Main Points in
Positivism
• 1) it is assumed that a single social phenomenon is a
concrete, indisputably objective entity… Comte does not
see that such phenomena…may be susceptible of
different interpretations.
• 2) he identifies ‘general facts’ (presumably what we would
call generalizations) with laws. But a fact is not the same
kind of thing as the laws that scientist formulate and test.
• 3) he assumes that these generalizations (or ‘general
facts’) are capable of reduction without remainder to
other generalizations of greater range.