E. Stokes in his book, Pasteur's Quadrant.
+
+
+== Other quadrants ==
+As shown in the following table, scientific research can be classified by whether it advances human knowledge by seeking a fundamental understanding of nature, or whether it is primarily motivated by the need to solve immediate problems.
+
+The result is three distinct classes of research:
+
+Pure basic research, exemplified by the work of Niels Bohr, early 20th century atomic physicist.
+Pure applied research, exemplified by the work of Thomas Edison, inventor.
+Use-inspired basic research, described here as "Pasteur's Quadrant".
+
+
+== Usage ==
+Pasteur's quadrant is useful in distinguishing various perspectives within science, engineering and technology. For example, Daniel A. Vallero and Trevor M. Letcher in their book Unraveling Environmental Disasters applied the device to disaster preparedness and response. University science programs are concerned with knowledge-building, whereas engineering programs at the same university will apply existing and emerging knowledge to address specific technical problems. Governmental agencies employ the knowledge from both to solve societal problems. Thus, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expects its engineers to apply general scientific principles to design and upgrade flood control systems. This entails selecting the best levee designs for the hydrologic conditions. However, the engineer would also be interested in more basic science to enhance designs in terms of water retention and soil strength. The university scientist is much like Bohr, with the major motivation being new knowledge. The governmental engineer is behaving like Edison, with the greatest interest in utility, and considerably less interest in knowledge for knowledge's sake.
+The university engineering researcher's interests on the other hand, may fall between Bohr and Edison, looking to enhance both knowledge and utility. It is not likely that many single individuals fall within the Pasteur cell, since both basic and applied science are highly specialized. Thus, modern science and technology employ what might be considered a systems engineering approach, where the Pasteur cell consists of numerous researchers, professionals and practitioners to optimize solutions.  Note that modifications to the quadrant model to more precisely reflect how research and development interact continue to be suggested.
+
+
+== References ==

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personoid-0.md

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+---
+title: "Personoid"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personoid"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:16:37.407270+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Personoid is the concept coined by Stanisław Lem, a Polish science-fiction writer, in Non Serviam, from his book A Perfect Vacuum (1971). His personoids are an abstraction of functions of human mind and they live in computers; they do not need any human-like physical body. 
+In cognitive and software modeling, personoid is a research approach to the development of intelligent autonomous agents.
+In frame of the IPK (Information, Preferences, Knowledge) architecture, it is a framework of abstract intelligent agent with a  cognitive and structural intelligence. It can be seen as an essence of high intelligent entities.
+From the philosophical and systemics perspectives, personoid societies can also be seen as the carriers of a culture. According to N. Gessler, the personoids study can be a base for the research on artificial culture and culture evolution.   
+
+
+== Personoids on TV and cinema ==
+Welt am Draht (1973)
+The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
+
+
+== See also ==
+Android
+Humanoid
+Intelligence
+Artificial Intelligence
+Culture
+Computer Science
+Cognitive Science
+Anticipatory science
+Memetics
+
+
+== References ==
+Stanisław Lem's book Próżnia Doskonała (1971). The collection of book reviews of nonexistent books. Translated into English by Michael Kandel as A Perfect Vacuum (1983).
+Personetics.
+Personoids Organizations Framework: An Approach to Highly Autonomous Software Architectures Archived 2006-09-28 at the Wayback Machine, ENEA Report (1998).
+Paradigms of Personoids, Adam M. Gadomski 1997 Archived 2015-08-26 at the Wayback Machine.
+Computer Models of Cultural Evolution. Nicholas Gessler. In EVOLUTION IN THE COMPUTER AGE - Proceedings of the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life, edited by David B. and Gary B. Fogel. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Sudbury, Massachusetts (2002).

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_experiment-0.md

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+---
+title: "Pilot experiment"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_experiment"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:16:38.642851+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+A pilot experiment, pilot study, pilot test or pilot project is a small-scale preliminary study conducted to evaluate feasibility, duration, cost, adverse events, and improve upon the study design prior to performance of a full-scale research project.
+
+
+== Implementation ==
+Pilot experiments are frequently carried out before large-scale quantitative research, in an attempt to avoid time and money being used on an inadequately designed project. A pilot study is usually carried out on members of the relevant population. A pilot study is used to formulate the design of the full-scale experiment which then can be adjusted. The pilot study is potentially a critical insight to clinical trial design, 
+recruitment and sample size of participants, treatment testing, and statistical analysis to improve the power of testing the hypothesis of the study. Analysis from the pilot experiment can be added to the full-scale (and more expensive) experiment to improve the chances of a clear outcome.
+
+
+== Applications ==
+In sociology, pilot studies can be referred to as small-scale studies that will help identify design issues before the main research is done. Although pilot experiments have a well-established tradition, their usefulness as a strategy for change has been questioned, at least in the domain of environmental management. Extrapolation from a pilot study to large scale strategy may not be assumed as possible, partly due to the exceptional resources and favorable conditions that accompany a pilot study.
+In clinical research, studies conducted in preparation for a future randomized controlled trial are known as "pilot" and "feasibility" studies, where pilot studies are a subset of feasibility studies. A feasibility study asks whether the study should proceed, and if so, how. A pilot study asks the same questions, but also has a specific design feature: in a pilot study, a future study is conducted on a smaller scale, which, if having produced positive results, may lead to a Phase I clinical trial. The use of pilot and feasibility studies to estimate treatment effect is controversial, with ongoing methodologic discussion about appropriateness.
+A checklist was published in 2016 to provide guidance on how to report pilot trials.
+In engineering, a pilot trial may be conducted to understand the design problems, learn the correct technique's or to capture unknown requirements prior to building a prototype.  It may use prototype parts or simply samples to see which are successful and which are not, prior to more significant development effort.  A pilot can typically be differentiated from a prototype by being significantly different in build, if not in function i.e. it is not intended to be developed into the end product, but to learn how to design and build the end product successfully.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Dry run (testing)
+Mass production
+Mock-up
+Pilot plant
+Proof of concept
+Prototype
+
+
+== References ==

