Talk:Antipositivism

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jwhitt21.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:29, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Targeting "Interpretivism" instead of "Antipositivism"
I propose that this page should be termed "Interpretivism" instead of "Antipositivism." While the terms are rather synonymous, interpretivism seems to have broader use within the social sciences. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:602:9701:1B80:3CDA:6993:16C1:256F (talk) 07:46, 11 December 2017 (UTC) Jwhitt21 (talk) 08:02, 11 December 2017 (UTC)jwhitt21

Agreed!Jamzze (talk) 17:06, 27 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I have been reading Alan Bryman's 'Social Research' and on page 28 they refer to Interpretivism over 'antipositivism'. "Interpretivism is a term given to a contrasting epistemology to positivism". I would suggest this is, at least, a contested name for this epistemological issue and this should be flagged more formally on the page. It would be great to hear people's thoughts on this. Jamzze (talk) 20:59, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Humanistic sociology
I have rewritten the Humanistic Sociology (HS) page to coform to this page. The previous sociology page was completely wrong stating that HS employed positvisim ect...Nigel Savage 09:18, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Changes
This page has been re-written again entirely in the past month. I think it's getting pretty good - deserves a new class review. --Tomsega (talk) 18:01, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not exactly sure what was intended here, and as far as I can tell this IP-editor is a good-faith contributor; regardless, the edit in question had the effect of replacing/altering Tomsega's comment. And, as people should not alter others' comments without a spectacularly good reason, I've reverted this change. Cosmic Latte (talk) 16:40, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Odd stmt
Section The concept, para # 5 (including the long citation) claims:
 * Some argue, even if positivism were correct, it would be dangerous

The statement is slightly absurd, since if it is correct but dangerous it need some dangerous flaw making it missing some part of reality that makes it incorrect... The statement is slightly contradictory. Certainly needs citation, if it is citeable, it may still be nonnotable because of its absurd construction. Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 06:29, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed, I suggest removal if no source / clarification is given soon. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The statement should be removed. There is no clear way to make sense out of it. &mdash; goethean &#2384; 18:47, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

False stmt
Section The concept. This statement is wrong on many levels..

"Simply put, positivists see sociology as a science, while anti-positivists don't. Positivists like Popper argue that sociology can be scientific by following scientific procedures, while anti-positivists like Kuhn argues that sociology cannot be a science since sociologists don't agree on one accepted paradigm"

1 - Popper were NOT a positivist even if Habermas called him positivist. References include "the Logic of scientific discovery" by Popper himself. However Popper criticized ANOTHER positivism (the Vienna Group) his criticism of verification could also be seen as a criticism of verificationist, or positivistic, social science as proposed by Comte. Hewever by the 1930’s Comtes positivism were not taken seriously even by the Vienna group (or particularly by them)

2 - Kuhn argued that sociology could not YET be seen as science, i do not think he rejected the possibility of scientific social science, bur perhaps it would be several paradigms.

3 - Kuhn, at large, agreed with Poppers anti- positivism but rejected Poppers views of scientific development Popper saw several small almost evolutionary steps while Kuhn preferred to see "revolutions". Copernicus could perhaps be viewed as a "revolution" BUT within his discipline and among his peers his view were more of a evolution. The Church and common view were revolutionized by his findings, argubly, to a larger extent than his fellow astronomers. The POINT here is Kuhn and Popper were both against a positivistic view of science, the article gives a false impression by calling Popper a positivist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abergdahl (talk • contribs) 14:06, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Karl Popper a positivist ?
From the odd 15 minutes I've been reading on Karl Popper I can tell that he was not a positivist.The reference to that statement is a dead link by the way. The following summary is from his "Quantum theory and the schism in physics" : ''The basic theme of Popper's philosophy--that something can come from nothing--is related to the present situation in physical theory. Popper carries his investigation right to the center of current debate in quantum physics. He proposes an interpretation of physics--and indeed an entire cosmology--which is realist, conjectural, deductivist and objectivist, anti-positivist, and anti-instrumentalist. He stresses understanding, reminding us that our ignorance grows faster than our conjectural knowledge.'' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.182.178.26 (talk) 10:53, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Question the prospect
May I draw your attention to this unfortunate combination of concepts? "To question" often carries the connotation of doubt, as in "His motives were called into question". On the other hand, "prospect" implies looking ahead, a vision of potentialities not yet real. Together, they confound the notions of whether the action is one of favoring or opposing a consideration, and whether the object is extant or proposed. 172.56.26.171 (talk) 12:05, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Serious problem in introduction
The introduction to this article says that antipositivists believe that social researchers should reject empiricism. This is then linked to an article on empiricism, a branch of philosophy which deals with how the "structure of mind" is formed. I don't think that this is what the original editor meant to say. Rather they (and this is guessing) most likely wanted to say that antipositivists believe that researchers should reject empirical research, or alternatively, social theory built mainly upon empirical evidence, or something to that effect. In other words, the term "empiricism" is used incorrectly, and the link to the philosophy article is not appropriate here. Any thoughts on this? 88.112.19.167 (talk) 06:41, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

I concur and am taking this line out Paul Ralph (University of Auckland) (talk) 22:59, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

This article is horrible!
Really needs some work.

Under the not-so-descriptive subtitle "cocept" the article aims to tell us what AP is about. The third paragraph tells us that some "German sociologists formally introduced verstehende sociological antipositivism". Then it goes on to say that AP's try to not do science, because it is not verstehende.

Okay. Not the best expession but still something you can follow. But next the paragraph says that Tönnies discussed Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft as this and that. Not only does the reader completely dail to realize why this paragraph exists in the entire artilce, i.e what it has to do with anything, additionally, the paragraph uses foreign language without explaining (against Manual of style), and uses absolutely no sources. Granted, it does link to the article on Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, which would be okay, except for that that article does not even mention antipositivism in anyway. Just that such concepts were introduced to sociology then and then. So, seriously, if some one does not come along soon and explain why this paragraph is there and how it is supposed to relate to anything, I going to remove it. 88.112.19.167 (talk) 18:39, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Epistemological difference and significant earlier writings
Antipositivism is a belief that the social world requires a different way of knowing. Therefore I added reference to epistemology in the introduction and tidied up this first section. Furthermore I have added the first significant formulation of the idea that natural world and social world are different etc from Vico. ConBlanchet (talk) 15:35, 1 November 2015 (UTC)