What is Logical Positivism?

Logical positivism is a paradigm of thinking that states that only data (or knowledge) derived from scientifically-valid and objectively-observable methods are considered valid. Any other method of deriving or accepting data is invalid, according to this method of thinking. Hence, all forms of metaphysical or religious ‘knowledge’ based on faith or belief or some other non-measurable means are not accepted by logical positivists. The approach is very influential in the academic work in which science and its products are privileged above metaphysics and non-verifiable data. However, there are other fields of academic interest (including some within sciences of different sorts) in which other types of data are accepted and indeed in which logical positivism is rejected for a variety of reasons. In general terms, the acceptance of the scientific method as the appropriate means of furthering knowledge that is sanctioned by academics means that most people in those areas are logical positivists in their professional work while accepting that this need not guide personal beliefs of themselves or other people.

Logical positivism was developed in the ‘Vienna school’ of philosophers in the 1920s and is directly related to various other streams of thought based on reason rather than metaphysics, including the work of John Stuart Mill and Ludwig von Wittgenstein. It was also known as logical empiricism and drew from a Berlin school of empiricists, which had the benefit of achieving a string of scientific successes to bolster its reputation. Above all, the role of Albert Einstein was hugely influential in promoting this method of thought above any others. However, in recent years, the cost and difficulty of mounting experiments in the advanced physical sciences (e.g. the Cern laboratory) has meant that abstract thinkers have tended to become more numerous and to some extent more influential in directing thought than empiricists (who accept experimental data only).

Logical positivism is not opposed to God or any other supernatural phenomenon. It does, however, demand replicable and verifiable data as the existence of supernatural phenomena or manifestations, just as it does with accepting physical phenomena which have not yet been accepted as real (e.g. cold fusion and human cloning). Replicable means that the same causes should produce the same events on a consistent basis (i.e. a ‘fortune-teller would have to be consistently right to be accepted as genuine, not just getting it right from time to time). Verifiable means that it must be susceptible to empirical means (i.e. a ‘God’ who exists outside of the physical universe and whose existence cannot be measured by physical means would not be accepted). Further, there would need to be a means of validating the data, which means checking that what is apparently being tested is what is really being tested. For example, it was previously thought that human or animal sacrifices were used to makes the gods happy and this could subsequently be measured by the event of natural disasters or epidemics subsequently. This is no longer accepted, at least not in most academic circles.