Positivism is a philosophical approach, based on the idea of objective truth, meaning that observational evidence together with its logical and mathematical treatment is the exclusive source of all worthwhile information. The positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of western thought from the Ancient Greeks to the present day, but it has been significantly developed from the early nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century. Postpositivism, mainly influenced by Sir Karl Popper's falsification theory and Thomas Kuhn's theory of the paradigm shift, still maintains the idea of objective truth, but believes that human knowledge is based not on unchallengeable, rock-solid foundations but rather upon human conjectures.
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Fathi, K. (2013). Positivism/Neopositivism. In: Runehov, A.L.C., Oviedo, L. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8265-8_201297
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8265-8_201297
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