>And let me tell you that I totally disagree with the characterization of
>Peirce as a "positivist", whatever that means. It's nearly impossible to
>fit Peirce into a neatly defined category, though "logicist" might be
>closer to the truth. Peirce's work is not that distant from Frege's and
>even Husserl's, at least in the attempt to avoid "psychologism".
Luiz,
As I remarked earlier, I have a very high regard for Peirce. In a number of
ways he was a generation or two ahead of his time. A truly amazing thinker.
But I think we must be careful in how we understand the word "positivism".
Schematically, people refer to three "waves" of positivism, and they are
all very different from one another. I think the common thread linking all
forms of positivism is the view taken of the relation of science to
philosophy. Positivism places a very high value on science as an innovator
and leader in philosophy and seeks to "serve" science with its
generalisations and reflections. In a sense then it's the philosophy of the
scientific community, not any particular "line" in epistemology. It changes
with the times.
As I understand it (without consulting textbooks), the three waves of
positivism were:
First (1830s-60s): Comte and his English opponents: which saw sociology as
the highest science, growing out of the development of natural science, and
supplanting religion. Very concerned with "laws of history", very
determinist, and so on.
Second (1860s-90s): Highly sceptical and subjective, Poincare, Mach etc.,
produced the "marginal revolution" in economics.
Third (1900+): a step ack from the second wave's subjectivism, includes
Carnap, the Logicists, Frege, etc. IMHO, Husserl and Wittgenstein are cases
of people who bridged across from the positivists into other streams of
thinking and I think Pragmatism was an outgrowth of Positivism, but
deserves a name of its own.
Lots of room for dispute in all this stuff. No-one fits into neat boxes.
Andy
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