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism-0.md

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+---
+title: "Positivism"
+chunk: 1/8
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:16:39.841383+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive – the latter meaning a posteriori facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience. Other ways of knowing, such as intuition, introspection, or religious faith, are rejected or considered meaningless.
+Although the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of Western thought, modern positivism was first articulated in the early 19th century by Auguste Comte. His school of sociological positivism holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to scientific laws. After Comte, positivist schools arose in logic, psychology, economics, historiography, and other fields of thought. Generally, positivists attempted to introduce scientific methods to their respective fields. Since the turn of the 20th century, positivism, although still popular, has declined under criticism within the social sciences by antipositivists and critical theorists, among others, for its alleged scientism, reductionism, overgeneralizations, and methodological limitations. Positivism also exerted an unusual influence on Kardecism.
+
+== Etymology ==
+The English noun positivism in this meaning was imported in the 19th century from the French word positivisme, derived from positif in its philosophical sense of 'imposed on the mind by experience'. The corresponding adjective (Latin: positivus) has been used in a similar sense to discuss law (positive law compared to natural law) since the time of Chaucer.
+
+== Background ==
+Kieran Egan argues that positivism can be traced to the philosophy side of what Plato described as the quarrel between philosophy and poetry, later reformulated by Wilhelm Dilthey as a quarrel between the natural sciences (German: Naturwissenschaften) and the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften).
+In the early nineteenth century, massive advances in the natural sciences encouraged philosophers to apply scientific methods to other fields. Thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon, Pierre-Simon Laplace and Auguste Comte believed that the scientific method, the circular dependence of theory and observation, must replace metaphysics in the history of thought.
+
+== Positivism in the social sciences ==
+
+=== Comte's positivism ===
+
+Auguste Comte (1798–1857) first described the epistemological perspective of positivism in The Course in Positive Philosophy, a series of texts published between 1830 and 1842. These texts were followed in 1844 by A General View of Positivism (published in French 1848, English in 1865). The first three volumes of the Course dealt chiefly with the physical sciences already in existence (mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology), whereas the latter two emphasized the inevitable coming of social science. Observing the circular dependence of theory and observation in science, and classifying the sciences in this way, Comte may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. For him, the physical sciences had necessarily to arrive first, before humanity could adequately channel its efforts into the most challenging and complex "Queen science" of human society itself. His View of Positivism therefore set out to define the empirical goals of sociological method:

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+The most important thing to determine was the natural order in which the sciences stand—not how they can be made to stand, but how they must stand, irrespective of the wishes of any one. ... This Comte accomplished by taking as the criterion of the position of each the degree of what he called "positivity," which is simply the degree to which the phenomena can be exactly determined. This, as may be readily seen, is also a measure of their relative complexity, since the exactness of a science is in inverse proportion to its complexity. The degree of exactness or positivity is, moreover, that to which it can be subjected to mathematical demonstration, and therefore mathematics, which is not itself a concrete science, is the general gauge by which the position of every science is to be determined. Generalizing thus, Comte found that there were five great groups of phenomena of equal classificatory value but of successively decreasing positivity. To these he gave the names astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology.
+Comte offered an account of social evolution, proposing that society undergoes three phases in its quest for the truth according to a general "law of three stages". Comte intended to develop a secular-scientific ideology in the wake of European secularisation.
+Comte's stages were (1) the theological, (2) the metaphysical, and (3) the positive. The theological phase of man was based on whole-hearted belief in all things with reference to God. God, Comte says, had reigned supreme over human existence pre-Enlightenment. Humanity's place in society was governed by its association with the divine presences and with the church. The theological phase deals with humankind's accepting the doctrines of the church (or place of worship) rather than relying on its rational powers to explore basic questions about existence. It dealt with the restrictions put in place by the religious organization at the time and the total acceptance of any "fact" adduced for society to believe.
+Comte describes the metaphysical phase of humanity as the time since the Enlightenment, a time steeped in logical rationalism, to the time right after the French Revolution. This second phase states that the universal rights of humanity are most important. The central idea is that humanity is invested with certain rights that must be respected. In this phase, democracies and dictators rose and fell in attempts to maintain the innate rights of humanity.
+The final stage of the trilogy of Comte's universal law is the scientific, or positive, stage. The central idea of this phase is that individual rights are more important than the rule of any one person. Comte stated that the idea of humanity's ability to govern itself makes this stage inherently different from the rest. There is no higher power governing the masses and the intrigue of any one person can achieve anything based on that individual's free will. The third principle is most important in the positive stage. Comte calls these three phases the universal rule in relation to society and its development. Neither the second nor the third phase can be reached without the completion and understanding of the preceding stage. All stages must be completed in progress.
+Comte believed that the appreciation of the past and the ability to build on it towards the future was key in transitioning from the theological and metaphysical phases. The idea of progress was central to Comte's new science, sociology. Sociology would "lead to the historical consideration of every science" because "the history of one science, including pure political history, would make no sense unless it was attached to the study of the general progress of all of humanity". As Comte would say: "from science comes prediction; from prediction comes action". It is a philosophy of human intellectual development that culminated in science. The irony of this series of phases is that though Comte attempted to prove that human development has to go through these three stages, it seems that the positivist stage is far from becoming a realization. This is due to two truths: The positivist phase requires having a complete understanding of the universe and world around us and requires that society should never know if it is in this positivist phase. Anthony Giddens argues that since humanity constantly uses science to discover and research new things, humanity never progresses beyond the second metaphysical phase.

