Positivism and antipositivism
positivism and antipositivism
Positivism is an philosophy which is based on social as well as natural sciences and more in logical and mathematical treatments. This theory was founded by Auguste comte and developed by Saint simon and comte. Positivists assume that sociological explanations should be like those of natural sciences and sociologists should use logic , methods and procedures of natural science. They believe social reality is objective and it can be measured and discovered by scientific methods. They also believe that social reality can be predicted for example with the help of Durkheims work on suicide we can find out the cause why people are dying . Positivists believe that society is an base for individual for example in the suicide case until and unless society creates certain circumstances an individual wont die. So this theory sees society on macro level and on subjective basis.
Whereas Anti positivism is a philosophy which says that society is subjective. It sees society as totally different from natural sciences. It says a person has different perspective and it cannot be seen in terms of quantities. It also says that there is no casual law which can govern the social behaviour. An example of this can be Goffman’s total institution. It sees society in micr level and subjectively
Seeing both the approaches there is a grear debate between positivism and anti positivism . These are the two theories that is basic theory of sociology. Nowadays we can see that both of these theories are functioning equally in the society and it is true also that positivists say society can mak an individual and we can find many cases. Similarly anti positivists say individual make society , Gandhiji , Hitler and many more great personalities are examples of this So this is a debate thta is going on and in future too it will be going on.
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