The Positivism‐Humanism Debate in Sociology: A Reconsideration*

Abstract

This paper examines the claim that positivism and humanism are mutually exclusive alternatives to the study and amelioration of human society. In the first part of the paper, eight theses normally associated with twentieth‐century positivism are documented and explicated at length, ranging from the verification doctrine and the unified‐language thesis to an emphasis on the nomological‐deductive model of explanation and the fact‐value distinction. In the second part the claims associated with a humanistic sociology are then examined, particularly those concerning scientism, the value‐laden character of all scientific inquiry, and the relation between science and human emancipation. In the third part of the paper a distinction is between those claims which were definitive of positivism and those which were either peripheral or later amended by the leading positivists. It is then argued that a number of the criticisms leveled against positivism such as the latter's supposed affirmation of strict determinism, of scientism, and that normative considerations, being nondescriptive in character, are of little consequence, are entirely unfounded criticisms. Such claims were never an explicit part of the positivist program. On the contrary, it is argued that both contemporary positivism and humanism are motivated by parallel ideals of enlightenment‐through‐science, by a concern with reliable social knowledge as the basis for rational public policies, and—to quote Hempel—with “the broadening of our (moral) horizons.”