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+Comte's fame today owes in part to Emile Littré, who founded The Positivist Review in 1867. As an approach to the philosophy of history, positivism was appropriated by historians such as Hippolyte Taine. Many of Comte's writings were translated into English by the Whig writer, Harriet Martineau, regarded by some as the first female sociologist. Debates continue to rage as to how much Comte appropriated from the work of his mentor, Saint-Simon. He was nevertheless influential: Brazilian thinkers turned to Comte's ideas about training a scientific elite in order to flourish in the industrialization process. Brazil's national motto, Ordem e Progresso ("Order and Progress") was taken from the positivism motto, "Love as principle, order as the basis, progress as the goal", which was also influential in Poland.
+In later life, Comte developed a 'religion of humanity' for positivist societies in order to fulfil the cohesive function once held by traditional worship. In 1849, he proposed a calendar reform called the 'positivist calendar'. For close associate John Stuart Mill, it was possible to distinguish between a "good Comte" (the author of the Course in Positive Philosophy) and a "bad Comte" (the author of the secular-religious system). The system was unsuccessful but met with the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species to influence the proliferation of various secular humanist organizations in the 19th century, especially through the work of secularists such as George Holyoake and Richard Congreve. Although Comte's English followers, including George Eliot and Harriet Martineau, for the most part rejected the full gloomy panoply of his system, they liked the idea of a religion of humanity and his injunction to "vivre pour autrui" ("live for others", from which comes the word "altruism").
+The early sociology of Herbert Spencer came about broadly as a reaction to Comte; writing after various developments in evolutionary biology, Spencer attempted (in vain) to reformulate the discipline in what we might now describe as socially Darwinistic terms.
+
+=== Early followers of Comte ===
+Within a few years, other scientific and philosophical thinkers began creating their own definitions for positivism. These included Émile Zola, Emile Hennequin, Wilhelm Scherer, and Dimitri Pisarev. Fabien Magnin was the first working-class adherent to Comte's ideas, and became the leader of a movement known as "Proletarian Positivism". Comte appointed Magnin as his successor as president of the Positive Society in the event of Comte's death. Magnin filled this role from 1857 to 1880, when he resigned. Magnin was in touch with the English positivists Richard Congreve and Edward Spencer Beesly. He established the Cercle des prolétaires positivistes in 1863 which was affiliated to the First International. Eugène Sémérie was a psychiatrist who was also involved in the Positivist movement, setting up a positivist club in Paris after the foundation of the French Third Republic in 1870. He wrote: "Positivism is not only a philosophical doctrine, it is also a political party which claims to reconcile order—the necessary basis for all social activity—with Progress, which is its goal."
+
+=== Durkheim's positivism ===
+
+The modern academic discipline of sociology began with the work of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). While Durkheim rejected much of the details of Comte's philosophy, he retained and refined its method, maintaining that the social sciences are a logical continuation of the natural ones into the realm of human activity, and insisting that they may retain the same objectivity, rationalism, and approach to causality. Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method (1895). In this text he argued: "[o]ur main goal is to extend scientific rationalism to human conduct... What has been called our positivism is but a consequence of this rationalism."
+Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a case study of suicide rates amongst Catholic and Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy. By carefully examining suicide statistics in different police districts, he attempted to demonstrate that Catholic communities have a lower suicide rate than Protestants, something he attributed to social (as opposed to individual or psychological) causes. He developed the notion of objective sui generis "social facts" to delineate a unique empirical object for the science of sociology to study. Through such studies, he posited, sociology would be able to determine whether a given society is 'healthy' or 'pathological', and seek social reform to negate organic breakdown or "social anomie". Durkheim described sociology as the "science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning".
+David Ashley and David M. Orenstein have alleged, in a textbook published by Pearson Education, that accounts of Durkheim's positivism are possibly exaggerated and oversimplified; Comte was the only major sociological thinker to postulate that the social realm may be subject to scientific analysis in exactly the same way as natural science, whereas Durkheim saw a far greater need for a distinctly sociological scientific methodology. His lifework was fundamental in the establishment of practical social research as we know it today—techniques which continue beyond sociology and form the methodological basis of other social sciences, such as political science, as well of market research and other fields.

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+
+=== Historical positivism ===
+In historiography, historical or documentary positivism is the belief that historians should pursue the objective truth of the past by allowing historical sources to "speak for themselves", without additional interpretation. In the words of the French historian Fustel de Coulanges, as a positivist, "It is not I who am speaking, but history itself". The heavy emphasis placed by historical positivists on documentary sources led to the development of methods of source criticism, which seek to expunge bias and uncover original sources in their pristine state.
+The origin of the historical positivist school is particularly associated with the 19th-century German historian Leopold von Ranke, who argued that the historian should seek to describe historical truth "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist" ("as it actually was")—though subsequent historians of the concept, such as Georg Iggers, have argued that its development owed more to Ranke's followers than Ranke himself.
+Historical positivism was critiqued in the 20th century by historians and philosophers of history from various schools of thought, including Ernst Kantorowicz in Weimar Germany—who argued that "positivism ... faces the danger of becoming Romantic when it maintains that it is possible to find the Blue Flower of truth without preconceptions"—and Raymond Aron and Michel Foucault in postwar France, who both posited that interpretations are always ultimately multiple and there is no final objective truth to recover. In his posthumously published 1946 The Idea of History, the English historian R. G. Collingwood criticized historical positivism for conflating scientific facts with historical facts, which are always inferred and cannot be confirmed by repetition, and argued that its focus on the "collection of facts" had given historians "unprecedented mastery over small-scale problems", but "unprecedented weakness in dealing with large-scale problems".
+Historicist arguments against positivist approaches in historiography include that history differs from sciences like physics and ethology in subject matter and method; that much of what history studies is nonquantifiable, and therefore to quantify is to lose in precision; and that experimental methods and mathematical models do not generally apply to history, so that it is not possible to formulate general (quasi-absolute) laws in history.
+
+=== Other subfields ===
+In psychology the positivist movement was influential in the development of operationalism. The 1927 philosophy of science book The Logic of Modern Physics in particular, which was originally intended for physicists, coined the term operational definition, which went on to dominate psychological method for the whole century.
+In economics, practicing researchers tend to emulate the methodological assumptions of classical positivism, but only in a de facto fashion: the majority of economists do not explicitly concern themselves with matters of epistemology. Economic thinker Friedrich Hayek (see  "Law, Legislation and Liberty") rejected positivism in the social sciences as hopelessly limited in comparison to evolved and divided knowledge. For example, much (positivist) legislation falls short in contrast to pre-literate or incompletely defined common or evolved law. 
+In jurisprudence, "legal positivism" essentially refers to the rejection of natural law; thus its common meaning with philosophical positivism is somewhat attenuated and in recent generations generally emphasizes the authority of human political structures as opposed to a "scientific" view of law.
+
+== Logical positivism ==
+
+Logical positivism (later and more accurately called logical empiricism) is a school of philosophy that combines empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism, the idea that our knowledge includes a component that is not derived from observation.
+Logical positivism grew from the discussions of a group called the "First Vienna Circle", which gathered at the Café Central before World War I. After the war Hans Hahn, a member of that early group, helped bring Moritz Schlick to Vienna. Schlick's Vienna Circle, along with Hans Reichenbach's Berlin Circle, propagated the new doctrines more widely in the 1920s and early 1930s.
+It was Otto Neurath's advocacy that made the movement self-conscious and more widely known. A 1929 pamphlet written by Neurath, Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap summarized the doctrines of the Vienna Circle at that time. These included the opposition to all metaphysics, especially ontology and synthetic a priori propositions; the rejection of metaphysics not as wrong but as meaningless (i.e., not empirically verifiable); a criterion of meaning based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's early work (which he himself later set out to refute); the idea that all knowledge should be codifiable in a single standard language of science; and above all the project of "rational reconstruction," in which ordinary-language concepts were gradually to be replaced by more precise equivalents in that standard language. However, the project is widely considered to have failed.
+After moving to the United States, Carnap proposed a replacement for the earlier doctrines in his Logical Syntax of Language. This change of direction, and the somewhat differing beliefs of Reichenbach and others, led to a consensus that the English name for the shared doctrinal platform, in its American exile from the late 1930s, should be "logical empiricism." While the logical positivist movement is now considered dead, it has continued to influence philosophical development.

