Physical education and positivism: some considerations in this scenario

Abstract

In the historic process of breaking with the aristocracy and the clergy, giving way to the republic, industrialization and the bourgeoisie, Comtean positivism arose with the intention of legitimizing this new social structure, subordinating imagination to observation. In different movements in Physical Education, the presence of positivism is legitimized. The aim of this theoretical essay is to bring up some considerations about the marks of positivist thinking in Physical Education. Physical Education has undergone several transformations, but the biologicist, technicist and experimental character remains part of its essence, whether in professional practice or in research. Through the courses of this social practice, we see the "tool-body" inside and outside the school, the result of restricted perceptions of its possibilities, being the object of political manipulation equated in history. From its inception to its scientific flights, Physical Education emanates the consecrated vestiges of positivism, neglecting its reactive possibilities for understanding the humanized body.