positivism

A doctrine contending that sense perceptions are the only admissible basis of human knowledge and precise thought.

The application of this doctrine in logic, epistemology, and ethics.

The system of Auguste Comte designed to supersede theology and metaphysics and depending on a hierarchy of the sciences, beginning with mathematics and culminating in sociology.

Any of several doctrines or viewpoints, often similar to Comte’s, that stress attention to actual practice over consideration of what is ideal.

The state or quality of being positive.

Actual or absolute knowledge.

[capitalized] The Positive philosophy (which see, under positive).

A system of philosophy originated by M. Auguste Comte, which deals only with positives. It excludes from philosophy everything but the natural phenomena or properties of knowable things, together with their invariable relations of coexistence and succession, as occurring in time and space. Such relations are denominated laws, which are to be discovered by observation, experiment, and comparison. This philosophy holds all inquiry into causes, both efficient and final, to be useless and unprofitable.

A doctrine that states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method, refusing every form of metaphysics.