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+
+== Criticism ==
+Historically, positivism has been criticized for its reductionism, i.e., for contending that all "processes are reducible to physiological, physical or chemical events," "social processes are reducible to relationships between and actions of individuals," and that "biological organisms are reducible to physical systems."
+The consideration that laws in physics may not be absolute but relative, and, if so, this might be even more true of social sciences, was stated, in different terms, by G. B. Vico in 1725. Vico, in contrast to the positivist movement, asserted the superiority of the science of the human mind (the humanities, in other words), on the grounds that natural sciences tell us nothing about the inward aspects of things.
+Wilhelm Dilthey fought strenuously against the assumption that only explanations derived from science are valid. He reprised Vico's argument that scientific explanations do not reach the inner nature of phenomena and it is humanistic knowledge that gives us insight into thoughts, feelings and desires. Dilthey was in part influenced by the historism of Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886).
+The contesting views over positivism are reflected both in older debates (see the Positivism dispute) and current ones over the proper role of science in the public sphere. Public sociology—especially as described by Michael Burawoy—argues that sociologists should use empirical evidence to display the problems of society so they might be changed.
+
+=== Antipositivism ===
+
+At the turn of the 20th century, the first wave of German sociologists formally introduced methodological antipositivism, proposing that research should concentrate on human cultural norms, values, symbols, and social processes viewed from a subjective perspective. Max Weber, one such thinker, argued that while sociology may be loosely described as a 'science' because it is able to identify causal relationships (especially among ideal types), sociologists should seek relationships that are not as "ahistorical, invariant, or generalizable" as those pursued by natural scientists. Weber regarded sociology as the study of social action, using critical analysis and verstehen techniques. The sociologists Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tönnies, George Herbert Mead, and Charles Cooley were also influential in the development of sociological antipositivism, whilst neo-Kantian philosophy, hermeneutics, and phenomenology facilitated the movement in general.
+
+=== Critical rationalism and postpositivism ===
+
+In the mid-twentieth century, several important philosophers and philosophers of science began to critique the foundations of logical positivism. In his 1934 work The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper argued against verificationism. A statement such as "all swans are white" cannot actually be empirically verified, because it is impossible to know empirically whether all swans have been observed. Instead, Popper argued that at best an observation can falsify a statement (for example, observing a black swan would prove that not all swans are white). Popper also held that scientific theories talk about how the world really is (not about phenomena or observations experienced by scientists), and critiqued the Vienna Circle in his Conjectures and Refutations. W. V. O. Quine and Pierre Duhem went even further. The Duhem–Quine thesis states that it is impossible to experimentally test a scientific hypothesis in isolation, because an empirical test of the hypothesis requires one or more background assumptions (also called auxiliary assumptions or auxiliary hypotheses); thus, unambiguous scientific falsifications are also impossible. Thomas Kuhn, in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, put forward his theory of paradigm shifts. He argued that it is not simply individual theories but whole worldviews that must occasionally shift in response to evidence. 
+Together, these ideas led to the development of critical rationalism and postpositivism.  Postpositivism is not a rejection of the scientific method, but rather a reformation of positivism to meet these critiques. It reintroduces the basic assumptions of positivism: the possibility and desirability of objective truth, and the use of experimental methodology. Postpositivism of this type is described in social science guides to research methods. Postpositivists argue that theories, hypotheses, background knowledge and values of the researcher can influence what is observed. Postpositivists pursue objectivity by recognizing the possible effects of biases. While positivists emphasize quantitative methods, postpositivists consider both quantitative and qualitative methods to be valid approaches.
+In the early 1960s, the positivism dispute arose between the critical theorists (see below) and the critical rationalists over the correct solution to the value judgment dispute (Werturteilsstreit). While both sides accepted that sociology cannot avoid a value judgement that inevitably influences subsequent conclusions, the critical theorists accused the critical rationalists of being positivists; specifically, of asserting that empirical questions can be severed from their metaphysical heritage and refusing to ask questions that cannot be answered with scientific methods. This contributed to what Karl Popper termed the "Popper Legend", a misconception among critics and admirers of Popper that he was, or identified himself as, a positivist.
+
+=== Critical theory ===

