Positivism vs. Behavioralism — What's the Difference?

Positivism is a philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either positive—a posteriori and exclusively derived from experience of natural phenomena and their properties and relations—or true by definition, that is, analytic and tautological. Thus, information derived from sensory experience, as interpreted through reason and logic, forms the exclusive source of all certain knowledge.Verified data (positive facts) received from the senses are known as empirical evidence; thus positivism is based on empiricism.Sociological positivism holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws.

Behaviouralism (or behavioralism) is an approach in political science that emerged in the 1930s in the United States. It represented a sharp break from previous approaches in emphasizing an objective, quantified approach to explain and predict political behaviour.

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

(American spelling) behaviouralism

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.

(philosophy) 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.

(legal) A school of thought in jurisprudence in which the law is seen as separated from moral values; i.e. the law is posited by lawmakers (humans).

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.

The form of empiricism that bases all knowledge on perceptual experience (not on intuition or revelation)

A quality or state characterized by certainty or acceptance or affirmation