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+Although Karl Marx's theory of historical materialism drew upon positivism, the Marxist tradition would also go on to influence the development of antipositivist critical theory. Critical theorist Jürgen Habermas critiqued pure instrumental rationality (in its relation to the cultural "rationalisation" of the modern West) as a form of scientism, or science "as ideology". He argued that positivism may be espoused by "technocrats" who believe in the inevitability of social progress through science and technology. New movements, such as critical realism, have emerged in order to reconcile postpositivist aims with various so-called 'postmodern' perspectives on the social acquisition of knowledge.
+Max Horkheimer criticized the classic formulation of positivism on two grounds. First, he claimed that it falsely represented human social action. The first criticism argued that positivism systematically failed to appreciate the extent to which the so-called social facts it yielded did not exist 'out there', in the objective world, but were themselves a product of socially and historically mediated human consciousness. Positivism ignored the role of the 'observer' in the constitution of social reality and thereby failed to consider the historical and social conditions affecting the representation of social ideas. Positivism falsely represented the object of study by reifying social reality as existing objectively and independently of the labour that actually produced those conditions. Secondly, he argued, representation of social reality produced by positivism was inherently and artificially conservative, helping to support the status quo, rather than challenging it. This character may also explain the popularity of positivism in certain political circles. Horkheimer argued, in contrast, that critical theory possessed a reflexive element lacking in the positivistic traditional theory.
+Some scholars today hold the beliefs critiqued in Horkheimer's work, but since the time of his writing critiques of positivism, especially from philosophy of science, have led to the development of postpositivism. This philosophy greatly relaxes the epistemological commitments of logical positivism and no longer claims a separation between the knower and the known. Rather than dismissing the scientific project outright, postpositivists seek to transform and amend it, though the exact extent of their affinity for science varies vastly. For example, some postpositivists accept the critique that observation is always value-laden, but argue that the best values to adopt for sociological observation are those of science: skepticism, rigor, and modesty. Just as some critical theorists see their position as a moral commitment to egalitarian values, these postpositivists see their methods as driven by a moral commitment to these scientific values. Such scholars may see themselves as either positivists or antipositivists.
+
+=== Other criticisms ===
+During the later twentieth century, positivism began to fall out of favor with scientists as well. Later in his career, German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg, Nobel laureate for his pioneering work in quantum mechanics, distanced himself from positivism: The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can any one conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear we would probably be left with completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies. 
+In the early 1970s, urbanists of the quantitative school like David Harvey started to question the positivist approach itself, saying that the arsenal of scientific theories and methods developed so far in their camp were "incapable of saying anything of depth and profundity" on the real problems of contemporary cities.
+According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Positivism has also come under fire on religious and philosophical grounds, whose proponents state that truth begins in sense experience, but does not end there. Positivism fails to prove that there are not abstract ideas, laws, and principles, beyond particular observable facts and relationships and necessary principles, or that we cannot know them. Nor does it prove that material and corporeal things constitute the whole order of existing beings, and that our knowledge is limited to them. According to positivism, our abstract concepts or general ideas are mere collective representations of the experimental order—for example; the idea of "man" is a kind of blended image of all the men observed in our experience. This runs contrary to a Platonic or Christian ideal, where an idea can be abstracted from any concrete determination, and may be applied identically to an indefinite number of objects of the same class. From the idea's perspective, Platonism is more precise. Defining an idea as a sum of collective images is imprecise and more or less confused, and becomes more so as the collection represented increases. An idea defined explicitly always remains clear.  
+Other new movements, such as critical realism, have emerged in opposition to positivism. Critical realism seeks to reconcile the overarching aims of social science with postmodern critiques. Experientialism, which arose with second generation cognitive science, asserts that knowledge begins and ends with experience itself. In other words, it rejects the positivist assertion that a portion of human knowledge is a priori.

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+
+== Positivism today ==
+Echoes of the "positivist" and "antipositivist" debate persist today, though this conflict is hard to define. Authors writing in different epistemological perspectives do not phrase their disagreements in the same terms and rarely actually speak directly to each other. To complicate the issues further, few practising scholars explicitly state their epistemological commitments, and their epistemological position thus has to be guessed from other sources such as choice of methodology or theory. However, no perfect correspondence between these categories exists, and many scholars critiqued as "positivists" are actually postpositivists. One scholar has described this debate in terms of the social construction of the "other", with each side defining the other by what it is not rather than what it is, and then proceeding to attribute far greater homogeneity to their opponents than actually exists. Thus, it is better to understand this not as a debate but as two different arguments: the "antipositivist" articulation of a social meta-theory which includes a philosophical critique of scientism, and "positivist" development of a scientific research methodology for sociology with accompanying critiques of the reliability and validity of work that they see as violating such standards. Strategic positivism aims to bridge these two arguments.
+
+=== Social sciences ===
+
+While most social scientists today are not explicit about their epistemological commitments, articles in top American sociology and political science journals generally follow a positivist logic of argument.  It can be thus argued that "natural science and social science [research articles] can therefore be regarded with a good deal of confidence as members of the same genre".
+In contemporary social science, strong accounts of positivism have long since fallen out of favour. Practitioners of positivism today acknowledge in far greater detail observer bias and structural limitations. Modern positivists generally eschew metaphysical concerns in favour of methodological debates concerning clarity, replicability, reliability and validity. This positivism is generally equated with "quantitative research" and thus carries no explicit theoretical or philosophical commitments. The institutionalization of this kind of sociology is often credited to Paul Lazarsfeld, who pioneered large-scale survey studies and developed statistical techniques for analyzing them. This approach lends itself to what Robert K. Merton called middle-range theory: abstract statements that generalize from segregated hypotheses and empirical regularities rather than starting with an abstract idea of a social whole.
+In the original Comtean usage, the term "positivism" roughly meant the use of scientific methods to uncover the laws according to which both physical and human events occur, while "sociology" was the overarching science that would synthesize all such knowledge for the betterment of society. "Positivism is a way of understanding based on science"; people don't rely on the faith in God but instead on the science behind humanity. "Antipositivism" formally dates back to the start of the twentieth century, and is based on the belief that natural and human sciences are ontologically and epistemologically distinct. Neither of these terms is used any longer in this sense. There are no fewer than twelve distinct epistemologies that are referred to as positivism.  Many of these approaches do not self-identify as "positivist", some because they themselves arose in opposition to older forms of positivism, and some because the label has over time become a term of abuse by being mistakenly linked with a theoretical empiricism. The extent of antipositivist criticism has also become broad, with many philosophies broadly rejecting the scientifically based social epistemology and other ones only seeking to amend it to reflect 20th century developments in the philosophy of science.  However, positivism (understood as the use of scientific methods for studying society) remains the dominant approach to both the research and the theory construction in contemporary sociology, especially in the United States.
+The majority of articles published in leading American sociology and political science journals today are positivist (at least to the extent of being quantitative rather than qualitative). This popularity may be because research utilizing positivist quantitative methodologies holds a greater prestige in the social sciences than qualitative work; quantitative work is easier to justify, as data can be manipulated to answer any question. Such research is generally perceived as being more scientific and more trustworthy, and thus has a greater impact on policy and public opinion (though such judgments are frequently contested by scholars doing non-positivist work).
+
+=== Natural sciences ===
+
+The key features of positivism as of the 1950s, as defined in the "received view", are:
+
+A focus on science as a product, a linguistic or numerical set of statements;
+A concern with axiomatization, that is, with demonstrating the logical structure and coherence of these statements;
+An insistence on at least some of these statements being testable; that is, amenable to being verified, confirmed, or shown to be false by the empirical observation of reality.  Statements that would, by their nature, be regarded as untestable included the teleological; thus positivism rejects much of classical metaphysics.
+The belief that science is markedly cumulative;
+The belief that science is predominantly transcultural;
+The belief that science rests on specific results that are dissociated from the personality and social position of the investigator;
+The belief that science contains theories or research traditions that are largely commensurable;
+The belief that science sometimes incorporates new ideas that are discontinuous from old ones;
+The belief that science involves the idea of the unity of science, that there is, underlying the various scientific disciplines, basically one science about one real world.
+The belief that science is nature and nature is science; and out of this duality, all theories and postulates are created, interpreted, evolve, and are applied.
+
+Stephen Hawking was a recent high-profile advocate of positivism in the physical sciences. In The Universe in a Nutshell (p. 31) he wrote:

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+Any sound scientific theory, whether of time or of any other concept, should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science: the positivist approach put forward by Karl Popper and others. According to this way of thinking, a scientific theory is a mathematical model that describes and codifies the observations we make. A good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested. ... If one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is. All one can do is describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time and say what predictions it makes.
+
+== See also ==
+Cliodynamics
+Científico
+Charvaka
+Determinism
+Gödel's incompleteness theorems
+London Positivist Society
+Nature versus nurture
+Physics envy
+Scientific politics
+Sociological naturalism
+The New Paul and Virginia
+Vladimir Solovyov
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== References ==
+Amory, Frederic. "Euclides da Cunha and Brazilian Positivism". Luso-Brazilian Review. 36 (1 (Summer 1999)): 87–94.
+Armenteros, Carolina. 2017. "The Counterrevolutionary Comte: Theorist of the Two Powers and Enthusiastic Medievalist." In The Anthem Companion to Auguste Comte, edited by Andrew Wernick, 91–116. London: Anthem.
+Annan, Noel. 1959. The Curious Strength of Positivism in English Political Thought. London: Oxford University Press.
+Ardao, Arturo. 1963. "Assimilation and Transformation of Positivism in Latin America." Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (4):515–22.
+Bevir, Mark (1993). "Ernest Belfort Bax: Marxist, Idealist, Positivist". Journal of the History of Ideas. 54 (1): 119–35. doi:10.2307/2709863. JSTOR 2709863.
+Bevir, Mark. 2002. "Sidney Webb: Utilitarianism, Positivism, and Social Democracy." The Journal of Modern History 74 (2):217–252.
+Bevir, Mark. 2011. The Making of British Socialism. Princeton. PA: Princeton University Press.
+Bourdeau, Michel. 2006. Les trois états: Science, théologie et métaphysique chez Auguste Comte. Paris: Éditions du Cerf.
+Bourdeau, Michel, Mary Pickering, and Warren Schmaus, eds. 2018. Love, Order and Progress. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
+Bryant, Christopher G. A. 1985. Positivism in Social Theory and Research. New York: St. Martin's Press.
+Claeys, Gregory. 2010. Imperial Sceptics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
+Claeys, Gregory. 2018. "Professor Beesly, Positivism and the International: the Patriotism Issue." In "Arise Ye Wretched of the Earth": The First International in a Global Perspective, edited by Fabrice Bensimon, Quinton Deluermoz and Jeanne Moisand. Leiden: Brill.
+De Boni, Carlo. 2013. Storia di un'utopia. La religione dell'Umanità di Comte e la sua circolazione nel mondo. Milano: Mimesis.
+Dixon, Thomas. 2008. The Invention of Altruism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
+Feichtinger, Johannes, Franz L. Fillafer, and Jan Surman, eds. 2018. The Worlds of Positivism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
+Forbes, Geraldine Handcock. 2003. "The English Positivists and India." In Essays on Indian Renaissance, edited by Raj Kumar, 151–63. Discovery: New Delhi.
+Gane, Mike. 2006. Auguste Comte. London: Routledge.
+Giddens, Anthony. Positivism and Sociology. Heinemann. London. 1974.
+Gilson, Gregory D. and Irving W. Levinson, eds. Latin American Positivism: New Historical and Philosophic Essays (Lexington Books; 2012) 197 pages; Essays on positivism in the intellectual and political life of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.
+Harp, Gillis J. 1995. Positivist Republic: Auguste Comte and the Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865–1920. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
+Harrison, Royden. 1965. Before the Socialists. London: Routledge.
+Hoecker-Drysdale, Susan. 2001. "Harriet Martineau and the Positivism of Auguste Comte." In Harriet Martineau: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives, edited by Michael R. Hill and Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, 169–90. London: Routledge.
+Kremer-Marietti, Angèle. L'Anthropologie positiviste d'Auguste Comte, Librairie Honoré Champion, Paris, 1980.
+Kremer-Marietti, Angèle. Le positivisme, Collection "Que sais-je?", Paris, PUF, 1982.
+LeGouis, Catherine. Positivism and Imagination: Scientism and Its Limits in Emile Hennequin, Wilhelm Scherer and Dmitril Pisarev. Bucknell University Press. London: 1997.
+Lenzer, Gertrud, ed. 2009. The Essential Writings of Auguste Comte and Positivism. London: Transaction.
+"Positivism." Marxists Internet Archive. Web. 23 Feb. 2012.
+McGee, John Edwin. 1931. A Crusade for Humanity. London: Watts.
+Mill, John Stuart. Auguste Comte and Positivism.
+Mises, Richard von. Positivism: A Study In Human Understanding. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1951.
+Petit, Annie. Le Système d'Auguste Comte. De la science à la religion par la philosophie. Vrin, Paris (2016).
+Pickering, Mary. Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, England; 1993.
+Quin, Malcolm. 1924. Memoirs of a Positivist. London: George Allen & Unwin.
+Richard Rorty (1982). Consequences of Pragmatism.
+Scharff, Robert C. 1995. Comte After Positivism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
+Schunk, Dale H. Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective, 5th. Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall. 1991, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008.
+Simon, W. M. 1963. European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
+Sutton, Michael. 1982. Nationalism, Positivism and Catholicism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
+Trindade, Helgio. 2003. "La république positiviste chex Comte." In Auguste Comte: Trajectoires positivistes 1798–1998, edited by Annie Petit, 363–400. Paris: L'Harmattan.
+Turner, Mark. 2000. "Defining Discourses: The "Westminster Review", "Fortnightly Review", and Comte's Positivism." Victorian Periodicals Review 33 (3):273–282.
+Wernick, Andrew. 2001. Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
+Whatmore, Richard. 2005. "Comte, Auguste (1798–1857)." In Encyclopaedia of Nineteenth-Century Thought, edited by Gregory Claeys, 123–8. London: Routledge.
+Whetsell, Travis and Patricia M. Shields. "The Dynamics of Positivism in the Study of Public Administration: A Brief Intellectual History and Reappraisal", Administration & Society. doi:10.1177/0095399713490157.
+Wils, Kaat. 2005. De omweg van de wetenschap: het positivisme en de Belgische en Nederlandse intellectuele cultuur, 1845–1914. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
+Wilson, Matthew. 2018. "British Comtism and Modernist Design." Modern Intellectual History x (xx):1–32.
+Wilson, Matthew. 2018. Moralising Space: the Utopian Urbanism of the British Positivists, 1855–1920. London: Routledge.
+Wilson, Matthew. 2020. "Rendering sociology: on the utopian positivism of Harriet Martineau and the ‘Mumbo Jumbo club." Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas 8 (16):1–42.
+Woll, Allen L. 1976. "Positivism and History in Nineteenth-Century Chile." Journal of the History of Ideas 37 (3):493–506.
+Woodward, Ralph Lee, ed. 1971. Positivism in Latin America, 1850–1900. Lexington: Heath.
+Wright, T. R. 1986. The Religion of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
+Wright, T. R. 1981. "George Eliot and Positivism: A Reassessment." The Modern Language Review 76 (2):257–72.
+Wunderlich, Roger. 1992. Low Living and High Thinking at Modern Times, New York. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
+Zea, Leopoldo. 1974. Positivism in Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press.
+
+== External links ==
+
+The full text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Positivism" at Wikisource
+Parana, Brazil
+Porto Alegre, Brazil Archived 24 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine
+Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
+Posnan, Poland
+Positivists Worldwide
+Maison d'Auguste Comte, France

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+title: "Post-normal science"
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+Post-normal science (PNS) was developed in the 1990s by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz. It is a problem-solving strategy appropriate when "facts [are] uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent", conditions often present in policy-relevant research. In those situations, PNS recommends suspending temporarily the  traditional scientific ideal of truth, concentrating on quality as assessed by internal and extended peer communities.
+PNS can be considered as complementing the styles of analysis based on risk and cost-benefit analysis prevailing at that time and integrating concepts of a new critical science developed in previous works by the same authors. 
+PNS is not a new scientific method following Aristotle and Bacon, a new paradigm in the Kuhnian sense, or an attempt to reach a new 'normal'. It is instead, a set of insights to guide actionable and robust knowledge production for policy decision making and action in challenges like pandemics, ecosystems collapse, biodiversity loss and, in general, sustainability transitions.
+
+== Context ==
+According to its proponents Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, the name "post-normal science" echoes the seminal work on modern science by Thomas Kuhn. For Carrozza PNS can be "framed in terms of a call for the 'democratization of expertise'", and as a "reaction against long-term trends of 'scientization' of politics—the tendency towards assigning to experts a critical role in policymaking while marginalizing laypeople". For Mike Hulme (2007), writing on The Guardian, climate change seems to fall into the category of issues which are best dealt with in the context of PNS and notes that "Disputes in post-normal science focus as often on the process of science - who gets funded, who evaluates quality, who has the ear of policy - as on the facts of science". Climate science as PNS was already proposed by the late  Stephen Schneider, and a similar linkage was propose for the workings of the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 
+From the ecological perspective post-normal science can be situated in the context of 'crisis disciplines' – a term coined by the conservation biologist Michael E. Soulé to indicate approaches addressing fears, emerging in the seventies, that the world was on the verge of ecological collapse. In this respect Michael Egan defines PNS as a 'survival science'. More recently PNS has been defined as a movement of 'informed critical resistance, reform and the making of futures'.
+Moving from PNS Ziauddin Sardar developed the concept of Postnormal Times (PNT). Sardar was the editor of FUTURES when it published the article 'Science for the post-normal age' presently the most cited paper of the journal. A recent review of academic literature conducted on the Web of Science and encompassing the topics of Futures studies, Foresight, Forecasting and Anticipation Practice identifies the same paper as "the all-time publication that received the highest number of citations".
+
+== Content ==
+"At birth Post-normal science was conceived as an inclusive set of robust insights more than as an exclusive fully structured theory or field of practice". Some of the ideas underpinning PNS can already be found in a work published in 1983 and entitled "Three types of risk assessment: a methodological analysis" This and subsequent works  show that PNS concentrates on few aspects of the complex relation between science and policy: the communication of uncertainty, the assessment of quality, and the justification and practice of the extended peer communities.
+Coming to the PNS diagram (figure above) the horizontal axis represents 'Systems Uncertainties' and the vertical one 'Decision Stakes'. The three quadrants identify Applied Science, Professional Consultancy, and Post-Normal Science. Different standards of quality and styles of analysis are appropriate to different regions in the diagram, i.e. post-normal science does not claim relevance and cogency on all of science's application but only on those defined by the PNS's mantram with a fourfold challenge: 'facts uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent'. For applied research science's own peer quality control system will suffice (or so was assumed at the moment PNS was formulated in the early nineties), while professional consultancy was considered appropriate for these settings which cannot be 'peer-reviewed', and where the skills and the tacit knowledge of a practitioner are needed at the forefront, e.g. in a surgery room, or in a house on fire. Here a surgeon or a firefighter takes a difficult technical decision based on her or his training and appreciation of the situation (the Greek concept of 'Metis' as discussed by J. C. Scott.)
+
+== Complexity ==
+There are important linkages between PNS and complexity science, e.g. system ecology (C. S. Holling) and hierarchy theory (Arthur Koestler), see e.g. the work of Joseph Tainter, Timothy F. H. Allen and Thomas W. Hoekstra on transition from fossil to renewable fuels. In PNS, complexity is respected through its recognition of a multiplicity of legitimate perspectives on any issue; this is close to the meaning espoused by Robert Rosen (theoretical biologist). Reflexivity is realised through the extension of accepted 'facts' beyond the supposedly objective productions of traditional research. Also, the new participants in the process are not treated as passive learners at the feet of the experts, being coercively convinced through scientific demonstration. Rather, they will form an 'extended peer community', sharing the work of quality assurance of the scientific inputs to the process, and arriving at a resolution of issues through debate and dialogue. The necessity to embrace complexity in a post-normal perspective to understand and face zoonoses is argumented by David Waltner-Toews.
+
+== Extended peer community ==
+
+In PNS extended peer communities are spaces where perspectives, values, styles of knowing and power differentials are expressed in a context of inequalities and conflict. Resolutions, compromises and knowledge co-production are contingent and not necessarily achievable.

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+
+== Applications ==
+Beside its dominating influence in the literature on 'futures', PNS is considered to have influenced the ecological 'conservation versus preservation debate', especially via its reading by American pragmatist Bryan G. Norton. According to Jozef Keulartz  the PNS concept of "extended peer community" influenced how Norton's developed his 'convergence hypothesis'. The hypothesis posits that ecologists of different orientation will converge once they start thinking 'as a mountain', or as a planet. For Norton this will be achieved via deliberative democracy, which will pragmatically overcome the black and white divide between conservationists and preservationists. More recently it has been argued that conservation science, embedded as it is in a multi-layered governance structures of policy-makers, practitioners, and stakeholders, is itself an 'extended peer community', and as a result conservation has always been 'post-normal'.
+Other authors attribute to PNS the role of having stimulated the take up of transdisciplinary methodological frameworks, reliant on the social constructivist perspective embedded in PNS.
+Post-normal science is intended as applicable to most instances where the use of evidence is contested due to different norms and values. Typical instances are in the use of evidence based policy and in evaluation.
+As summarized in a recent work "the ideas and concepts of post normal science bring about the emergence of new problem solving strategies in which the role of science is appreciated in its full context of the complexity and the uncertainty of natural systems and the relevance of human commitments and values."
+For Peter Gluckman (2014), chief science advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, post-normal science approaches are today appropriate for a host of problems including  "eradication of exogenous pests […], offshore oil prospecting, legalization of recreational psychotropic drugs, water quality, family violence, obesity, teenage morbidity and suicide, the ageing population, the prioritization of early-childhood education, reduction of agricultural greenhouse gases, and balancing economic growth and environmental sustainability".
+ Conservation science is also a field where PNS is suggested as to fill the space between research, policy, and implementation, as well as to ensure pluralism in analysis. Ecosystem services are a topical subject for PNS.
+Reviews of the history and evolution of PNS, its definitions, conceptualizations,
+and uses can be found in Turnpenny et al., 2011, and in The Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics (Nature and Society). Articles on PNS are published in Nature and related journals.
+
+== Criticism ==
+A criticism of post-normal science is offered by Weingart (1997) for whom post-normal science does not introduce a new epistemology but retraces earlier debates linked to the so-called "finalization thesis". For Jörg Friedrichs  – comparing the issues of climate change and peak energy – an extension of the peer community has taken place in the climate science community, transforming climate scientists into 'stealth advocates', while scientists working on energy security – without PNS, would still maintain their credentials of neutrality and objectivity. Another criticism is that the extended peer community's use undermines the scientific method's use of empiricism and that its goal would be better addressed by providing greater science education.
+
+== The crisis of science ==
+It has been argued  that post-normal science scholars have been prescient in anticipating the present crisis in science's quality control and reproducibility. A group of scholars of post-normal science orientation has published in 2016 a volume on the topic, discussing inter alia what this community perceive as the root causes of the present science's crisis.
+
+== Quantitative approaches ==
+Among the quantitative styles of analysis which make reference to post-normal science one can mention NUSAP for numerical information, sensitivity auditing for indicators and mathematical modelling, Quantitative storytelling for exploring multiple frames in a quantitative analysis, and MUSIASEM in the field of social metabolism. A work where these approaches are suggested for sustainability is in.
+
+== Mathematical modelling ==
+In relation to mathematical modelling post-normal science suggests a participatory approach, whereby 'models to predict and control the future' are replaced by 'models to map our ignorance about the future', in the process exploring and revealing the metaphors embedded in the model. PNS is also known for its definition of garbage in, garbage out (GIGO): in modelling GIGO occurs when the uncertainties in the inputs must be suppressed, lest the outputs become completely indeterminate.
+
+== Special issues ==
+The journal FUTURES devoted several specials issues to post-normal science.
+
+The first was in 1999 and included two editorial pieces, from Jerome Ravetz and Silvio Funtowicz, and from Jerome Ravetz.
+The second special issue, edited by Merryl Wyn Davies, was entitled "Post normal times" in 2011. This was a selection of papers from the symposium "Post Normal Science – perspectives & prospectives 26-27th June 2009, Oxford." A summary of the abstracts can be found on the NUSAP net.
+The third special issue on post-normal science was in 2017. This special issue contains a selection of papers discussed at the University of Bergen's Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities between 2014 and 2016. The issue includes also two extended commentaries on the present crisis in science and the post-fact/post-truth discourse, one from Europe and one from Japan.
+Another special issue on post-normal science was published in 2011 on the journal Science, Technology, & Human Values.
+
+== References ==
+
+== Bibliography ==
+Ravetz, Jerome R. (1979). Scientific knowledge and its social problems. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-19-519721-1.
+Ravetz, Jerome R. (September 1987). "Usable Knowledge, Usable Ignorance: Incomplete Science with Policy Implications". Knowledge. 9 (1): 87–116. doi:10.1177/107554708700900104.
+Funtowicz, S.O. and J.R. Ravetz (1990). Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy. Kluwer Academic Publishers, the Netherlands.
+Ravetz, Jerome R. (2005). The No nonsense guide to science. Oxford: New Internationalist.
+
+== External links ==
+NUSAP.net
+Article on The Guardian  14 March 2007
+More articles on PNS
+Report from Secretariat of the International Seabed Authority about "post-normal science for recalibration of policy instruments."

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+
+Postnormal times (PNT) is a concept developed by Ziauddin Sardar as a development of post-normal science. Sardar describes the present as "postnormal times", "in an in-between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have yet to be born, and very few things seem to make sense."
+
+
+== Context ==
+In support of engaging communities of various scope and scale on how to best navigate PNT and imagine preferred pathways toward the future(s), Sardar and Sweeney published an article in the journal Futures outlining The Three Tomorrows method, which fills a gap in the field as "many methods of futures and foresight seldom incorporate pluralism and diversity intrinsically in their frameworks, and few, if any, emphasize the dynamic and merging nature of futures possibilities, or highlight the ignorance and uncertainties we constantly confront".
+
+
+== Theory and criticism ==
+Rakesh Kapoor criticized PNT in 2011 as a Western concept that does not apply to India and other emerging markets. Sam Cole criticised the three Cs of PNT (chaos, complexity and contradictions) as "Alliterative Logic, theorizing through alliterative word-triads that is not based on empirical evidence". Jay Gary has suggested that PNT is embryonic, needs a more robust framework, and should be extended to include C S Holling's adaptive cycle. Scientists working on complex evolving systems have pointed out that PNT recalls the "Long Waves" of Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter's view of waves of "creative destruction".
+PNT is one of the core areas of research for the Center for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies at East-West University in Chicago, Illinois, US. A number of articles and editorials on PNT have been published in the journal East-West Affairs.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Center for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies
+East-West Affairs: A Quarterly Journal of North-South Relations in Postnormal Times
+'The Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies (CPPFS) is an international research and consultancy network that promotes futures literacy...'
+Special issue on Futures

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